Niedersachsen / Lüneburg monasteries

The German Inscriptions Online project has posted a lovely set of pictures of art from the Lüneburg monasteries/cloisters along with a discussion and translations of the original inscriptions and text! There are some lovely pictures of embroidery - enjoy :)

Source and sketch for St. Martin's panel

I've actually started my panel. I've got the frame dressed and the pattern traced, so now I just need to get started stitching. I've included a picture of the original from Bildindex below.

The Nuns at Wienhausen

This website is on women's monastic communities and it has some great embroidery from the Convent at Wienhausen (some in color!). There is information for embroidery pieces and a bibliography. If you're hunting down info on a piece, this may be a good start. The convent embroidered pieces in the brick stitch that I have been focusing on and the Klosterstitch works that Racaire has been working on.

Pretty pictures

Thanks to my sister for sending me links to some more pictures on the web :)

Two Flickr pools of interest:
* detail pictures from the Cloisters piece at the NY Met: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosettastones/3406589474/in/set-72157616161436505/
* some scans from the Kroos book, along with some pretty stitching: http://www.flickr.com/photos/medievalartcraft/

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.

Source-tastic!

I have found another source (in English!) from Digital Archive of Documents Related to Embroideryfor further information on brick work:
Mediaeval Embroidery from the Collection of Mrs. Murray Crane The Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1932)

My bibliography grows stronger!

Source book

I've had a few requests for more information on the source book that I'm using. Its Niedersächsiche Bildstickereien des Mittelalters by Renate Kroos, published by Berlin, Deutscher Verl. f. Kunstwissenschaft in 1970. The book is based on Renate Kroos' dissertation on embroidery in Lower Saxony. The book in German, so I have been using the pictures of the pieces and then translating snippets of the information as I need them. There aren't a lot of copies floating around the US, but you can see WorldCat's listing at http://www.worldcat.or/oclc/176343&referer=brief_results to find your nearest copy. Many universities have some allowances for allowing public access to books (though they many not let you check it out). Just take care of the copy that you use, since there aren't that many around :)

Brickwork in clothing

I found an example of someone who charted some brickwork from the Anna Meyer dress from Holbein’s Darmstadt Madonna (painted between 1526-1528). Very cool. Up to this point I had mostly seen wall hangings and pouches, and trim on a priest's stole.

References

Along the way I thought that I'd post some references pieces in the embroidery genre that I am working on. Unfortunately most of the pictures that I can find are black and white, though the color pictures that I find show brightly colored embroidery with a pretty good variety of colors. In cases where I can get color pictures, I have stitched the patterns in matching colors.

Master Wymarc's web page got me started on this and I found the book "Niedersächsiche Bildstickereien des Mittelalters" by Renate Kroos. It was dumb luck that the book was available through the Georgia library system, since there aren't that many copies. The book has tons of black and white plates of brickwork examples from Germany and information on them. It is in German though, so its been slow going for me. Many of the patterns charted are coming from plates in this book.

The New York Met has a large piece in the Cloisters:
Altar Frontal, late 14th century
German; Silk on linen; 63 x 62 1/2 in. (160 x 158.8 cm)

Lady Sabine Berard has taken lovely detail pictures of the piece which can be found here:
http://www.silverdragon.org/SABINE/cloistext.html

Introduction

My name is Helene and I currently live in the Barony of South Downs in the SCA Kingdom of Meridies. This blog is to track my progress in the A&S 50 challenge. For more information on the challenge, check out the web page at http://artsandsciences50.org/ and the yahoo group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AandS50ChallengeCommunity/

I am taking the depth challenge for the A&S 50 with a focus on embroidery. A while back I found "A Stitch Out of Time" and made a small project from it. The article is by Master Richard Wymarc and is a fantastic piece. Since then I've gotten into a style of 14th and 15th Century German counted thread embroidery which uses the brick stitch.

Though Master Richard Wymarc found few examples of this type of embroidery at the V&A, I have found a copy of " Niedersächsiche Bildstickereien des Mittelalters" by Renate Kroos, which has several nice examples. I have decided to begin the challenge by charting and stitching samplers of the geometric patterns used as fill in these pieces. After I get a number of the patterns done, I plan to move on to stitching up several of the full pieces.