Blackwork Collar and Cuffs for Duke Sir Gabriel de Beaumont

Fighter Auction Prize for Great Northern War AS47

Blackwork collar and cuffs by The Honourable Lady Ceara Shionnach of House Burbage, Politarchopolis.http://cearashionnach.wordpress.com/

Contents1. Introduction............................................................................................................................................................2

2. Background.............................................................................................................................................................2

3. Designing the Pattern..............................................................................................................................................3

4. Creating the Collar and Cuffs...................................................................................................................................6

5. The Finished Piece...................................................................................................................................................6

6. References...............................................................................................................................................................7

1. IntroductionFor the Great Northern War Fighter Auction Tournament (heavy fighting, Northern Reaches) in June 2012 I offered to embroider collar and cuffs for the person who bought me.

Duke Sir Gabriel de Beaumont was the victor in the auction. His garb and persona are in the style of early to mid sixteenth century England, and so I designed a blackwork collar and cuffs in this style. (Cuffs to come).

2. BackgroundBlackwork is known by many names, including Spanish work, Crimson work (specifically referencing the use of red thread) and monochrome embroidery. It was a popular and common style of embroidery during the 16 th century throughout Europe. Blackwork embroidery may have evolved from the “double-running stitch…[found] in the Islamic countries south of the Mediterranean in the 14th and 15th centuries” (Laning, 2008). Laning also suggests that this style may have become popular in Western Europe following the marriage of Catherine of Aragon to King Henry VIII in 1509 as prior to that time there appears to be a lack of solid evidence of the use of blackwork in Western Europe.

Blackwork was used in to decorate many personal items for males and females such as handkerchiefs, coifs, jackets, stomachers, stockings, shirts/chemises, as well as appearing on embroidery samplers (Historical Needlework Resources, 2013; VAM, 2013; The Met, 2013).

There are several extant pieces incorporating this technique readily available in the online collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, particularly from England and Italy (VAM, 2013; The Met, 2013).

In period, blackwork could include one or more different stitch types. Perhaps the most common examples consist of Holbein (aka double running) stitch or stem stitch (Historical Needlework Resources, 2013). The colour of the embroidery was typically black silk, however, red, blue and other coloured silks were also used (Laning, 2008; Root, 2004). The style of the pattern could vary anywhere from rigidly geometric to freeform, and common motifs commonly included repetitive geometric patterns, flora and/or fauna.

The primary inspiration for this work was the collar and cuff bands of an extant sixteenth century English shirt held in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Linen shirt embroidered in blue silk with similar motifs on the collar and cuffs. c1540, England (VAM, museum number T.112-1972, 2013)

3. Designing the Pattern

There are many resources available to aid in the design of a period blackwork pattern. They can include extant embroidered pieces from the period, period portraiture depicting blackwork embroidery on garments or items, and pattern books or Modelbuchs. Pattern books contained patterns and motifs many kinds of decorative arts, including various forms of embroidery, lace-making and illumination (Historical Needlework Resources 2, 2013).

Several model books can be found published/listed online by The West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild (2013), The German Renaissance of Genoveva (2013), Mathilde Eschenbach (2013) and the Antique Pattern Library (2013).

I wanted the collar and cuffs to specifically suit the recipient. As such, I designed something where every element directly related to Duke Sir Gabriel. In the configuration of a base design that’s a cross between the motifs of Figure 2 and the configuration of Figure 3 (both from 16th century model books), I included the following simplified motifs:

Rampant badgers (Figure 4), replacing the lions in Figure 2, representing the badge of his household Moralez Beaumont,

His personal device (Figure 5), The pelican in her piety (Figure 6), a symbol of the Order of the Pelican to which he belongs, and A belt (replacing the laurel wreaths in Figure 2), a symbol of the Order of Chivalry to which he belongs.

Figure 2: Base pattern inspiration, sourced from Egenolff (1527) page 44

Figure 3: Base pattern inspiration, sourced from Paganino (1909) page 76

Figure 4: Rampant badger inspiration, sourced from the East Kingdom College of Heralds (last accessed April 2014)

Figure 5: Duke Sir Gabriel’s device, sourced from Lochac’s Roll of Arms (last accessed April 2014)

Figure 6: The pelican in her piety was adapted from this image, sourced from Elizabeth Braidwood (last accessed April 2014)

Figure 7: The border was adapted from the strawberry vines in this sixteenth century illumination (Special Collections of the University of St Andrews, 2012)

The border consists of Strawberries (fruit, leaves and flowers as adapted from those depicted in Figure 6) in the border to represent his title as a Duke. As an aside, it was period practice to use similar patterns across many art forms, including crossovers between illumination and embroidery (as mentioned above, Historic Needlework Resources 2, 2013).

