Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Pouch from Cologne

I found this while doing some research and thought that the pouch folks might like it. Its looks like an example of the brick stitch pouches complete with fancy tassels. It seems that the pouch patterns are a mixture of stitches and emtpy canvas. The book "Der Kunst- und Reliquienschatz des Kölner Domes (1870)" can be found here. The figure is on pdf page 267 or if you're browsing the "flip book" its page 159 of the last section.

I'm using Google translate for the information since the book is in German, so my understanding of the passage is vague. The piece is listed as a relics embroidery bag in silk embroidery on canvas. The colors are listed as red, white, and blue silks. The pouch is from the first half of the 14th century and seems to be considered a representative piece of a larger collection.

5 comments:

Laura Kathleen said...

Wow! The engravings in that book are just incredible!

Helene said...

Yeah, all of the pictures had that kind of detail! I haven't been able to find the piece on Bildindex, so I'm not optimistic about finding a photograph. It also occurs to me that the empty canvas was most likely covered by a fiber that is no longer there. I've seen several pictures of older pieces in silk where one color was almost completely gone.

Louise said...

If you go to silkworks/Isis blog you can also see a purse from Holland where most of the threads are no longer there. And in some of the embroideries the white is often made of linnen thread which might be an explanation.

I think the pattern on the purse looks a lot like the small purse from V&A in London?

Louise said...

Sorry no, it really doesn´t look like the London one

Helene said...

Its from the same era and near the region as the V&A and is done in the same stitching technique with similar materials So they are definately related pieces :)