SOLD English Embroidery From The Metropolitan Museum 1580-1700 * £90 €135 $175 Tracked Shipping Included

It is an impossible task to describe this fabulous book. It is over 2 kilos and 300 pages of delight.

The images are fabulous, the details shots are fabulous, the essays are excellent.

All I can say is if you were to buy it from Amazon it would cost £216 or $199.

This book is in as good a condition as if you bought it from a bookstore - it is near pristine - no tears or marks.

If you love embroidery from this period, you really do need this book.

Because this is a high value book, it will be expedited to you with full tracking. I will consider invoicing over two months if that will help.

SOLD Art & Decoration In Elizabethan & Jacobean England * £65 €100 $140 Tracked Shipping Included

This is another connoisseur's book for research students or lovers of 16th and 17th century sources of design. Over 2 kilos and around 350 pages, this is a fabulous source book if you want to know the origins of designs in needlework, tapestry and other ornament during this period.

It is rich pudding indeed, and if Bess of Hardwick and the needlework of Hardwick Hall is of interest to you, then you will be pleased to hear that Anthony Wells-Cole, focuses on this prodigy house.

He identifies for the first time the exact print sources employed in decoration and furnishing.

A large proportion of illustrations will be unfamiliar to all but specialists.

This book is in excellent condition and recognizing it is an expensive book, I will split the payment over two months for you.

SOLD Sudeley Castle - A Thousand Years of English History * £8 €12 $30 Shipping Included

Sudeley Castle is famous for being home and final resting place of Katherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII.

It is also famous for its rich textile collection, including a wonderful embroidered casket

and a Sheldon Tapestry.

It does depict the Expulsion from Paradise, but is also interesting for its depiction of the Cardinal Virtues, Justice, Prudence, Charity, Temperance. 

And note the running border above which has many motifs found on Stuart Panels 100 years later.

This is a 16th Dutch portrait of  Queen Elizabeth I painted on glass.

This book has over 40 fully illustrated pages of history and is A4 landscape size.

Old Stourbridge Village * 65 Samplers On-Line

Old Stourbridge Village has the most delightful, visitor friendly on-line collection I have seen for a while. They have 65 samplers in their on-line collection, many simple, some more intricate like these shown. To visit, simply click here and enter Sampler in the search box. It is that easy!

SOLD Kreuzstichmuster im Jahreslauf * German Pattern Book * £8 €12 $30 Including Shipping

This is new book, unused, with 37 size A4 pattern pages. The scan has bleached out the grid lines rather, but each page is printed on gridded paper - the paper is thick craft paper and is printed on one side only. The pages are also punched so you can keep them in a loose leaf binder if you prefer.

If you are considering festive embroidery, these patterns are perfect.

I think these two horses flanking the bird charmed tree with some initials would make a sampler all by itself.

I love these flower sprigs - again make an arrangement of them with a simple alphabet (there is one in the book) and you would have a charming sampler, too

SOLD Candace Bahouth Medieval Lion Tapestry Mini-Kit * £10 €15 $30 Shipping Included

New condition unopened Candace Bahouth needlepoint kit. Candace Bahouth has designed some beautiful items based on medieval tapestries for the Ehrman Tapestry Shop in Kensington over the years. This kit includes gold lurex thread for highlights and can be made into a pincushion or a mini (sweet) bag. It is a small project and will be finished in hardly any time at all....

SOLD Ralph Sheldon's Tapestry Maps of Elizabethan England * £17 €25 $40 Shipping Included

This exceptional book is now out of print and generally unavailable. It describes the background and history of Ralph Sheldon and his famous tapestry maps. Ralph was described in his lifetime as one of the sufficientist wise men of England and fittest to have been made one of the Council, but for one matter. And that matter was his Catholic faith which made him an outcast and suspect.

Ralph, educated in the Inns of Court, was 30 when his father made provision in his will for the establishment of a tapestry manufactory at the family manor of Barcheston under Richard Hyckes, the apparent English name an alias for an immigrant weaver, described as the only Author and Beginner of his art.  Ralph continued these arrangements which resulted in the weaving of fabulous tapestry maps amongst other items. What is remarkable is the depiction of the country and the architecture, such as the prodigious country seat above and Sheldon's own new house below.

Below you can see the vast scale of the maps woven.

and the depiction of countryside, rivers, bridges and situation of towns and villages just as they were in Elizabethan times.

This softback book packed with textile history is 60 pages in length and is in mint condition.

SOLD The Eighteenth Century - 100 Years of Sampler Making * £12 €18 $30 Shipping Included

With the end of the Civil War in the 17th century, the restoration of the monarchy and the Glorious Revolution peace did not return to the UK as might have been expected, in fact the 18th century was a turbulent one with the English almost ceaselessly engaged in wars that extended over 4 continents.

At home there were the twin scourges of Scots Jacobitism and French Jacobinism always threatening to undermine the civil status quo. On the other hand, the eighteenth century was the Age of the Enlightenment and the beginnings of epistemological understanding. New thinking that replaced children's inherited Original Sin with a tabula rasa had a great effect on changes to education in general and provided the momentum towards civilization and social alignment through education of the nation's marginalized and perceived fifth column of the wayward poor.

This catalogue documents 45 samplers worked in the 18th century

and shows the variety of needlework taught in schools at that time

together with details of the girls' personal histories.

The catalogue is in mint condition. 

SOLD A Schole-House For The Needle 1624 * £7 €12 $25 Shipping included

This is a facsimile reprint of Richard Shorelyker's book of needlework patterns for embroidery and lace.

Here you can see some examples from the 34 pattern pages.

it is a useful resource for enthusiasts of historical embroidery.

This book is in perfect condition.

SOLD English Girlhood At School * £25 $50 €35 Shipping included

Here are just a few snippets from this treasure trove of a book. In an early 17th century finishing school, Anne Colston, a young gentlewoman, was to be brought up for five years in the art of bone-lace making, working of parchment, and taking out of all manner of laces; also in making all sorts of bands and plain work in sewing with a needle and all other things belonging to a spinster, but not to do any servell worke.

Girls were to be given after their training a pattern of every sort of lace they had learned to make. And here we learn a little more about the creation and purpose of samplers. This illustration from the book shows us an excellent example of a bi-directional sampler, the image above is a flipped excerpt taken from the full sampler below.

For Martha Tristram in the 1620s, £20 was paid to Mrs Beekes by instalments, for her to learn during eight years, button-making, the making of pin cushions, and sheathes for knives.

In 1720 the Charity Schools came under attack: In a free nation where slaves are not allowed, the surest wealth consists in a Multitude of the laborious Poor. Every hour poor folk's children spend at their books is so much time lost to society, besides unfitting them when they grow up for downright labour.

The SPCK responded: Labour was to be added to the instruction given to Children in the Charity Schools; as Husbandry in any of its Branches, Spinning, Sewing, Knitting to effectually obviate an Objection against the Charity Schools that they tend to take poor Children off from those servile Offices which are necessary in all Communities and for which the wise Governor of the World has by His Providence designed them.

The book has a number of black and white plates, some of which are shown here together with the contents page below.

This is a very neat, clean first edition of the book published in 1929 by Oxford University Press and if you have an interest in the particular histories of girlhood education, you will be totally enthralled by this book.