Putting a Value on a Needleworker

I was lamenting with my daughter over Christmas about the likely effects of cuts to Government spending. It is a tough call and certainly the next few years are going to be very hard for some people and organizations. Museums share county budgets which also have to fund services which are life critical such as care for the elderly, and it is not difficult to forcast where cuts will be made as push comes to shove. So, it somewhat brightened my day to see a high value nots from Iceland (worth just under £30 or about $45) which commemorates an embroiderer, her work, her teaching and her contribution to Icelandic culture. The reverse of the note shows her, pattern book in hand, directing stitchers working on an altar cloth - the design of which forms the patterned background.

The embroiderer is Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir and you can see more of her on the front of the note together with her husband, a bishop. The source for the image is a portrait made in 1636 in Copenhagen.

 

Threads of Identity

I was totally bowled over by two newish books on the block - not to mention the title of one of the works - Threads of Identity. Having seen how women in prisoner of war camps continued stitching, one can understand how this special activity of ours allows stitchers in sometimes the worst of circumstances to cling to the last shreds of their identities, to keep hold of the thread of who they are, what life is and what life is meant to be. (I suppose it equates in some bizarre way to my father's first thought on reaching dry land after his ship had been torpedoed. Standing in little more than the rags he asked where he could get a proper shave. And again, tales of the unemployed in the bleakest of past times would always involve getting up, having a shave and dressing carefully.) And so Threads of Identity is a history of Palestinian women told through aspects of stitching, rug-making and costume. The interviews with women who lived through the traumas and changes of the 20th century are a contribution to oral history, augmenting standard historical accounts. While most writing about the Middle East concentrates on politics, Widad Kawar's book focuses on the dignity of ordinary people, and women in particular, bridging the gap between the major events of history and everyday life. With this book Widad Kamel Kawar pays homage to Palestinian women - she is known as Umm ‘l-ibas al falastini - Mother of the Palestinian dress. Her world-acclaimed collection is the largest in the Middle East and has been exhibited in Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England, Scotland, Iceland, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia.

Margarita Skinner lived in the Middle East for over twenty years and during that time volunteered in several Palestinian women’s projects in Jordan, Gaza Strip, West Bank and for over five years she supervised embroidery production by over 300 ladies in a self-supporting programme in the Gaza Strip. Her 1998 book Between Despair and Hope: Windows on my Middle East Journey 1967-1992 gives some details of this endeavour. Margarita met Widad Kawar when they both worked in the refugee camps of Jordan after the 1967 war. Her book Palestinian Embroidery Motifs 1850 – 1950: A Treasury of Stitches, is the first to document all the different motifs by origin and names used on the old dresses.

My Mother and the Varangian Guards

The Varangian Guards were sometimes referred to as Beserkers and so you might wonder what they had to do with a gentle and excellent needlewoman from Yorkshire. The most obvious link is that they both laid claim to Scandinavian descent, my mother through her red-haired (Rus/Viking) relatives in Ireland, and the Varangians whose name was synonymous with Swedes until the late 16th century. The Varangians were Scandinavian mercenaries usually employed as bodyguards in the Byzantine Empire, in Constantinople and, perversely, in the 11th century they fought the Norman (Norseman) Monarchy which had captured the Island of Sicily in the Mediterranean. Both Constantinople and Sicily were centres of silk-weaving which produced fantastic damascene silk court and sacred robes. (Damascene weaving allows for the carrying of weft across a number of warp threads, the effect of which is to create a pattern which reflects light and glitters against the more matt background of a twill weave.) It is no surprise that the Varangians did a bit of sacking and pillaging in the course of their careers and some of these precious silks were taken back North. Not having the technology or the crafting skill at the time, workers in Scandinavia found that it was possible to emulate similar effects by 'darning' a pattern upon a plain linen ground. Opus Teutonicum - white on white pattern darned embroidery - is probably a descendent of this technique and it was certainly carried to Thule (Iceland). Here you can see an Icelandic altar front which is pattern darned - though the darning is nothing to do with mending; it is like a fly caught in Baltic amber, a memory of the desire for patterned damascene silk. My mother? I nearly forgot; she belonged to a group of textile workers called Burlers and Menders who were in great demand to 'fix' bolts of cloth which came off the loom with numerous knots and snags and had to be repaired by carefully mending warp and woof to match the weave of the cloth. Darning in other words, but with a great knowledge of all the various weaves. Demand for this skill dates back to the introduction of the New Draperies in the late middle-ages. Before their arrival from the Low Countries, woollen textiles were felted and showed no weaving pattern. If you were a young girl in the textile centres of Norfolk or Yorkshire, this was a way of earning a crust, either working in a factory, or as an outworker if you also had children to care for. It is worthwhile to bear in mind the distinction between 'pattern-darning' which is a form of textile creation and 'darning' as a means of mending - it is so easy to confuse them - like my mother with the Varangian Guards.

Thank you Ine from the Netherlands for telling us that stitching diagrams exist for this altar piece just click here.