In a previous post on this site we focused on whitework embroidery as reinterpreted by modern artists and on the symbolical meanings that may be hiding behind it. Yet, there are different techniques that should be rediscovered such as blackwork embroidery, that is black silk on white linen, a popular technique that became fashionable during the reign of Henry VIII.
Blackwork is historically associated with dress embroidery and with costumes styles from the 16th and 17th centuries, and it was also known, at least in its initial phase, as "Spanish work" since it was inspired by Spanish-Moresque motifs.
Examples of blackwork embroidery appear in quite a few paintings and portraits in which the sitters donned intricately embroidered cuff ruffles: in the Portrait of an Unknown Lady (around 1587-97) attributed to John Bettes the sitter wears a magnificent wired cut-work collar and her costume features richly embroidered sleeves veiled in silk gauze. The sleeves are decorated with a series of floral motifs including Tudor roses, oak and vine leaves, carnations, and pomegranates and carnations (a symbol of earthly or divine love) also appear on her cuffs.
The most interesting thing about this technique is that it has a connection with architecture: many motifs and patterns employed in this embroidery style and in other styles popular in the Tudor times were not restricted to needlework, but were also employed in interior and architectural decorations, including plaster ceilings, wall-paintings, and wood and stone carvings. It is therefore not rare to spot in Elizabethan timber-framed houses structural timbers that feature the same style of bold black-and-white patterning found in blackwork.
The fashion for blackwork continued throughout the 16th century, dying out around 1630, but you will get a chance to rediscover it in October thanks to a one day course organised by the Royal School of Needlework (RSN) at the Fashion Museum Bath Study Facilities.
The course will move from a man's blackwork embroidered shirt from 1600 stored in the Bath Fashion Museum archive (a permanent loan from the Vaughan Family Trust). Led by RSN tutor Deborah Wilding, the class will dissect the motif on the shirt and then invite the participants to use traditional embroidery and counted blackwork patterns to create their own piece of historic embroidery.
Black on white needlework can be very inspiring and, like whitework, nowadays it could be reinvented to suit our times and maybe help us commenting on social and political issues, so that, from a decorative pattern, it could become a visual code with different functions, meanings and symbolisms.
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