Monday, October 27, 2014

New inspiration from Old resources

With our contest theme of Old Stitches, New Tricks in mind, I thought I'd share some interesting online resources of historical needlework with you today.

The Gutenberg project is host to many free e-books (in different formats) including some interesting Needlework books. These are mainly older books in English that are in the public domain. If you search for 'embroidery' or 'needlework' you will find a few interesting books like this book about Jacobean Embroidery and the famous Encyclopedia of Needlewerk by Therese Dillmont.

The Antique pattern Library is another interesting resource for all kinds of non-copy righted publications for different types of Needlework (as well as other crafts).

More and more museums are putting their collections online too, some of them are very extensive like the Metropolitan (6173 hits when I searched for Embroidery, 10494 for Needlework!). The collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum is definitely worth browsing too.

Perhaps somewhat more difficult to search for most is the Dutch Rijksmuseum online collection. However I found some lovely examples using the dutch word for embroidery (which is 'borduurwerk') like the late 19th century silk shoes you see pictured above.

And how about this allegorical embroidery  from ca. 1800,  made by Louise van Ommeren? Check out the furry stitching on the man's cloak and the shading on the lady's robe!

There's so much amazing embroidery work and knowledge to discover online and what I shared here today is just a tiny bit of it so go forth and (re)discover what was created by stitchers from the past! And if you have any useful links to share please let us know in the comments.


What are you stitching? Please share in the &Stitches Flickr group. We'd love to see it!

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