Exercises 1.1 and 1.2: The Archive
The first question posted before completing the first exercise was what I would define as a textile and to give some examples. My own perception of a textile is of a constructed yarn or mesh even, formed to make a structure which can be draped, either on the body or in furniture for example. Anything from cotton to nylon, from chainmail to the fabrics used in bus seats, neoprene to paper dresses, whether it’s made of metal or paper pulp, to me this all classes as a textile.
I tend to love stories and histories behind textiles and fabrics. A good example was a piece of lace I removed from the back of my wedding dress on the day I got married. I can remember sat on the stairs an hour before the make-up lady was due to arrive thoroughly berating myself for not checking and leaving it to the last minute. I did manage to make the alteration in time and it looked great, when I look at the dress I don’t think of that moment but when I look at that tiny piece of lace I am forever reminded of my nature and of sitting at the top of the stairs howling at my eldest son to get out of the bath which he was casually swimming in at the time.
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After reading the brief for Exercise 1.1 , I contacted the Carisbrooke Castle Museum and asked if they had some textiles that I could go and study. I knew that there was a long history of the castle going back to before the Domesday Book and that King Charles I had been held prisoner there before his execution so I had a good feeling about finding something suitable.
A swift reply came from Kate Tiley who works at the museum asking what textiles I would like to come and see. She asked what my interests were particularly and I replied that I was very interested in embroidery and lace. I was offered at least 30 items to view, Kate sent me a catalogue of items and said that they would need some advance warning so that they could retrieve the items from their stores. The room I went to was in the attic of the museum, accessed by a winding wooden staircase.
Several of the items offered were of unknown origin, and since the brief was specifically about gaining background knowledge I chose 3 pieces that had some information that went alongside them. Of the items on offer I chose the following;
Piece number 1 is a heavily embroidered Vestment cope dating back to 1660 so it is of the Stuart period. It is hand sewn and was made in Belgium. It is owned by Dominics Priory (just up the road from Carisbrooke Castle) which closed in 1990. It is currently on loan to Carrisbrooke Castle Museum. From reading some books on lacemaking, it was common to have laces and embroideries made in Belgium.
I have found myself very surprised by the materials used in this piece. Of the 3 pieces I chose my expectations were surpassed. I only had an hour to be able to study this piece: I was allowed to arrive at 11 and I had to leave by 2.30pm and the ladies who had kindly retrieved it from storage for me had to leave by 12. I made good use of the hour I had and absolutely loved it. Thankfully I brought my Dad’s magnifying glass with me so I was able to really study all the pieces in some depth.
The bulk of the cope is cream brocade and is in pristine condition. Having not really studied a textile of this age before I was staggered at how delicate the brocade detailing was and I started asking myself how this fabric was made. The cope is lined with deep red silk which has in places ripped probably owing to the delicate weight of the silk fabric and deterioration over time. The silk has fared worst of all the fabrics in the cope. So many questions arose in me about techniques and tools that must have been employed to make this item, it opened up many new streams of learning for me. I briefly looked at medieval fabrics and could see that the relatively simple flower design set into this fabric was possible to have been made in 1660. It was not possible, however, for me to verify exactly where the where the textiles themselves were made.
The cope is beautifully adorned in goldwork of many different types, ranging from what I’d refer to as a dull / pale gold (almost silver) which was used on the raised curlicues (this was sewn with a fine metallic thread) to the bright shining golds found amongst the apple pips. It was difficult to photograph the different effects of these on the cope on a large scale and I hope the photos in the slideshow above do it some justice. There were also goldwork ‘tassels’ all over the outer edge of the cope which were all of uniform width and length , all twisted with a perfect loop at the end of each one.
My favorite aspect of the cope was the chenille embroidery. There were notes on the printed sheets that said that the chenille was re-mounted in 1940 by Sister Mary Hyacinth. The colours of the chenille were muted on some of the flowers and vivid on others and very well inlaid to depict different gradients of colour, for example in the greens. I had no idea that chenille was used in 1660 so I looked into this a little
Chenille (Wikipedia 2019) was believed to have been invented in France and was named after a caterpillar because of the close resemblance. The name Philippe De La Salle (Wikipedia 2019) appeared in a search who was born in 1723. He worked with silks and designed a machine called a Semple (Beloved Linens 2019) which allowed patterns to be moved from one loom to another. It looks as though he used silk to make a chenille / velvet effect.
It looks as though chenille yarn (Google patents 2019) was not made until the mid 20th Century. The reason I had to question when the yarn was made was because of this:
This looks like chenille yarn to me and it looks as though it has been couched into place and has come away, with the cream brocade fabric showing through beneath it. The handout stated that the chenille was re-mounted in 1940. So could it have been that it was originally embroidered with silks or other yarns which were replaced?
