Last year, I posted my first article on Medieval and early Tudor trade: a series of posts which uses images to illustrate the trades that were predominant and powerful in medieval England. Today’s post continues that theme – although some of the images have very loose connections to the trade which they are illustrating – but I hope you enjoy viewing the pictures anyway!
A sinful hermit sitting outside a tavern drinking ale; the alewife approaches him with a flagon from The Smithfield Decretals (France, Last quarter of the 13th century or 1st quarter of the 14th century) shelfmark Royal 10 E IV f. 114v.
Broderers (embroiders)
Plaque on the wall of Gutter Lane, London, EC2 – the original site of Broders Hall which was destroyed in 1940 during The Blitz. The Worshipful Company of Broderers are now located in East Moseley and are strongly associated with The Royal School of Needlework who are based at Hampton Court.
Butchers
Smithfield Meat Market – London’s traditional livestock market for 900 years. ‘Smithfield, or “Smoothfield”, a plain, grassy space just outside the City Walls, was well known in the Middle Ages for its horse Market. In 1173 William FitzStephen, clerk to Thomas Becket, describes the area as “a smoth field where every Friday there is a celebrated rendevous of fine horses to be sold.” There was also trading in sheep, pigs and cattle. In 1305 oxen were being sold for 5s 6d each. In 1400 the City of London was granted the tolls from the market by charter. Bartholomew Fair was held here from 1123 until its suppression for rowdiness and debauchery in 1855.’ (Ben Weinreb & Christopher Hibbert, ed, The London Encyclopaedia, (London, 1983) p.789.)
This blog
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Yesterday and today I am publishing my most viewed 12 posts from the last year. My top 1 to 6 posts were described yesterday – so today I am sharing with you my top posts from 7 to 12.
7. The Medieval Spinsters – The medieval ladies from Raymund of Peñafort’s Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals’)
8. Mappy Monday – My top 7 websites for medieval, early-modern & modern maps of London & Great Britain
12. The Dunmow Flitch – Can you prove that you’ve been happily married for a year and a day without a cross word passing between you? Read my account of the 2012 Dunmow Flitch.
Which were your favourite posts and why?
Please do leave your thoughts on my blog below.
Thank you!
My post Coronation and Diamond Jubilee Goldwork described how technically difficult and time-consuming it is to embroider the incredible goldwork that can be seen on royal, religious, ceremonial and military robes.
Above are some of the heraldic and religious ceremonial robes (many at least a hundred years old) from Tuesday’s Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. All robes are heavily embroidered with goldwork and must have been extremely heavy and uncomfortable to wear.
Day 8 – chip work. The dents in all the yellow felt are where I’ve started or finished a thread. A new thread is started by doing several tiny stab stiches (starting on top of the work) in an area that is going to be covered up later with stiches. No knots and no starting or finishing on the back of the fabric! In fact the only time you turn the fabric over is when securing plunged gold thread
Day 8 – Not too much fluff on the work – although there’s a couple of areas where there’s beeswax in tiny smudges
Day 8 – my working area. The metal object that’s part way on the purple velvet cutting board is called a mellor. It helps you to stop touching the gold and also to manovre the thread into exactly the correct place
Day 8 – the spots on the purple cutting board are a few gold chips ready to be sewn down
Day 8 – pins marking out the exact place where the spangles are going to be sewn down
Day 8 – first set of spangles. Each are sewn down with a tiny gold chip of bright check placed in the middle
Day 8 – both sides with spangles & gold chips
Day 8 – so much tissue paper to protect my work!
Day 8 – more chipping needed! However, the race is on because the gold threads already embroidered will start to tarnish (particularly in the chipping area) but the new bright check thread to be turned into chips will be all bright and shiny. It all needs to tarnish at the same rate.
