Embroidery History Sampler, Part 1

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We're talking
about something I have wanted to talk about for a
long literal years.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Yeah, it is tricky to pinpoint the origin of embroidered
embellishment for obvious reasons. Most textiles that were around before
recorded history don't exist anymore. They have not survived the
ravage of time, and as a consequence, depending on what
source you look at, you'll actually see different timelines for
the origin of needlework used to decorate fabric. And then,

(00:44):
to add to that, this is of course a global art.
Different cultures have employed embroidered embellishments for a long time.
It seems to spontaneously arise kind of in every culture
in some way, which I think is cool. But each
of those cultures had their own timelines regarding when embroidery
was adopted into their handiwork. But as I just mentioned,

(01:04):
I've been wanting to talk about embroidery in its history
for a long time. When I tell you literal years,
not kidding, And I have loved it for a lot
of years, and I have started and not completed this
episode a minimum of five times. Yeah, where I'm like,
I don't I can't wrap my head around how to

(01:24):
manage all of this. I don't know that I did
manage all of this, But it's because it's overwhelming. There's
a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
You can't be comprehensive at all, right, and you have
to accept that and try to pick pieces that you
think will give people a decent set of informational facts
and contexts without being able to fully flesh out every concept.
But then over the holidays, when I was working but

(01:51):
things were a little bit slower, I had some time
to dig out the books that I have been amassing
on the subject, and I tried to figure out a
way to talk about it. So the way it's usually
talked about when you read histories is usually through like
a bifurcated narrative. The reason for that is that we
know some things about ancient embroidery around the world, but

(02:12):
then the subject largely splits in two directions, Western and
specifically English embroidery traditions and Asian specifically Chinese embroidery traditions.
To the point that you will have books that say
a comprehensive history of embroidery, and they're only about one or.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
The other, which makes it very tricky. But the silk Road,
of course, is a bridge between them. And there are
instances where some developments were happening in one culture's needle
work traditions that would impact others later on. So it's
very hard to keep everything linear. Thus here's your warning.
We're going to jump around a little bit. But also,

(02:49):
as I said, embroidery has a massive history. It could
be a podcast in its own right, although that would
be for a rather niche audience. The embroidery which I
would listen to. Yeah, you know, this is a more
general history show, so to try to make it all
work sort of, this is in the embroidery tradition, more
of a sampler of information. We're going to talk about

(03:10):
embroidery samplers in a bit. And when I say in
a bit, I mean next episode, because this is a
two part two and even so I just want a
caveat this means we are leaving so much out even
with a two parter. So for a show like ours,
which is not an all embroidery podcast, my goal is
to showcase how important embellishment of fabric has been throughout

(03:32):
all of human history as a means of expression and artistry,
and a way to share information.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
You may think you do not have much of a
connection to embroidery, but I promise you embroidered pieces have
been part of almost every story throughout human history, thus
probably yours, whether you knew it or not. So embroidery
is at its most basic definition, the embellishment of a
fabric using a needle and thread to create some kind

(04:00):
of decoration. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first
known use of the word embroidery in English print appeared
in the writings of fourteenth century writer John Gower, who
mentioned it in his work Confessio Amantis. This is part
of the Confessions of the character Amans, who notes his

(04:20):
lady embroidering. The word is borrowed from the French ambrode,
which is a verb, and the word broidery, which is
a noun. But humans were engaging in embroidery so long
before it had that name. Ancient needles made from animal bone,
complete with eyes to pass thread through, have been found

(04:42):
in Europe and Asia and have been dated back as
far as thirty eight thousand BCE. North American finds of
similar objects are estimated to be between twelve thousand and
thirteen thousand, five hundred years old, so all over the
world four thousands of years this has been something that's
come up. Examples of actual embroidery have been noted in

(05:03):
fossils dating back to thirty thousand BCE during the Paleolithic era,
but we don't know a whole lot about those early efforts.
There is evidence of embroidery and beads being used in
that embroidery, and even in one case a stitch that
finished the edges of a garment like a buttonhole stitch,
but what has been seen is largely just fragments and

(05:24):
kind of like hints at what we think it is.
What we actually do know conclusively actually jumps us forward
in time quite a bit to ancient Egypt in the
eleventh century BCE, and we know that the ancient Egyptians
used embroidery thanks to their burial rituals. There are a
number of fairly well preserved examples of embellished textiles from tombs.

