Wonderful Zoom presentation yesterday from Oxford, on Aegean embroidery of the 17th and 18th centuries, and some earlier. It's based on a new book on the subject by the presenter, Dr Francesca Leoni, curator of the Ashmolean Museum.
I had alerted stitchers who read in here, and I hope they caught it.
Without going into the technicalities of stitching, it was probably skilled domestic production, in silk thread on a foundation of linen and cotton mix fabric.
Some of the work had linen warp, cotton weft, some the reverse. The two fibers were not spun together. The threads were usually single unspun lengths. Silk takes a great depth of dye color, as you will see. There was a variety of stitches, from early crossstitch counted thread work to freeform surface split stitch, herringbone, french knots and satin stitch.
There's a lot unknown about this artform in that region, because it was such a crossroads of trade from the whole shipping world. Hard to know if the materials were local or imported, and if the work was a team enterprise. Chances are it was home produced, most probably women's work. There were motif patterns available to use, as you'll see.
There are familiar motifs to anyone who has studied middle Eastern art, carnations, phoenixes, vines, star shapes , and geometric
The geometric stars are familiar too, to people who've seen Chinese blue and white embroidery, usually folk art. The same birds and stars show up in Pennsylvania Dutch artworks, and I don't know if there was borrowing or if there were trade connections, the Chinese being worldwide traders.
Anyway here's a gallery I put together, trying to capture labels close to the artworks. These works were valued, recycled and remade into other items, a dress hem into a pillow cover in this collection.