Day 8 – all goldwork will eventually tarnish – some areas faster then others depending on the alloy in each type of metal thread. This is accelerated the more the threads are touched as moisture, grease etc from hands are transfered onto the threads and will spead up the tarnishing process. All gold thread should be kept in glycerine bags and then kept in a dark box/cupboard. Plastic bags should not be used because of moisture in the bags will attack the thread.
Day 8 – looking good! Although according to the RSN by the end of day 8 my work should be finished and mounted ready for marking. However I had to do a lot of work at home and completed all the chipping areas during several lengthy sessions of sewing just the bright check beads. This was surprisingly very therapeutic and I did the embroidery whilst listening to the audiobook of Hilary Mantal’s Wolf Hall on my iPod!
Day 8 – RSN trestles used for resting the slate frame on. These trestles are hand made for the RSN and are nearly £400 per set!!
Homework – Crown all done in bright check chips. The two ‘leaves’ above both sets of ‘spangled’ leaves are now fully bright check chipped. This all took about 7 hours to do
Homework – Only two areas of yellow felt now left to be sewn with bright check chips
Full of Essex girl bling!
Nearly finished – all the bright-check chip work is finished
Only the gold cut-work to be done on over the yellow soft-string padding
Still in it’s embroidery frame. The work has to be cut from the frame and then properly mounted.
Bling!
The remaining area to be embroidered
Spangles and bright-check chips
More spangles and chips
Day 9 – Cutwork – This part was by far the hardest to do. The few stiches in this picture took me nearly 3 hours! The gold splits and cracks very easily. If that happens, the stitch has to come out and a new piece of gold has to be cut and sewn in.
Day 9 – Cutwork – The gold has to be cut to the exact length – 1mm too long and the gold will crack & split as it is sewn in. 1mm to short and you will be able to see a gap. Both not allowed and will be marked down. So it’s precise work. The angle has to be perfect to. I have the habit of flipping my angles (I’m dyslexic and dyspraxic) and I find it very difficult to keep the correct degrees
Day 9 – Embroidery finished.
Day 9 – Cutwork – another problem is that you very easily loose your bearings on where the needle is going to come out (as you can’t “feel” the needle from the top side). Quite a few times, my needle came out exactly in the middle of a piece of gold – which, of course, then splits it and wrecks the stitch. So out comes the stitch! For every stitch you see on my dialgonal cut work, at least 3 others had to be ripped out and resewn. These 2 strips of cutwork took me 6 solid hours to do!
Day 9 – Top section
Day 9 – Bottom section
Day 9 – The debris from doing my cutwork. Lots and lots of pieces of gold that I’d either a) sewn in and then had to rip out (too short, too long, cracked, split, uncoiled) or b) had cut but never got to sew them in because they were wrong (eg split when they went on the needle or cracked because I looked at them the wrong way!)
Part of the Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery is to learn how to properly mount a piece of fine embroidery (without glue,cello-tape or staple gun!!). This part of the course was just as hard as the embroidery and required brut force at many stages to force my embroidery to come together properly.
Day 10 – Mounting. My work is still in it’s embroidery frame. So here I’m using paper to meausure out how big the mount is going to be
Day 10 – Mounting. A running stitch is sewn all along the edge of the paper to give guidelines. This photo shows the running stitch on the right hand side of the work
Day 10 – Mounting. The running stitch is now marking out where the mount is going to be
Day 10 – Mounting. Measuring and cutting out the carrdboard mount. This is extremely thick conservation cardboard (either class 1 or Class A – can’t remember which)
Day 10 – Mounting. Underneath the cardboard is wadding. I can’t remember it’s name but it’s a type of wadding that I’ve never seen before – it looks a bit like a very soft baby’s wool blanket. Then a piece of calico is glued into place. Only a tiny bit of glue is used in strips just on the back of the cardboard. Of course it’s conservation glue!
Day 10 – Mounting. The top of my work is being pinned into place. But first it had to be very carefully unpicked from the slat-embroidery frame. The grain has to be even all the way around and no lumps or bumps anywhere. This was very time consuming and took over an hour just to get the fabric correctly placed with the grain exactly right and the pins all put in. The photo here shows only half the pins that the work ultimately had to have!
