Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

A whitework alphabet: letter E (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Oh yes, I thought, this week’s E embroidery can be a nice little pomegranate in the embroidery style of Elizabeth I.

When I was young, pomegranates were very special. They seemed to be available in about October round about the time of  Nottingham’s Goose Fair. They looked rather gorgeously exotic, promised much but were somewhat disappointing – probably because we tended to eat them by laboriously picking out the jewelled seeds one by one with a safety pin! Full Middle East cuisine was yet to penetrate Nottinghamshire coal towns – we’d just about met pink grapefruit, avocados and french dressing (from the new big Sainsbury’s in Nottingham) but sprinkling salads with pomegranate seeds or using pomegranate molasses were decades away. Mind you I’m not passionate about the seeds even now and find them more gravelly than tasty, though the syrup Grenadine can be a fun addition to a cool drink on a hot day..

Sketches for E with pomegranate

The most common pomegranate’s binomial name is Punica granatum – Punica in reference to the scarlet colour of flowers and seeds, though Punica could equally refer to the plant’s Carthaginian origin, punic being the latin adjective for Carthaginian (think Punic Wars) and an early name for the pomegranate was indeed Malum punicum (cathaginian apple).  Granatum refers only too accurately to the gritty quality of the seeds. It is of course the eating of six pomegranate seeds that got Proserpina (Gk: Persephone) into trouble in the underworld and landed her with her very own Brexit dilemma – the solution, 6 months in Hades and 6 months on earth,  is  fortunately not available to politicians in the real world!

A whitework alphabet: letter E (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

The pomegranate spread via the Romans throughout southern Europe, rising to such importance in Spain that the city of Grenada was named for it with the fruit prominent on its coat of arms, just to underline the connection. Though not from Grenada, Catherine of Aragon adopted the pomegranate as her own device – its association  with fertility and fruitfulness being just the thing for a young queen hoping to continue her husband’s royal line.  I wrote about the pomegranate when I embroidered my own Elizabethan jacket and I quote from that blog post here, because I’d completely forgotten what I’d written there.

“Katherine and Henry’s marital difficulties are succinctly described in a small embroidery of 1529 by Anne Boleyn’s mother in which Anne’s symbol, the falcon, is depicted picking at Katherine of Aragon’s split pomegranate. Ouch, this is embroidery with the cut and thrust of a Private Eye cartoon and somehow more wounding for being made in a less transient medium than paper.

Katherine’s daughter, Mary I, then took over the symbol in memory of her mother. You might expect Elizabeth to have had enough of the pomegranate by the time she came to the throne. Indeed there is triumphalism in Elizabeth’s Armada portrait of 1588 where what looks like a pomegranate sits in front of an open window through which you can clearly see the Spanish fleet routed and in disarray. But by 1599, the  ‘Hardwick’ portrait from Nicholas Hilliard’s workshop  shows a couple of plump pomegranate fruits among all the other painted motifs clearly visible on the lower right of her dress.”

Hmm.  Maybe by 1599 the queen’s eyesight was failing (she died in 1603, aged 70) – I’m not sure she would have madly embraced the image of the pomegranate with all that symbolic fruitfulness and fertility, both qualities which seemed to have missed being bestowed on the queen the day they were handed out … but as Nicholas Hilliard lived for 16 years after the queen died, it obviously didn’t amount to treason.

Es – some sketches of images found online

I now realise I’ve spent too much time looking at embroidered pomegranates and not enough at pictures of the real thing. The leaves are quite wrong. Mine are lobed when they should be lanceolate or spear shaped. I’ve also got the orientation completely wrong. The little coronet or calyx – the remains of the flower – should be at the opposite end to the stalk. Both of these things I did get right on one of my drawings but then I seem to have got carried away and did my own thing. It’s a good thing I’m no royal emblem maker as in one small embroidery I’ve not only insulted the queen but got the botany wrong too!!

