English Embroideries

This handbook explores the Ashmolean Museum's collection of English seventeenth-century embroideries. These intriguing pieces, often made by affluent school girls, include pictorial panels and an elaborate box showing bible stories as well as costume accessories and fanciful items such as a frog-shaped purse. The introductory essay explores how the miniature world of kings and queens, biblical and classical heroes, courtiers and shepherdesses, set in landscapes with lovingly depicted animals and flowers, connects with the turbulent events of the seventeenth century. Detailed photographs reveal the fine stitches and imaginative raised work embroidery techniques we well as the lavish use of metal threads and semi-precious stones. The book will appeal to all those interested in the life of seventeenth-century women as well as to textiles and embroidery specialists.