Day 10 – Mounting. Yikes. My work has had to be placed on a cushion of well-bundled up bubblewrap so that I can put it face down to work on it. The outside white fabric (with the black stitches) is the calico that my work was original stitched onto back on Day 1 and is the backing. There are hundreds of pins are all around the edge of the work attaching the work to the calicoed-board
Day 10 – Mounting. Excess fabric has been removed. This photo shows the start of the mitring of the corners – all of which are being pinned into place. The hands aren’t mine but my tutors (I needed help with this!)
Day 10 – Mounting. Look closely and you will see black herringbone stitches along the edge. The corner is about to be mitred using slip stitches.
Day 10 – Mounting. This particular corner was a nightmare as the stitches have to be pulled really taut and my thread snapped twice doing this which meant I had to unpick and start the corner again. As it was 5pm, I gave up had to start again the next day/ This has to be done all the way around and then a nice backing of a material called “sateen” slip-stitched onto the back.
Day 11 – Mounting. Using black double-threaded-waxed gutermanns thread didn’t work as it kept snapping on the corners. So instead I had to use white button-hole thread- much much stronger. The herringbone stitch shown on the back was covered up so it didn’t matter that it’s highly visible. The corners are slip-stitched and pull together so no thread is visible at all
Day 11 – Mounting. Corners and excess fabric being cut back
Day 11 – Mounting. Slip stiching the corner
Day 11 – Mounting. The white backing folded to size and then pinned to the back. I could have used black silk backing material but as it was my first marked piece, I was advised to use a white backing material
Day 11 – Mounting. Working from right to left, the area between the black pin and the red pin has been stitched into place with slip-stitches. Yeah – you can’t see my stitches!!!
Day 11 – Mounting. The backing has been slip stiched on
Day 11 – Mounting. Yeah – pins removed and the backing is all there! It’s taken so much effort to get the mounting and back done to perfection that I think I’ll frame it with glass on the back of the picture as well as on the front. That way I can flip the picture over onto the back so that people can admire my beautifully tiny stiches on the back!
Day 11 – Mounting. That’s it!! All done and finished. The final task was to remove all the pin holes around the edge of the work and remove any fluff etc on the work. My work was handed handed in and marked by 2 RSN-trained graduates and an external marker. (I got in the mid 70s%)
I finished this work sometime in 2010 but unfortunately have not been able to get back to the Hampton Court because of personal commitments. During 2011, in the days immediately after the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Royal School of Needlework was in the media spot-light because they made the beautiful lace in Kate’s dress. The course director of the Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery (who, along with many other extremely talented tutors, had personally embroidered & made the lace for Kate’s wedding dress) contacted me and asked if the RSN could use my work in their display cases to show off the work of their students. I am very proud to say that my William Morris Flower is now in the display cases in the studios at the Royal School of Needlework in Hampton Court for visitors to look at.
My posts over the last couple of days have, I hope, shown the story of just one piece of goldwork. The next time you look at military, religious or royal robes embroidered with gold, think of those ladies (and men) of the Royal School of Needlework busy embroidering in their beautifully historic William and Mary apartments at Hampton Court. The RSN may not have been totally responsible for the craftsmanship in the ornate robes you saw in all the pageants that were part of this weekend’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. However, most likely one or more hardworking and extremely skilled craftsman responsible for those spectacular robes was probably trained at this incredible school.
The Lord Chancellor’s Purse for the Queen’s Speech
The Lord Chancellors Purse.
