If you've done research about early medieval embroidery, you've probably come across the Maaseik embroideries - silk and goldwork, preserved in Maaseik, and there's pictures of them online at kikirpa.be.

Brand new, though, is this: Alexandra Makin has made a presentation about these pieces, and the results of an examination that she did. Watch it right here:

Here's another picture of embroidery featuring gold - this is the sample (unfinished, of course) where I did the counting of how many threads were lying side to side:



The silk parts are worked in split stitch, the gold is couched down with a red silk thread in the same thickness. As you can see, I was not very good at this kind of stitching when I made the sample - which was quite a few years ago! I did this bit mostly to show how the silk and gold would look together, and how split stitch can be used to cover an area. So it was stitched on a rough charcoal drawing as a template, and the gold patch also only outlined with coal, still faintly visible and not very rounded or symmetrical.

Like most of my sample bits, this has been dragged around and stuffed into baskets and boxes and taken out and fingered and then stuffed back in wherever it came from. I've also cleaned (gently washed) all my samples at least once by now. The gold has developed a little bit of a patina due to all this, but it's still pretty and shiny when light falls on it. So - it does hold up quite well!

I've been asked recently about how much gold thread to calculate for covering a given area - so I've taken out my samples and took a look, and did some maths, and maybe that's interesting for you, too.

The gold thread that I have in the shop is about 0,2 mm in diameter - so if we assume that it will be couched down perfectly, one thread right beside the next, and there's no significant gap between threads, 50 threads next to each other are needed to cover a width of one centimeter. For a stripe one centimeter wide and ten centimeters long, accordingly 5 metres of thread are needed - plus a little more, since it's necessary to have a little bit of thread to pull to the back of the fabric.

When I had my gold embroidery starter kit fairly new, I found a volunteer to test it for me, and these are the results of stitching with 5 m of gold thread:

[caption id="attachment_5805" align="alignnone" width="640"] This is how much ground you can cover with 5 m of gold thread.


That's roughly in the area of the 10 x 1 cm stripe. As you can see in the picture (hopefully - it's really hard to take a good photo of gold embroideries!) there are areas where the threads overlap a little, and areas where there are narrow gaps, and that can even itself out or, if you tend more towards one or the other, it will reduce or extend your covered area slightly.

As to the number of threads lying beside each other, I did some counting on a piece where I had threads couched all in parallel, and I got about 21 to 23 threads on 5 mm - so about 42 to 46 per centimeter. Which is close to the theoretical 50, but not quite there, just like I would have expected.

For calculating thread needs, thus, 50 cm of thread per square centimeter seems to be a good ballpark number - it should give you enough wiggle room to anchor your thread ends and safely cover that area, even if you have a little bit of overlap here or there.

Here's some textile-related stuff (finally, as promised) that has popped up during the last few days. Enjoy!

Tracy Hudson has an article up in the EXARC digital journal, looking at spinning experiments and how much they can tell us.

Another exciting thing, right at my doorstep: The Kaisermäntel ("emperor's cloaks) in Bamberg are getting some quality research time, and it already looks like the researchers will find exciting things, such as remains of pre-drawings on the fabric (link goes to a German article). There are six pieces counted as Kaisergewänder, and they are the oldest extant textiles of European rulers, dating back mostly to the 11th century. Only mostly, as the fine gold embroidery was cut out from the original ground cloth and transferred to new silk ground fabrics.

It was assumed until now that the original placement of the embroideries was preserved during that transfer, but current research will look into that. Art historian Dr. Tanja Kohwagner-Nikolai, who is working on these wonderful textiles, is doubting that the original arrangement has been preserved especially regarding the Sternenmantel, which is a cloak with embroideries of constellations. She suspects that the embroideries were purposefully arranged differently, with the intention of supporting a cult around the rulers Heinrich and Kunigunde.

The project will run for the next four years, looking into different questions around the pieces and their history from the 11th to the 15th century, up to their last conservation and restauration in mid-20th century. Research will be interdisciplinary, with material and technological analyses, historical and art historical methods combined.

This is a very exciting project - I do hope they will get a lot of good results from the analyses! If you'd like more information, here is the (German) page of Uni Bamberg about the project. If you are in the area, you can visit the Diözesanmuseum and see the garments for yourself (the museum is open Tue-Sun 10-17 o'clock).

Sarah Bendall has posted the next chapter on her effigy bodies reconstruction: Boning and Binding.

Finally, rather unrelated, but really interesting: Barbie dolls dressed up with hijabs.

It just arrived this morning, and oh, it is pretty! I'm very happy with it, and I can finally stop worrying. (I never stop worrying about a print product until it is in my hands, and I can be sure the printing went okay. Glitches can happen, after all.)



Also, since I have been gently prodded, I have already put it up in the shop.

So now it's time for me to pack up the complimentary copies due to the museums and institutions, and for the German National Library (which keeps a copy of all the things published in Germany).

If you want to be sent a copy too, you can order it in my shop - or come and see me at the Nadelkunst on October 2-4 and buy it there.