It could have originally been embroidered with flat silks and then chenille added at a later date, or the cope could have been produced at a later date. Because the fabrics were archived I was not allowed to touch them so I couldn’t distinguish if it was made with silk chenille. Some of the embroidered flowers looked ‘blown’ – almost as though the chenille mounting had been lost, it just looked fluffy.
This part looks as though the chenille has ‘blown’ but I don’t know if these were original fibres. The gradiented fibres appear to have been hap-hazardrdly re-couched with a thicker thread which can be seen in the reds and more strikingly in the greens.
I found this a puzzle and so I come to answer the question which is how difficult it is to precisely date a textile. It is very difficult to be completely accurate, in fact I’ve found it bewildering. I’m realising as I get older the importance of history and of documenting what we do.
In hindsight I wish I had asked if I was allowed to lift part of the chenille to see if anything was laid underneath, it was only the following studies that made me question dates and history. Most of the colours were uniformly laid on the apples, foliage and flowers, however there were flowers which I think look like lilies that were different from the rest. The reason I thought they looked very different were that the stitches looked as though they were loosely couched with brown stitching. It did resemble the stamens you would normally see on a lily but these were the only flowers I thought were more random in the way the couching was carried out. They were my favorite flowers.
The two volunteers (Pauline and Judith) who had retrieved the cope from storage had told me that the cope had recently been frozen. They volunteer at the museum where they store and care for many various garments. I asked how long they have to freeze items for and they said that all items should go in for at least 4 weeks but in practice, because they have so many items to continuously protect, items go in for 2 weeks. They said it was to protect the items from being eaten by many different insects, not just moths as I had thought. And looking around the building in which these items are stored I can see why this continuous freezing is necessary. The building is bare Island stone and insects were visible to me high in the rafters. Items are carefully wrapped in layers of tissue paper with stored in cardboard boxes, which were housed all over the building from the cellar to the attic. This is a far cry from the state of the art technology in which items are stored at the Victoria and Albert Museum, for example. There are housed hundreds of military garments made of thick wool. They said that items which were painted were unable to be frozen as the paint is destroyed by the freezing process, many buttons are painted.
The cope would have been worn for ceremonies and I did wonder what sort of ceremonies this would have been worn for. It is such a beautiful, colourful piece that I would imagine in a church with stain glass windows, such ceremonies would have been happy occasions. The printout about the cope stated that it was made for / ordered by Cardinal Phillip Howard (Wikipedia 2019) , who was ordained in 1652.
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Figures 1 – 24. Hutchison, J (2016) [Photographs] In: possession of: Julie Hutchison: Isle of Wight
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Piece number 2 is a piece of lace allegedly worn by Charles I when he was beheaded. This is a key piece owned by the Carrisbrooke Castle Museum. King Charles was known for his extravagance and would regularly pay hundreds of pounds for artwork and fine lace. For the historical value of the piece alone I felt compelled to view it.
I bought a book (Earnshaw, 2009:160) and wanted to learn a little more about the type of lace that it is. From glancing at the pictures throughout the book it looked to me like a venetian point plat. The book shows a photo which shows scrolling which has been filled with differing intricate designs, and they all have the characteristic ‘mesh’ being the almost hexagonal infil, although these meshes are often adorned with tiny flowers, and in fact most of the venetian examples had these flowers in the middle. There are several examples of different styles of flat laces that look similar these being Point de Neige which is where the flowers in the lace are raised, this was a lace used for bridal wear at it’s peak. There is also Coralline which the book describes as a ‘rather degenerate form of Point Plat, where the design has been largely lost and the fillings are limited in type’. The photo of Coralline lace shown in the book is full of swirls and small flowers, each flower being the same style. The book then goes on to describe Spanish lace being very similar and the author talks about a book called ‘Hispanic Lace and Lace Making’ where she believes the author, Florence May, ‘Could make one believe that all the types of lace in the entire world emanated from Spain, but only one small point of design, which can best best be described as a knobbly caterpillar, appears distinctively characteristic..’ I wondered what she was referring to in the ‘knobbly caterpillar’ , could this be the ‘mesh’ I had described? Venetian Lace was much sought after and very expensive and was very inspiring to lacemakers of many other countries, including Spain, France, Belgium and Germany. Given that the Museum had very little information about the piece, and given the fragility of it, it’s very difficult to pinpoint where it came from.