I wish I could say I embroidered this! But I didn’t. But I did get to touch it (gently and carefully) when I was at the RSN. This is a beautiful piece of State goldwork that the RSN first embroidered in 1984. It was brought to the RSN in 2010 for repair work before that year’s State Opening of Parliament. The top left tassel was very worn and needed repairing. Some of the embroidered goldwork needed replacing. The whole piece was very dusty and needed a good spruce up. What this photo doesn’t convey is that it is very large (for a purse!) and is in 3D. It’s about 3 foot square. It is also very heavy and the back shows a lot of wear and tear because whoever held it, had to balance it because of its weight (there is a much-worn handle on the back). The Lion and the Unicorn are both gold-stump work figures – ie heavily padded figures (padded with carpet-felt) that were made separately and then sewn onto the purse. The figures down the edges are the heads of angels and have the most beautiful faces. Again these are padded figures created separately and then sewn on. The stumpwork figures are about 2-3 inches in depth. The coat of arms uses a fabric called “Cloth of Gold” which, as the name implies is fabric woven with gold and is about £200 a metre. It is used by the Lord Chancellor to hold the Queen’s speech during the State Opening of Parliament.
Have you ever wondered how the beautiful Coronation robes were embroidered with such magnificent goldwork? Or how Kate Middleton’s dress was embroidered so beautifully for her wedding to Prince William? Or how was the amazing goldwork done on robes of the Herald’s of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant? Embroidery on royal or military robes and garments are incredible works requiring great skill and craftsmanship.
The only people able to embroider to such a high level of excellence are, of course, those trained by the remarkable Royal School of Needlework based in Hampton Court Palace.
Whilst I can never claim to being as skilled and as experienced as the embroiders (known as ‘apprentices’) who made the Queen’s Coronation Robes, I can claim first-hand knowledge of how difficult it is to do goldwork embroidery – and how rewarding it is. In 2010-2011, before my dissertation took hold of all my time and attention, I was fortunate enough to attend my first (out of four) embroidery techniques that comprise the Royal School of Needlework‘s Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery. The technique I choose to be my first (and to date, only technique) was goldwork.
To celebrate the final day of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee weekend, my post today is images of my time at the Royal School of Needlework. I hope these photos convey how technically difficult it is to do goldwork embroidery.
Day 1 – Finding a source for my work. I love the work of William Morris, so chose this pattern
Day 1 – the tiny portion of the amazing William Morris pattern which will form the basis of my work
Day 1 – Framing up. Attaching calico to a “slate” frame (which isn’t made of slate!)
Day 1 – Still framing up – this took hours!
Day 1 – My stitches aren’t very neat but it doesn’t matter because when I’d finished the work, I cut these stitches to remove the work from the frame
Day 1 – My design – this has been “pricked” so I can “pounce” it with white powder made from cuttlefish. The tracing is covered all along the design with
tiny pin-pricks about 2mm apart.
Day 1 – My black silk has been sewn to the calico backing (this took a couple of hours to do). Then the pricked tracing is placed over the black silk and “pounced”. The pounce is made of finely ground cuttle-fish which is then smeared over the tracing so the pounce falls through the tiny holes and leaves an outline on the black silk
Day 1 – All ready for the outline to be painted on.
Day 1 – This was so tricky as I don’t have a steady hand. Using a very fine paint-brush, the outline of the design is painted onto the black silk. It’s a bit too thick in place and too fine in others. When the goldwork is embroidered onto the fabric, it has got to cover all the paint lines so no lines are showing.
Day 1 – All framed, painted and ready to start…
Day 1 – My first bit of padding – a lot of the goldwork has padding underneath the metal threads to raise it up from the surface. This strip has 4 pieces of felt sewn down one on top of the other.
Day 1 – Some of the yellow padding. Most of this work has padding all over it before the gold can be applied.
Day 2 – It took me all day to sew the felt padding.
Day 2 – The 2 far out leaves have 2 layers of felt padding. The middle (of 3) long down felt padding is 4 layers, either side of this, it’s 1 layer. The 2 leaves on top/next to the down felt is also 4 layers. The top triangles are 3 layers. The upside down “crown” at the top has 3 layers of tiny circles and the 1 layer of upside down crown.
