Last year, when I was working on my blackworked half smock, I had a horrible shock when I washed the embroidered panels before assembling the smock – the black thread leaked a dark & murky purple.
Luckily, the purple mostly rinsed out, and the half smock looks OK.
Today, I was sorting through my studio stuff, and ran across a bag of the black silk threads I’d used, and decided to see if I could identify which one leaked dye. There were two kinds – Eterna, and a Chinese hand-dyed silk that I’d bought from Miriam’s at Pennsic (a Society for Creative Anachronism event).
I soaked each one in a small amount of water.
The culprit was the Eterna silk. Within a few minutes, the ten-centimeter length I used ran purple. I was truly horrified – and surprised. Eterna is lovely to work with and has an excellent reputation. Possibly an “off” lot – the ends were tied oddly, and left undyed spots in several places, which isn’t something I’d expect from Eterna. Sadly, it’s no longer in production, so I can’t buy another skein & see if it leaks too.
I’d kinda expected it to be the Chinese hand-dyed silk from Miriam’s! It did leak a faint yellow – when I left a whole skein to soak overnight.
From now on, when I’m setting up to embroider something that will need washing, I’ll test the threads for leaking. And, just to be sure, will treat them with Raycafix, which somehow stabilizes the dye and keeps it from leaking.
In sixteenth century Europe, blackwork was the most fashionable and go-to style of embroidery for linens. The relatively simple materials required – linen, a contrasting fine fiber, and the ability to count threads – saw a veritable blooming of this intricate style of embroidery. Surviving examples include smocks, sleeves, coifs, forehead cloths, the occasional cushion, at least one skirt1, and many, many portraits.
Remaining examples of early medieval designs are highly geometric. There’s a strong resemblance between blackwork and a monochrome Middle Eastern embroidery technique which may have migrated to Europe from Egypt via Moorish Spain.
The example below is 13th-15th century, from Egypt2.
It was once thought that blackwork came to England with Catherine of Aragon, who arrived there in 1501. However, it was in use much earlier. One of the earliest literary appearances of blackwork can be found in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400. His description of the miller’s wife’s smock sounds like the classic double running stitch used in blackwork, where the pattern is the same on both sides3 :
Of white, too, was the dainty smock she wore, embroidered at the collar all about with coalblack silk, alike within and out.
Blackwork evolved rapidly to include a wide range of patterns; from intricate geometric repeats to an almost freeform style, lively with critters and fanciful flora.
Like the collar of the miller’s wife’s smock, the geometric motifs are sometimes reversible. A double running stitch and thread counting can permit the pattern to be the same on both sides. This method of blackwork embroidery is also known as Holbein stitch4 because of its frequent appearance in his portraits. It’s one of the few kinds of embroidery that follows the (totally unrealistic) Victorian conceit that embroidery should be as tidy on the back as on the front!
The cuff on the left in the image below5 is from the 1530 Holbein portrait of Jane Seymour. The embroidery painstakingly painted illustrates counted stitch blackwork being used to produce an intricate and delicate geometric pattern.
On the right is the slightly later portrait of Queen Elizabeth’s sleeve (from an unknown artist in 1590). Compared to the cuff, the sleeve demonstrates the evolution of blackwork from the early geometric style to the later freeform style.
The design
The collar, plackets, and cuffs of my linen waist smock are embroidered in the later, freeform style. The design was inspired by the front panels of the smock worn by Europa Anguissola in her sister Sofonisba’s painting The Chess Game6:
The motifs are an adaptation of those on this coif in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston7:
I adapted the design, adjusted the scale, redrew it, and added pea pods & snails for whimsy.
The finishing trim and ties are an adaptation in black of the crisp whipstitched cord edging and ties on the collar of this shirt from the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which I also used as a model for the cut. I have used the rectangular cut8 of a shirt because, as the half smock only goes to the waist, it doesn’t need the hip width provided by the triangular gores that are used in women’s full-length smocks. The shirt is also shown in the well-loved Janet Arnold tome: Patterns of Fashion 4.9
For my half smock, the ground fabric is white handkerchief linen, and the thread is loosely-twisted black filament silk. The embroidery is mostly executed in stem stitch, with a sprinkling of others – such as spiderweb, stippling, blanket stitch, and herringbone – where the motif suggests it.
Assembly
For the main seams, the individual pieces are hemmed and assembled with a faggoting stitch. The other seams are clean-finished using whip stitch, slip stitch, or flat felled, where appropriate.
The strings at the neck and cuffs are fingerloop braided from buttonhole-weight spun silk. To keep the front panels in line, I made a hook and sewed it in below the placket. It’s made of 18 gauge brass wire, formed with pliers, and work hardened in a tumbler. It fastens with a thread loop, which is less likely to unhook than a matching metal one would be.