I could only imagine how long this piece took to make. It was so incredibly fine that I couldn’t make out the thickness of the threads which made it, giving me enormous eyestrain! It was also very brittle: I didn’t touch the piece itself but did depress the velvet cushion on which it was laid. The cushion moved fluidly however the lace moved a little and stayed rigid. The pattern on the piece was symmetrical I had thought. It wasn’t until I tried printing off a black and white copy of a photo I had taken when I saw what looked like two initials which looked to me like ‘J’ and ‘G’. The edge of the lace was raw and looked as though it had been cut, and I asked Kate how it would have been worn, seeing as the edge had been seemingly cut, I wondered if that was the part that had met with the axe blade. Kate then said that they recently had the piece examined and that they believed the lace was made after 1649. She said that at the time that King Charles I was beheaded there was a black market on items that were believed to have been owned or worn by him. It’s possible that it was purposefully cut along the one edge and then the tale imagined. It’s also possible that that one edge was left ‘unfinished’ or could have had something else attached so that it could be attached to the collar. Kate did say that there was no documentary evidence that it had belonged to King Charles I.
I did some research on Charles I and it was said that on the day of his execution he wore two shirts so that the audience could not see him shaking with fear. If this had been the cravat worn by him on the day of his execution this would have been the last garment adorned. His belief, which was passed down to him by his father, was in the Devine Right of Kings. Charles was never meant to have become King, it was only when his older brother Henry died in 1612 that he became the successor to the throne.
I would have loved to handled the lace when it was produced, I would imagine it would have held a beautiful drape. The book on lace identification did say that it was rare to find such lace these days and I did feel very honoured to be able to study it, it’s a beautiful item.
Bibliography
Earnshaw, P., 2009. The identification of Lace. 3rd ed. United Kingdom: Shire Publications.
List of illustrations
Figures 1 – 4. Hutchison, J (2016) [Photographs] In: possession of: Julie Hutchison: Isle of Wight
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Piece number 3 is a whitework bedcap allegedly worn by Charles I the night before his execution. It is in pristine condition, unmarked and not creased at all. It is made of white linen, with whitework embroidery and cutwork decoration with needle-lace infil. The notes that were printed off for me say that it is is venetian needlepoint / point plat. It also has a bobbin lace frill that curls up around the cap. It was given to the museum as a gift from Queen Victoria.
Upon talking with Kate, she told me that the cap had also recently been examined by members of the Victoria and Albert Museum,and that they had been told that it was in fact very likely to have been made of the era in which it had believed, also that it could very well have been worn by King Charles on the night before his execution. This made me see the cap as a holder of dreams: I wondered what his last dreams might have been. Did he even sleep that night? Did he perhaps doubt the decisions that he had made that had led him up to that night? What would the nightcap reveal if it were able to tell us what the wearer had thought?
When I looked up bobbin lace in the lace identifying book (Earnshaw, 2009:160) , I read that bobbin lace was not made until the 1800s. And given that the piece was so immaculate I did wonder if it was made at a later date. I’m finding some enquiries quite contradictory. The cap looked stiff and starchy but I had no way of testing this myself (I was requested to leave the samples on the surfaces that they were presented on). I would have loved to have looked on the inside of the nightcap to see how it had been finished / been lined. It is immaculately made and in that sense it held less interest to me than the other 2 items because I could not see how it had been made. The decoration is symmetrical and perfectly constructed. If I’d have made a piece of this quality I’d have been ecstatic, every stitch is precisely made, the tension is even throughout.
I gave that last statement some thought “it held less interest to me than the other 2 items because I could not see how it had been made” for several days and initially it bothered me. Here were 3 pieces, each having taken probably hundreds of hours to construct, this piece being presented perfectly and me not taking as great an interest in it. I think the reason for this feeling is that I have more of an appreciation of handmade items, of irregularities, than of items that are deemed ‘perfect’. This piece is beautifully made, the stitches are all uniform and the more you look at it the more fine detail you see.
I can remember walking into a High Street Shop one day and standing amongst the hair accessories. They were all of flowers and they were all identical. I felt intensely saddened in that moment.I tried to imagine the factory in which they were all made, of the people constructing them all to be precisely exact, all the same. How I could image at least a handful of those factory workers wanting to make them into something different. I thought of the thousands and thousands of these same hair accessories being sold in this country and Europe. And of how none of us are the same and that that in itself should be celebrated.
Bibliography
Earnshaw, P., 2009. The identification of Lace. 3rd ed. United Kingdom: Shire Publications.
List of illustrations
Figures 1 – 4. Hutchison, J (2016) [Photographs] In: possession of: Julie Hutchison: Isle of Wight
Learning log of Julie Hutchison 