Day 2 – Urgh. I can’t believe how much fluff is on my lovely black silk!
Day 3 – Soft string padding. This is about 15 strands of thick soft string, heavily waxed with bees wax and then twisted together and tightly sewn down. It was a pain to do!
Day 3 – The beginnings of the 2nd section of waxed soft string
Day 3 – By the end of this day, a lot of my beautiful paintwork had started to brush off. Under the 2nd section of soft string, it had disappeared totally so the yellow lines you can see are from the tacking lines I’ve had to sew in to get back the outline
Day 3 – Lots and lots of tissue paper surround my work so it doesn’t get dirty! I get marks deducted if it is dirty or has wax marks on it. My little pin keep I made myself – it’s so handy.
Day 4 – On this day, I got to couch down some Japanese gold thread
Day 4 – All those little “tails” of gold thread had to be taken through the black silk and secured to the back of the picture. Taking the threads through the background fabric is called “plunging”
Day 4 – 2 sides of the stem are now done
Day 4 – The camera doesn’t really show the couching stiches. They are done in a “brick” stitch pattern
Day 5 – Middle section all couched down. Loads of tails that all need plunging
Day 5
Day 5
Day 5 – middle wavy section is three different threads – rocco, Japanese and twist
Day 5 – Bottom of stem have been plunged. Gold threads have been taken through to the back of the fabric by using a lasso of strong button-hole-cotton. The gold thread is threaded through the lasso and then the lasso is pulled tight from the other side of the fabric and with any luck the gold thread will pop through to the other side.
Day 5
Day 5- The back of the work with lots and lots of gold threads
Day 5
Day 5 – Every thread has been plunged (this took about 4 hours to do them all)
Day 5 – The back of the fabric. Now all these threads had to be securely sewn down in little bundles and the ends snipped off.
Day 6 – back of the fabric – top section of threads have been sewn down. Bottom section awaiting to be done
Day 6 – the only way to sew these little bundles of gold thread down is by using a curved needle. Using a straight normal needle is nearly impossible as the fabric is so taught and the gold threads so thick
Day 6 – Last few bundles to be done
Day 6 – All done
Day 6 – Sewing down the bundles took about 4 hours. Great care has to be taken where each bundle is sewn down to – its got to be on areas that doesn’t have to be sewn over later on. If I got it wrong, I’d be pushing a needle through fabric and the thick bundles of gold thread (ouch!)
Day 6 – Back to the top of the fabric. I’ve now outlined the left side leaves in pearl purl (or is it purl pearl?) Each leave is indiviually done and I had to work out which line belonged to which leaf
Day 6 – Close up of the pearl purl. My camera shows all the tiny piece of beeswax and fluff from the felt. The felt “leaks” fluff all the time. The pearl purl is sewn down with heavily bees-waxed cottom to make it stronger. It leaves tiny traces of bees-wax behind on the fabric. The next day’s job was to remove all the fluff and bees-wax from my work.
Day 6 – I did the gold swirlie bit on the right of the picture last minutes on day 5. But then I realised I hadn’t done it properly because I tried to loop around in curves at the top of swirlie bit but it just looked awful. So I had to unpick this entire section.
Day 7 – the re-sewn embroidery so that the swirls follow round and round in a spiral. It still wasn’t perfect – too much space between each swirl – but had to do.
Day 7 – both sides are now done in swirlie loops using gold passing thread.
Day 7 – from this close up you can see the swirls are by no means perfect. After I took this photo, the tutor had a good prod and poke arouond and evened up my swirls. The long gold thread hanging off to the left of the picture is pearl purl – used to outline things. Hard work couching it down as you have to pull the waxed thread through the little tiny gaps (pearls). The stitches end up being about 1mm in length
Day 7 – all the pearl is done. And 2 arches of rocco gold thread added to the black part at the top
Day 7 – so the 2 sides aren’t symmetrical! But it’s a flower and not supposed to be symmetrical.
