Framing samples

I collected my Montenegrin and Jacobean samples from the framers today.  I was a bit disappointed with them, but not upset.  I'm not good at specifying what I want, or how I want it to look.  I had accepted the advice from the framer, assuming they were more competent than me.  They have not achieved the look that I wanted, but I contributed to this failing, by not being able to specify what was optimal.

Jacobean sample

Faults are:  the surround to the float mount is too small.  Should have been much bigger to privilege the work; the fabric is not evenly stretched so the thicker linen woven threads can be seen to waver; the hand woven linen is very fine and the ends of the embroidery threads can be seen (should have stitched them in more securely).

Montenegrin sample

However I am far from disheartened by this.  I see both of these as stitch exercises - useful to learn a new technique, but not actually inspiring me to stitch.

I see the Montenegrin sample as a piece that fulfils middle class values.  In order for this to be stitched in 1653 (date of the original sampler by Elizabeth Billingsley) it required wealth (for the linen, dyed silks, hand made needles, and embroidery frame -threads were finished on the top, as the frame could not be flipped).  Thus she came from an affluent family.  Her education taught her decorative, and highly complex stitches - therefore she was a child whose time was spent on non-utilitarian sewing.  Her leisured occupation led to her being highly skilled - Montenegrin is incredibly complex, and she must have had a lot of practice to stitch it so well, in so many directions.

For all that I admire Elizabeth Billingsley's skills, I reflect that her use of Montenegrin stitch is cleverness, for cleverness' sake.  Its purpose is to densely cover the fabric.  Which it does.  Incredibly complexly.  I have mastered it, through many hours work, yet I cannot identify when I would use it again.  It is very useful for patterning as demonstrated above, but I cannot see further use for it.

The Jacobean sampler is not my taste because although I enjoyed the process of stitching, and learned a new, useful stitch, it creates a picture.  The Jacobean Royalist symbolism is not readable to a modern audience.  The tree is an oak (Boscobel oak), with acorns (royal lineage), butterfly and caterpillar (Charles I and Charles II), borage flowers (courage), spider (concealed hiding place of Charles I), hazelnuts (?) bedbugs, fleas, snail etc.  I loved working with the two weights of silk thread, and learned to do Elizabethan twisted chain stitch for the trunk.  This was not part of the kit design.  Elizabethan twisted chain stitch is very effective to get sinuous curves.

But the process of working with the Jacobean 'picture' made me think about iconography.  My choice of iconography is about working class objects, like toilet brushes, cleaning bottles, and car seats.  It is not about flowers , which were traditionally painted by genteel ladies.  Rozsika Parker notes the iconography in samplers often selected the same biblical stories about women.  So I need to reflect on  inconography and class.