16th Century Germanic Borders

As always, searching for one thing, something else crops up. I found a site showing a pattern for 16th century Germanic counted-stitch borders. These will likely come in useful at a later date and time.

http://www.dragonbear.com/germanic.html

Here's the transcript from the site in case the site gets lost to time...

Here are three simple patterns that are useful for quick borders on clothing, napkins, or tablecloths. They're from a sampler described as "...probably German, appears to be a sampler for church linen; the motifs are in the style of the earliest group of pattern-books, about 1523-40" (King). The motifs were worked with colored silks on linen in cross stitch, long-armed cross stitch, 2-sided Italian cross stitch, and double running stitch. The original fabric piece is 34½" by 21¼" and is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. There are black & white photographs in Donald King's Samplers (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1960) and in Anne Sebba's Samplers: Five Centuries of a Gentle Craft (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1979).

Since the photos I used to chart these patterns were black & white, the colors are merely to make this page more decorative. Use whatever goes well with your garb, or whatever floss you have on hand.

Pattern #1 is 13 stitches high with an 8 stitch repeat.

Pattern #2 is 8 stitches high with a 5 stitch repeat.

Pattern #3 is 7 stitches high with an 8 stitch repeat.

You are free to download the design and symbol information for personal use, but please keep the copyright information attached. See the

Usage page also. Charts copyright 1999 by Carol Hanson.

Bag 2 - Embroidered

Found another bag that would be reasonable for my persona. I'll post the extended info later, but the link is A 15th Century Embroidered Bag. Along with a link to other types of embroidery at the time, German Counted Embroidery.  I also found that the Reliquary bags on Medieval Silkwork to be inspiring.

Embroidered Cushion

From the same site as the Embroidered Box I also found an Embroidered Cushion. Isn't that marvelous?

A 14th - 15th century Embroidered Cushion from Westphalia (Germany)

The pictures and descriptions are small enough, I figured I might as well copy and paste so as not to loose them to the vagarities of the internet web page spider monkeys.



This cushion is described in A Pictorial History of Western Embroidery, by Marie Schuette and Sigrid Mueller-Christiansen (1963) Frederick A. Praeger, New York, Item Number 178. The caption states:

"CUSHION. Westphalia, 14th to 15th century. Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg, Kunstgewerbemuseum (88.663). 28 x 40 cm. Grey linen canvas. Embroidered with untwisted floss silk in brick stitch. Colors: green, yellow, red, white. On the underside, striped Spanish silk. From the Treasury of Enger. Acquired from the Dionysianisches Kapitel der Johanneskirche in Herford."

The Kunstgewerbemuseum is no longer located in the Charlottenburg Palace, but is now in the Kulturforum in Berlin. The colors listed are incorrect. They should be green (DMC 989), blue (DMC 312), red (DMC 3777), and white (DMC Ecru or Brut). In Kreinik Au Ver a Soie colors, these are equivalent to green 233, blue 1446 or 1424, red 946 and Brut or Creme.
The front of the cushion is completely covered with brick stitch, and is still very bright and colorful. There is almost no lost stitching. The "striped Spanish silk" back is a surprisingly modern-looking pattern of wide (~1/2") golden-yellow stripes separated by narrow black and white stripes. It is very thin, and is falling apart, and I'm still kicking myself for neglecting to take a photograph of it. The cushion itself is plump and well-stuffed, and not at all flattened. I was told that the stuffing was original, and it appears to be fine hay, or something similar.
The embroidery ground is a grey tabby-woven linen, and each brick stitch covers four threads. After charting the overall pattern, I found that the entire pillow is 395 threads across, and 326 threads tall. Divided into the actual breadth and height of the pillow, I get a ground fabric of 25 tpi (threads per inch) across, and 29-30 tpi tall.
Although the overall pattern is composed of only 4 different types of medallions, almost all of the medallions of a given type were different from each other. Some of the differences are merely "off register" variants, caused by starting a design element off one thread, so that a bird runs into a plant, or a medallion ends up losing a row of stitches. Some variants are caused by running out of one color thread, and replacing it with a different color. Interestingly, it is always white that is being replaced by either red or green.
I made my own recreation of this cushion, based on the[ following ]se charts. I used linen with a thread count of about 26 x 28, and it ended up being 39.37 x 29.85 cm. It took about 86 hours of stitching time, spaced over 2 years and 8 months. It isn't actually finished, strictly speaking, because I haven't found appropriate material for the back side, nor a good stuffing.


T = Tree Medallion, and 10 variants,

B = Bird Medallion, and 1 variant,

S = Striped Medallion,

F = Flake Medallion, and 7 variants.

View or download all charts.