Day 7
Day 7
Day 7 – This thread is called bright check. It’s cut into tiny tiny little beads that are then sewn down over the felt
Day 7 – this was to be cut into tiny tiny beads and then sewn down over the remaining yellow felt
Day 7 – half way down the thread is a bead cut from the bright check. The bead is about 2mm in length. That whole tiny area has to be full of hundreds beads with no spaces of yellow left
Day 7 – by the end of each day, my eyes were so tired that I just couldn’t see my goldwork anymore! The tiny gold mark towards the right (by the tissue paper) is where the bright check has very slightly frayed as it’s being cut leaving behind a tiny trace of gold wire and it has bounced onto my work (it brushed off)
Day 7 – as the bright check is cut into beads, it shatters and jumps all over the place. This is the lid of a jam pot so that when the beads jump, it’ll stay within the lid and not disappear. I should have put the lid on tissue paper, instead of straight onto my black silk – everything has to be protected so that no dirty marks are left behind.
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An archer sitting on a grotesque creature shooting a hapless rabbit (folio 143v) from The Macclesfield Psalter, (East Anglia, England, circa 1330), © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
A sinful hermit sitting outside a tavern drinking ale; the alewife approaches him with a flagon from The Smithfield Decretals (France, Last quarter of the 13th century or 1st quarter of the 14th century) shelfmark Royal 10 E IV f. 114v.
Plaque on the wall of Gutter Lane, London, EC2 – the original site of Broders Hall which was destroyed in 1940 during The Blitz. The Worshipful Company of Broderers are now located in East Moseley and are strongly associated with The Royal School of Needlework who are based at Hampton Court.
Smithfield Meat Market – London’s traditional livestock market for 900 years. ‘Smithfield, or “Smoothfield”, a plain, grassy space just outside the City Walls, was well known in the Middle Ages for its horse Market. In 1173 William FitzStephen, clerk to Thomas Becket, describes the area as “a smoth field where every Friday there is a celebrated rendevous of fine horses to be sold.” There was also trading in sheep, pigs and cattle. In 1305 oxen were being sold for 5s 6d each. In 1400 the City of London was granted the tolls from the market by charter. Bartholomew Fair was held here from 1123 until its suppression for rowdiness and debauchery in 1855.’ (Ben Weinreb & Christopher Hibbert, ed, The London Encyclopaedia, (London, 1983) p.789.)
Day 8 – chip work. The dents in all the yellow felt are where I’ve started or finished a thread. A new thread is started by doing several tiny stab stiches (starting on top of the work) in an area that is going to be covered up later with stiches. No knots and no starting or finishing on the back of the fabric! In fact the only time you turn the fabric over is when securing plunged gold thread
Day 8 – looking good! Although according to the RSN by the end of day 8 my work should be finished and mounted ready for marking. However I had to do a lot of work at home and completed all the chipping areas during several lengthy sessions of sewing just the bright check beads. This was surprisingly very therapeutic and I did the embroidery whilst listening to the audiobook of Hilary Mantal’s 
Day 10 – Mounting. Yikes. My work has had to be placed on a cushion of well-bundled up bubblewrap so that I can put it face down to work on it. The outside white fabric (with the black stitches) is the calico that my work was original stitched onto back on Day 1 and is the backing. There are hundreds of pins are all around the edge of the work attaching the work to the calicoed-board
Day 11 – Mounting. Using black double-threaded-waxed gutermanns thread didn’t work as it kept snapping on the corners. So instead I had to use white button-hole thread- much much stronger. The herringbone stitch shown on the back was covered up so it didn’t matter that it’s highly visible. The corners are slip-stitched and pull together so no thread is visible at all
Day 11 – Mounting. That’s it!! All done and finished. The final task was to remove all the pin holes around the edge of the work and remove any fluff etc on the work. My work was handed handed in and marked by 2 RSN-trained graduates and an external marker. (I got in the mid 70s%)
The Lord Chancellors Purse.
Day 7