A whitework alphabet: letter D (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Damask and brocade are very similar in appearance, manufacture and origin, yet I love damask but don’t feel so amorous of brocade. This is probably because I find whitework very pleasurable and what is damask but woven whitework made on powered looms (using the Jacquard process) – think of all those heirloom tablecloths and napkins your mum and your gran loved and those acres of enormous cloths covering well set tables in English stately homes. Before my husband retired as priest in charge of 2 Oxford parishes, I used to haul my mother’s damask linen tablecloth(s) out for special occasions, knowing that life was changing and such tablecloths would get fewer outings in future. (The silver plated sugar bowl and hot water jug, also my mother’s, we used every Sunday and though not an especially sentimental person, I felt warm with the thought that she would have loved that I did this.) Nowadays few like the idea of washing or drying such giants of whiteness so the thought of inviting the inevitable tea or coffee stains acts as a severe inhibitor to use (though I always find a generous splodge of neat Ecover clothes washing liquid failproof, whether on a T shirt’s greasy stains or blood or wine on just about anything – as long as it’s of a size to go into the washing machine).

Damask design (based on Fortuny fabric)

So, that preamble is a long way round saying that I like damask so much that I enjoy trying to fake it – sometimes by appliquéing a slightly different shade of white or, in this case by using a simple backstitch in stranded embroidery cotton to emulate the weft of a loom (weFT are the threads running leFT to right, so warP are the uP and down threads.) The design of the motif for the damask is similar to a Fortuny brocade design (though as it’s one of his stencilled rather than woven designs, I take comfort in joining the great man in taking liberties).

A whitework alphabet: letter D (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Technically damask is a reversible figured fabric woven on a Jacquard loom with both threads the same colour, though subtlety different in appearance. The matt weft yarn forms the ground of the fabric, while the sateen warp yarn forms the pattern. Brocade is usually woven into the top of the fabric surface using contrasting threads, one of which may be metallic. Both damask and brocade are thought to have originated in China, whence they travelled the silk route to the Middle East where it is generally thought they attracted the eye of crusaders. Damask became damask as it was the cloth from Damascus, but more interestingly damask is the name of one of the five basic methods of weaving  known to early Medieval Byzantine and Middle Eastern weavers, the rest being, tabby, twill, lampas and tapestry.

1. Tabby is plain weave, used whenever you’re not thinking about what sort of weave you’re using.
2. Twill has a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs as the weft is passed over one or more warp threads and then under two. Think cavalry twill trousers.
3. Lampas is a fabric of luxury. The background weft is silk taffeta (taffeta comes from the Persian for twisted woven) but with four or more wefts laid on top to create the design; there may also be a brocading weft and metallic threads are often used.
4. Tapestry is weft faced weaving, all the warp threads being hidden.
5. Damask has a matt weft background with patterning in the sateen warp.

Sketches of various Ds found online

Now I need a visit to a factory making silk fabric to really sort out what’s going on with the lampas weave – words alone seem confusing and inadequate.

Happy to have been enlightened as to the different methods of weaving, which I’d never really given two thoughts to, and loving semi-obscure words in general, the terms flotsam and jetsam come swimming into my mind for here are two of another set of words, which we use everyday without thinking about what exactly they refer to.  Flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict each refer to specific kind of shipwreck defined in Maritime Law.  (I blame QI for this and even then I can never remember the last two!)

1. Flotsam: part of wreckage of a ship and its cargo found floating in water;
2. Jetsam: goods thrown overboard to lighten the load when the ship’s in difficulties (or when being chased by the Excise Men). Includes goods that sink to the sea bed where jettisoned or those washed ashore.
3. Lagan: Goods cast overboard but attached to a buoy or some other indicator with the intention of them being collected later.
4. Derelict: Goods cast overboard – either intentionally or forcibly – lying on the ocean floor  with no hope of recovery.

This week’s post has been a diversionary tactic to take me away from my work tacking together the three layers of the altar frontal.  Sized 3.30m (nearly 11 ft) by 2.60m (8.5 ft) and bigger than the available floor area in our living room (anyway my knees are no longer up to crawling around on floors), I have had to import a couple of craft tables (4 ft by 2ft each). These laid lengthwise with the dining table as backup behind mean the quilt is at least at a decent height but I’d forgotten just how much stretching across the tables employs arm muscles not in regular use. An eighth of the way through after half a day’s work, progress is slow… I can no longer put off today’s session.

For an appliqué  in brocade style see this embroidered letter E here.