Comments Regarding Blackwork and The Internet
Today, April 13th, 2022, searching for “blackwork embroidery” on the web brought up 2,780,000 hits. I included “embroidery” in the search terms because just “blackwork” brings up a lot of tattoo pages, which are sometimes interesting, but usually irrelevant. Many of the “embroidery” pages are also irrelevant to research: touting clothing, commercial embroidery services, supply sales, kits etc. However, if you have the patience to wade through the distractions, there is a lot of good, solid information and research out there. A very deep rabbit hole – easy to lose an afternoon in.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Accession Number 1996.51 [↩]
Victoria and Albert Museum, Accession Number T.112-1972 [↩]
Arnold, Janet et. al., Patterns of Fashion 4 c. 1540-1660, The cut and construction of linen shirts, smocks, neckwear, headwear and accessories for men and women, Macmillan, London, ISBN 878-0-333-57082-1, 2008, p. 17 [↩]
This is actually my third go at these stockings. Between my first attempt and this one, a lot more information had come out about them, the best being the images in the Medici archive.
The first time I tackled the stockings was from a pattern I downloaded from the internet, and knit with commercially-dyed red wool fingering. I stopped knitting & discarded this test as soon as I realized that the pattern was for a stocking with a present-day shape, only using the surface patterns from the originals, and that the gauge was way too big – more of a sport sock than an elegant lady’s stocking. The pattern doesn’t seem to be on the internet any more.
The second test was from the pattern by Anne DesMoines published on Ravelry. This one I knit with a silk yarn finer than the wool of the first test. Initially, the silk was white, and I dyed it with cochineal. It had some issues – the dye insisted on being a fuchsia pink instead of red, and the gauge was still too big, with fewer pattern panels than the originals. Also, I found the silk very unpleasant to knit with, and abandoned the attempt.
For the current stocking I bought white laceweight wool yarn. This time I dyed it with madder overdyed with cochineal, and got a very satisfying brick red.
This yarn knits up at a finer, more period gauge – approximately 14 stitches to the inch on 1mm needles. None of the documentation I’ve seen to date gives the gauge of the actual Eleonora stockings. However, because of the number of stitches in the pattern panels and the number of repeats, it must be very fine.
As far as I can tell from the available images, this edition of the stockings has same number of patterned panels as the originals, and the stitch count is very close.
I changed a few details – I didn’t like the second zigzag and the eyelets in the cuff or the “ladder” effect of the double garter stitch in one of the panels, so I eliminated the zigzag, and substituted a purl square for the eyelets and a chequerboard pattern for the “ladder” effect, all of which are consistent with late 16th century knitting techniques.
Since I plan to wear the stockings, I changed the shaping. The original Eleonora stockings are baggy in the calf and foot – the decreases for the calf are far too low on the leg to fit me and the feet are too thick. Perhaps, after at least eleven pregnancies, Eleonora’s feet and ankles were somewhat the worse for wear.
Instead of designing the foot following the the Medici archive images, I used the foot shaping for 16th century stockings shown in Richard Rutt’s A History of Hand Knitting. The soles of the originals are mostly moss stitch or seed stitch; instead, I picked up and continued the band pattern just for the fun of it.
One stocking is done and the second is in progress. With luck & a following wind, it’ll be done by Pennsic!
(The little *blip* at the back of the heel is historically accurate. I’ve been assured that it wears in fast and is comfortable..)
I’ve just been reminded of another change that I forgot about – and this one’s a biggie! The Eleonora stockings were knitted flat and sewn up the back; mine are knitted in the round. I couldn’t bring myself to knit them flat. The technique was known by Eleonora’s time – Bertram von Minden’s Knitting Madonna, painted ca 1400-1410, is knitting in the round!
This linen will be red. What shades of red, I don’t know yet – a series of tests with madder, cochineal and brazilwood is my current dye project.
Playing with the colours is fun&exciting, but much as I’d like to get right into weighing out the madder and grinding up the cochineals, I first need to scour the fabrics & yarns. Less entertaining, but necessary – before the colour goes in, whatever is inhabiting the fibre has to come out, and there’s a surprising amount of gunk on even the newest, cleanest, whitest textile!
Of the three fibres I scoured – silk, wool, and linen – the most dramatic was the linen. Though the yardage was new and clean and very white, the water turned this dirty yellow from the waxes and pectins from the linen, plus whatever was added in the processing.
In this case, I suspect there were optical brighteners – the fabric started out bright white. Now it’s still white, but with a more “natural” tone.