I added a border to the base design to better fill in the dimensions of the space, whilst still conforming to the style of the time (Figure 2, 3). The addition of the border also allowed me to add the Duchy motif to the design in a period manner. For example, Figures 8 and 9 depict three other embroidery designs from Egenolff that includes such borders.

Figure 8: An example of vine borders around embroidery designs from page 5 of Egenolff (1527)

Figure 9: Two examples of vine borders around embroidery designs from page 28 of Egenolff (1527)

I arranged the final pattern, incorporating the above elements, on my computer to true-to-life dimensions for the collar. As the whole pattern was too long to print onto one single A4 piece of paper, I split the design in half (Figure 10).

Figure 10: My final design for Duke Sir Gabriel’s collar

The cuff design is a larger version of the border from the collar. This is consistent with the variations of designs (a larger one, and a smaller one based on the border) observed in Paganino’s (1909) model book.

4. Creating the Collar and CuffsThe linen for the collar and cuffs was provided by Duchess Constanzia Moralez y de Zamora, and it is the same linen as the shirt will be made from. The length of the collar and cuffs were also provided by Duchess Constanzia, being 48cm and 21cm respectively. Having made two blackwork collars previously, I knew that approximately 5cm in width would be an adequate height for the collar.

Before I started transferring patterns or embroidering on the ground linen, I measured the outline of the collar dimensions and marked the corners with a ceramic pencil. Following the grain of the fabric (to keep the lines straight – this only works in even weave fabrics), I used stem stitch to embroider paired lines for the borders.

I separated black Madeira silk into single strands and embroidered the motifs in a mixture of stem stitch, split stitch and Holbein stitch.

5. The Finished Piece

Figure 11: The finished collar

Figure 12: Detail of the finished collar (top) and one completed cuff (bottom)

Collar Dimensions: 48cm by 5cm

Cuff Dimensions: 2.3cm by 19.5cm

Stitches used: Stem stitch (for the border and vines), and a mixture of Holbein stitch and split stitch for the detail.

Estimated time to embroider: 26 hours for the collar, 8 hours each for the cuffs (42 hours in total).

6. References

East Kingdom College of Heralds (last accessed April 2014). Online System for Commentary and Response. http://oscar.eastkingdom.org/index.php

Egenolff, Christian (1527). Modelbuch aller art nehewercks vnd [und] stickens: Ornament, Volume 1. Note: A .pdf of this book is available for download on the Antique Pattern Library website (last accessed April 2014). http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/

Elizabeth Braidwood, 1999. The Medieval Pelican.http://donna.hrynkiw.net/sca/pelican/

Historical Needlework Resources (accessed June 2013). Blackwork.http://medieval.webcon.net.au/technique_blackwork.html

Historical Needlework Resources 2 (accessed April 2014) – Patterns and Modelbuchs. This page includes a description of period pattern books, which can be used to design blackwork (and other) embroidery. http://medieval.webcon.net.au/period_16th_c_modelbuchs.html

Laning, Chris (last updated 2008). The roots of blackwork embroidery. The West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild.http://wkneedle.bayrose.org/Articles/blackwork_roots.html

Lochac Roll of Arms (last accessed April 2014). Device of Gabriel de Beaumont.http://lochac.sca.org/LRoA/index.php?page=individual&id=276

Mathilde Eschenbach (last accessed April 2014). A Bibliography of Pattern Books in the 16th Century. This site lists numerous pattern books for embroidery, lace, and other textiles. http://home.comcast.net/~mathilde/embroidery/bibpatbk.htm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met, accessed 2013). Search the collections. http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections

Paganino, Alex (1909). Il Burato – libro de ricami (an Italian facsimile embroidery and lace model book with patterns from 1500 to mid-1600’s).http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/books.html#P

Root, Rissa Peace (2004). A Blackwork Embroidery Primer. Accessed 2013.http://www.prettyimpressivestuff.com/blackwork.htm

Special Collections of the University of St Andrews (2012). Echoes from the Vault – A carpet page with a decorated initial ‘V’ from a 16th century manuscript copy of the Office of the Dead.http://standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/52-weeks-of-inspiring-illustrations-week-16-the-office-for-the-dead-with-other-devotional-works/

Victoria and Albert Museum (accessed June 2013). Search the collections. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/o Linen shirt embroidered in blue silk with similar motifs on the collar and cuffs. c1540, England, museum

number T.112-1972.

The West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild (last accessed April 2014) – Annotated Booklist: Historic Model Books and Pattern Books. http://wkneedle.bayrose.org/booklist/Book-Model.html