Textiles for domestic use were produced in increasing quantities from
the 16th century to make houses more comfortable and colourful. Woven
and embroidered wall hangings, carpets, cushions, pillow covers and
bed hangings were in demand by the rich and middle classes.
A bed was the most prized possession in a household, a symbol of
wealth and rank, its coverings as sumptuous as the owner could afford.
Luxury fabrics imported from France and Italy were used on state beds
and those of the aristocracy. A newly emerged middle class, whose
wealth was founded on trade, were unable to afford expensive imported
fabric and furnished their beds with embroidered hangings.
In the 17th and 18th centuries bed hangings with huge exotic leaves
or Tree of Life designs were in fashion. Embroidered by middle-class
women using crewel wools on a linen ground. (1)
Four-poster beds were fashionable, requiring hangings which, when
drawn at night, provided warmth in draughty rooms, protection from
peeping eyes and some colour in an otherwise fairly austere interior.
A set of bed hangings comprised two curtains either side of the head,
made from two-and-a-half to three widths of fabric; two wide curtains
at the foot of the bed, each made from five widths of fabric; three
narrow top valances and three base valances, and a bedcover. (2)
Materials and Embroiderers
Originally the word crewel (mostly known at the time as curl, croyl
or crewel) referred only to the type of wool, twisted two-ply worsted*
yarn, which would originally have been spun and dyed in the home.
The ground fabric was homespun linen with a diagonal twill weave,
linen warps (verticals) on cotton wefts (horizontals). Looms at this
time were narrow, an average loom width was 19 inches or 49 cm .
Colours were derived from vegetable and mineral dyes, but many were
not fast due to mordants or fixing agents still to be discovered.
Green was achieved by painting a yellow dye, such as one made from
onion skins or saffron, over a blue, from the plant woad. Due to oxidation
the yellow has often disappeared leaving the blue. Many crewel work
hangings we see today have blue leaves, which had originally been
green. (3)
Professional embroiderers were men, who had been apprenticed for
seven years as young boys to craft guilds. The embroidery guilds undertook
work for church furnishing and garments, as well as Court regalia.
After the Reformation**, the demand for ecclesiastical embroidery was
greatly reduced with the professional embroiderer working on secular
domestic work.
Professional pattern drawers and embroiderers, no longer employed
by the guilds for ecclesiastical embroidery, toured the country as
freelance journeymen. They stayed at gentry houses to draw patterns
on cloth for furnishing and clothes, and for giving advice on colours
and stitches. On estates where this luxury could not be afforded,
a drawing master or anyone in the employ of the estate who could draw,
was pressed into service. For those living in or near cities haberdashers
offered the service of pattern drawing, as well as selling needles,
thimbles and crewels. There is reference in 1731 to an Abraham Pinhorn
who drew ‘all sorts of Patterns for Needlework, French Quilting,
Embroidery, Cross and Tent Stitch’ and sold ‘shades of
Silk and Worsted’ for working them.*** The
ladies of the house would then embroider the pattern in a variety
of stitches including stem, back, split, satin, basket, fishbone,
vandyke, cross, petal, French and bullion knots. The pattern could
be achieved fairly quickly with thick wools, the background being
left natural.
Crewel work hangings were sometimes worked by professionals, but
it was amateur needlewomen who embroidered for their own pleasure
and to furnish their homes. Needlework and painting were seen as an
essential part of noble women’s accomplishments. Girls were
taught to embroider at an early age. In 1688 A Guide to Ladies, Gentlewoman
& Maids stated that needlework ‘is both needfull and pleasant,
and is commendable in any woman, for it is time well spent for both
profit and delight.’ *** Servant girls would
be taught plain sewing in order to make household linen and underwear,
but anyone who could work a needle might be employed to assist the
lady of the house to work her crewel work hangings.
Design and influences
The coiling monochrome patterns called blackwork (4), which can be
seen on men and women’s clothes in the sixteenth century were
one of the influences for crewel work. As well as black on the natural
linen ground most commonly seen, red or a bright green was also used.
Flemish Verdure tapestries with their huge curling acanthus leaves
were another influence. Venetian needlepoint lace with its variety
of leaf fillings can be seen reflected in the leaves of many crewel
hangings (5). Italian and French Baroque silks with their large leaf
designs were also influential (6), but the greatest influence towards
the end of the 17th century came from the Orient, from China and India.
The East India Company, which was granted a Charter by Elizabeth
I in 1601, sent ships laden with cargoes of wool, metal and money,
to the East. Their cargoes were traded in India for tea, porcelain,
jewels and spices. Towards the end of the century printed and painted
cloths called palampores from the Coromondal Coast in Gujerat were
also being brought back to Britain (7). The word palampore comes from
the Hindustani word Palangposh meaning bedcover, but they were also
used for wall and bed hangings. The ancient Tree of Life design was
of a semi-stylised tree emerging from a hilly outcrop covering the
hanging. It derived from Persian and Indo Persian painting. On their
journey to India the ships might encounter a Chinese junk, when wool
was traded for embroidered silks. The Chinese embroideries in turn
might be sent to India where they were used for inspiration for textile
designs and in particular the palampores.
By the early 18th century the design of the palampores influenced
crewel work with similar Tree of Life designs (8). At the same time
that the colourful palampores were being imported, William of Orange
from Holland and his wife Mary succeeded the throne in 1689. They
brought new ideas of design in architecture, the decorative arts and
furnishings with a lighter, prettier and colourful look emerging.
During the early 18th century bed hangings worked with crewel wools
were lighter and more elegant to reflect this change of fashion. Many
depicted two Tree of Lifes with a variety of fruit and flowers on
the same tree. Huntsmen, stags, dogs and rabbits are also depicted
chasing across Chinese inspired grassy hillocks (9). It is not suprising
that the embroideress back in Britain now wanted to produce polychrome
work with elegant Tree of Life designs, rather than heavier and darker
monochromatic colouring and repeat designs.
Crewel bed hangings became unfashionable just after the middle of
the 18th century when the washable, colourfast Palampores became hugely
popular. Embroidering with crewel wools did not became fashionable
again until the 1870’s. Four posters were also out of fashion
but window curtains, wall hangings, bedcovers and screen panels were
worked with the addition of figurative or allegorical subjects. In
the 1910’s, again in the 1920’s and 1930’s crewel
work was revived and called Jacobean work, because it was first worked
during the Stuart period in the reign of James I (1603-25). At this
period firescreens, cushions and some large hangings were embroidered.
* Fabric or yarn made from the long fibres of a
sheep’s fleece.
** The Reformation 1536. Henry VIII appointed himself
head of the Church Of England when the Pope refused to annul his marriage
to Catherine of Aragon, who was unable to produce an heir. Most embroidery
had been worked for church robes and furnishings, but now there was
little demand.
Click
here to go to English & European Embroidered Textiles section
of the website.
Clabburn, Pamela The National Trust Book of Furnishing Textiles.
1988 Viking & Nat Trust. ISBN 0670805602
Edwards, Joan Crewel Embroidery in England. 1975 Batsford.
IBSN 0713430281 ***
Hughes, Therle English Domestic Needlework. 1961 Lutterworth
Press
Johnstone, Pauline Three Hundred Years of Embroidery 1600-1900.
1986 Wakefield Press, S Australia.
Synge, Lanto Antique Needlework. 1982 Blandford Press, Poole,
Dorset. ISBN 0713710071
© 2006 Meg Andrews.
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