20 May 2004

Research Success

I had a good stitching related day yesterday. On a whim, I decided to have a play with some of the online journals I have access to here at work. Normally, I don't turn up much but yesterday I hit a bit of a winner. When I typed in "embroidery" into JSTOR, I got over 200 hits. As I worked my way through them yesterday, I ended up with just over 80 articles relating to pre-16thC embroidery. Now, this was tempered by the fact that many of the articles were written in the early part of the twentieth century and that some of the scholarship on early modern textiles has come along way since then. But they had something that didn't change, lots of images of the pieces under discussion. Bonus. There were a couple of really interesting finds, such as "Moldavian Portrait Textiles" and some info on a piece of 16th C German linen work that I had never seen before. So I am slowing working my way through printing out all these articles and seeing what joys they contain. One thing about the early scholarship is that that hadn't been unduly influenced by many of the now ubiquitous "paradigms" that people now like to discuss. They are very much into giving the technical info, it was this big, made from these materials, used these colours and fit into this style. I like this basic info, because it lets me put the piece into context myself.

On the practical side of things, I got another couple of hours done on the scissors sheath. I have the silver background complete on one side. I will start the other one tonight. Once that is done, I will start adding the gold (which I think I will understitch with some yellow silk) braid stitch and then some pailettes.

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