…
The PH meter I ordered just arrived in the mail! Now to calibrate it…
My first attempt at knitting the Eleonora stockings in silk was an education! (My first-first attempt was in wool, which I’ve had lots of experience with – and the gauge was way too big, so I abandoned it.)
To get back to the silk: I wanted to dye the yarn a true red with cochineal.
Since cochineal is sensitive to ph – an acidic dyebath pushes it toward red and a basic one towards purple – I used neutral ph distilled water for the dyebath and added vinegar in an attempt to shift the colour towards red.
Though I’ve gotten bright reds with cochineal & vinegar on wool, for some reason the yarn refused to become red no matter how much vinegar I added.
It settled to a raspberry mousse shade and refused to budge, so I worked with that.
When I started to knit the cuff, I discovered that it knit up to significantly fewer rows per vertical inch than the swatch I’d made. This squashed the detail so badly that I could hardly see it, which surprised and puzzled me.
I asked a friend who had knitted in the round with silk, and apparently this was due to the fact that, unlike wool, silk has no “memory”. Wool springs back to its original size; silk stays stretched.
To make the pattern look right, I knit each pattern row twice. This made the pattern a little longer, but that was better than squashed.
For the swatch, I just knit on the needle part of a circular needle, back&forth with very little pulling, so it didn’t stretch. Working in the round on the stocking, I was pulling the piece around the whole needle, so it did stretch.
The other disappointment was that the surface of the yarn scuffed, spawning little balls of purple fluff. If this happened during the knitting, the finished stockings would probably get scuffed & covered with purple fluff when worn, obscuring the pattern.
Which would make knitting so much complicated detail kind of pointless.
So my next attempt will either be in wool or a wool/silk blend, depending on budget & availability, and if it comes out on the purple end of the scale when I dye it, I’ll try overdying it with madder to get a true red.
Turns out my Mining the stash project is going to be delayed. For the best of reasons: I’m going to Italy with my sister next spring – and the dates are just too close to do both justice.
Much as I enjoy the annual SCA* Arts & Science comptetition, it’s no contest – I’m off to Italy!
A great opportunity to look at lots of art and at any historical textiles I can find.
With luck, I’ll be able to see stuff I’ve never met before and gather lots of information on colour, details and those visual elements that translate poorly at a resolution of 72dpi, or even in book-size photos.
In the meantime, I’ve gone through the stash & chosen the main fabrics for the gown and coat and the fur for the lining and the zibellino (the furpiece the countess is holding over her arm).
The coat fabric is a grey/taupe cotton velveteen – apparently cotton velveteen is closer to what Renaissance velvets were than 21st century velvets. I’m hoping to be able to check this out while in Italy!
The gown fabric is dark green silk damask – to show the detail, I’ve made the scale bigger in the sketch than it is in real life
The fur lining will come from an tawny mink coat a friend found when clearing out his mother’s estate
The zibellino is a red fox fur I bought in a second-hand shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market.
Tempting as it is to get started making the outfit, this is as far as I’m going to go with the project until I come back from Italy!
Actually, that not quite true – I’ve made the zibellino and am working on a detail that doesn’t show: stockings. As the countess is dressed for winter, she’s almost certainly wearing stockings.
I’ve used my imagination and am making a pair of knit red silk stockings in the style of the pair found in the tomb of Eleanora of Toledo. I dyed the yarn with cochineal and am waiting for it to dry. It looks like it’s going to be more towards purple than the red I was aiming for, so it’s going back in the dyepot tomorrow.
Regardless of overstuffed storage space, the stash grows.
The Textile Museum of CanadaVolunteers’ “For Love of Cloth” sale last weekend tested my resolve – and it crumbled a bit.
A pair of sample panels in this huge, gorgeous stylized carnation pattern that looks like it’s inspired by Ottoman ikats bushwhacked my resolve. They’re gorgeous; no idea what I’m going to do with them. They’re from Pierre Frey in Paris, and I discovered that one of the colourways is still available – one more yard would be enough to make a spectacular vest. However, when I found out that the fabric is $600/yard + tax + shipping, I gave that idea up. Maybe something parti-coloured!
My mission for going to the sale actually was to find a fabric to make the shell of a mink-lined vest. A couple of years ago I found a vintage mink vest with a the label of Simpson’s, a long-gone department store I used to shop at, and I bought it out of nostalgia.
The vest fits but it’s showing its age – bald spots around the arm holes and a couple of divots from moth-munches – so I decided to turn it into a vest lining.
I wanted a shell fabric that was lightweight and interesting, and lucked out with a sample panel of a toile de Jouy-like cotton/silk damask.
Now all I need to decide is whether I want to use the blue version or the green version…