Embroidered Box

I found an interesting box on a website today that I think I'll attempt at some point to replicate. I can likely use it to store little objects of personal value. Not necessarily jewelry or things of that nature, but perhaps sewing supplies I don't want to get lost, writing implimentation, paper... The possibilities are endless, it just takes doing it, unless I find that these types of boxes were used for a specific purpose, which will likely happen, but for now, it's a neat little box and I like it's construction.

A 14th - 15th century Embroidered Box from Westphalia (Germany)

As with the embroidered cushion, I determined to go ahead and place the information from her site here so I won't lose it.

This box is described in A Pictorial History of Western Embroidery, by Marie Schuette and Sigrid Mueller-Christiansen (1963) Frederick A. Praeger, New York, Item Number 178. The caption states:

"CORPORAL BOX WITH EMBROIDERED COVER. Westphalia, 14th to 15th century. Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg, Kunstgewerbemuseum (88.651). Height: 4.6 cm. Width: 22.4 cm. Length: 22.4 cm. Wood, originally with four (now only three) ornamental metal feet of spherical shape. Covered inside and outside with linen. The six outer sides embroidered with floss silk in green, red, blue, white, pink. The underside and side walls have similar patterns in long-armed cross stitch. The cover, illustrated, is in brick stitch. From the Treasury of Enger. Acquired from the Dionysianisches Kapitel der Johanneskirche in Herford."

Design and ConstructionThe design on the top of the box consists of staggered rows of diamonds, and the bottom and sides are of a "spiral in star" motif (see photos). The colors are quite faded, and there seem to have been only four: blue (DMC 597 or Au Ver a Soie 132), a green that had faded off to a yellowish color (DMC 734 or Au Ver a Soie 2212), a very faded bown-pink (DMC 842 or Au Ver a Soie 4532), and off white (DMC Ecru, or Au Ver a Soie Brut or Creme). I suspect that the box's original colors were very similar to those found on an embroidered cushion which also came from the Treasury of Enger. The green was probably much "grassier" originally, and the pink was probably a brilliant rosewood red.

The top of the box is worked entirely in brick stitch, with each stitch covering two threads. The design is made up of four kinds of diamond patterns, and their placement is diagrammed below. The "D2" type is a minor variant of "D1", and occurs only along the right-hand edge of the box. Diamond types 3 and 4 are roughly equivalent, and differ in having either a flower motif in the center, or a hackenkreuz (swastika).

The bottom and sides are covered in a continuous repeating pattern worked in long-armed cross stitch. The only variation within the pattern is whether the blue spirals within each 8-pointed star rotate clockwise or counterclockwise.

To calculate the weave of the ground fabric, I charted the entire pattern, then added up the number of stitches from left to right, and from top to bottom, then divided by the actual dimensions of the box. The bottom and sides turned out to be embroidered on cloth that is 27 tpi (threads per inch) from left to right, and 25 tpi from top to bottom. I calculated the lid to be 44 tpi across, and 26 tpi down. Thinking that this had to be wrong, I double-checked the stitching in some worn areas, and confirmed that the brick stitches do indeed cover only two threads each. The warp threads are extremely fine, and the weft is fairly thick.

The construction of the box itself is quite fine. The wooden pieces (species unknown) are a little less than 1/2" thick. Each piece was covered with pale peach-colored linen, very fine and thin, before being joined together. The cloth disappears into the joints, which are mitered, and joined in an unknown method. The finished embroidered pieces were stitched onto the linen liner of the assembled box with visible overhand stitch. There is a metal foot in three of the four corners of the box bottom, and a hole in the fourth corner. Interestingly, there is also a hole in the middle; perhaps there were actually five feet? Each foot is a metal ball, about 1 in in diameter, stippled all over with concentric rows of little bumps, and the bottom of each ball is slightly flattened.

One odd thing is that the box is "upside down," that is, when opened, the "box" is lifted away, leaving a "platform." There are no handles for lifting the box open. Presumeably one would have used both hands, or one person would have opened it and held it for another.

The box is covered by six separate pieces of embroidery. When closed, the top of the box is covered with a single square of embroidery, covered with diamond motifs. The four sides are covered with 4 long strips of the "spiral" motif. The bottom is covered with a single large square of the "spiral" motif, with the corners nicked out so that the embroidery can be brought up and around to cover the 4 edges of the "platform." In other words, the bottom square of embroidery is larger than the top square by about 1/2" all around (equal to the thickness of the wooden pieces making up the box itself).

D1 = Diamond, Type 1

D2 = Diamond, Type 2

D3 = Diamond, Type 3

D4 = Diamond, Type4

Embroidery on the bottom and sides is also charted.

View or download all charts.