(05:46):
One example is made up of two pieces of fabric
from the funeral tent of Queen Istamkeeb. This fabric is
actually animal hide, and it's specifically gazelle, and it has
a pink leather corting stitch to it with pink thread
to form a decorative binding along the edge. So not
exactly embroidery as we would think of it, but certainly
an embellishment with a fabric and an elin thread. Also

(06:08):
in Egypt, but several hundred years later, there's another example
that we don't have in hand, but we have a
description of it, which was written by Herodotus. He writes
of an Egyptian corslate, which in this instance means a
piece of decorative armor. Quote. It was made of linen,
ornamented with numerous figures and animals, worked in gold and cotton.

(06:31):
Each thread of the corslt was worthy of admiration. According
to the additional description provided by Herodotus, each individual thread
was made up of three hundred and sixty other threads.
All these threads, according to the writing, were very clearly visible.
The stitchers in the audience are probably trying to envision

(06:52):
what that would look like, and honestly, so are we.
Three hundred and sixty threads, even if they are very
very fine, would make us significantly sized cord if they
were all twisted together. So maybe this was stitched down
in a way that spiraled and showcased all of these threads.
Or maybe Herodotus was like a little confused about how

(07:14):
embroidery works. Maybe it is a translation issue. Who can say.
In any case, he mentions in the histories that this
was a gift from the pharaoh Amasus to the Simians,
and then another similar Corsul it was given to the
temple of Minerva and Lindus. The earliest surviving piece of
embroidery is a piece that was taken from the tomb

(07:35):
of in Common, dating back to about the thirteen twenties BCE,
and by that point needles made from metal were already
in use.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, So just in case you're like, wait, you said
there's evidence of older than that, this is the first
actual surviving piece of embroidery. And we're going to talk
about some early evidence of embellishment stitching in China after
we first paused for a sponsor break. All right, we're about.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
To talk about some Chinese things. And let me just
tell you, I know my pronunciation is not good, so
we're doing our best. Blessings upon you for your patients.
At an archaeological site outside of Beijing known as Zukudian
and dated to sixteen thousand BCE, researchers have uncovered a
wide range of bone needles. Similarly, beads made from shell,

(08:33):
bone and stone have been found throughout China and other
Asian countries, indicating that in addition to possibly trading some
of these items, people were using them to embellish clothing.
Renowned embroiderer and historian Yung Yong Chung described the use
of what she called proto embroidery in her books Silken Threads,

(08:53):
A History of Embroidery in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam
as a way to track migration and cultural.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Development in Asia. She notes that proto embroidery really shows
up in the northern areas of Asia first, and also
that the earliest evidence of a spindle whirl, which is
a weighted object that was used on a spindle to
maintain a consistent speed for creating yarns, shows up in
the Late Neolithic period, so that means after seven thousand BCE,

(09:23):
an especially important development in embroidery history and in textiles
in general, happened when people in China developed the ability
to cultivate silkworms themselves, rather than just gathering silk pods.
Silk pods from wild silkworms would have only provided short
filaments that had to be very carefully wound together to

(09:44):
form longer fibers. And that's because as a silkworm emerges
from the cocoon, it produces a secretion that breaks the
cocoon down so it can emerge. But once silkworms were.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Domesticated, these pods could be harvested before the chrysalis inside matured,
so the silk from the pod could be unwound and
one long, continuous piece. That made it possible to create
much finer silk textiles. And this is a technique that
enabled China to be the sole producer of silk for
a long time. Yeah, their whole technique of weaving was

(10:19):
like a secret for many many years. Well before the
silk Road was officially established in the second century BCE,
silk was in production and embroidery on it was part
of Chinese culture. For example, the chain stitch was in
use as early as the fifth century bce in China,
and also what we call the Silk Road was really

(10:39):
a collection of smaller trade routes that had been in
use that started to coalesce as trade increased. Even in
that coalesce state, there were actually many routes, not just one.
UNESCO actually uses the plural term silk roads when talking
about this trade network. But the most important thing, at
least as it relates to what we're talking about today,

(11:00):
is that ideas were being exchanged along these routes as
well as goods, and as more people saw Chinese embroidery,
the designs and techniques were borrowed and copied and incorporated
into the stitching of other cultures. So as we talk
about the embroidery traditions of various places around the globe,
we have to keep in mind that there is a
degree to which they are all linked developmentally thanks to

(11:22):
this trade of ideas and designs. In the years that
the Silk Roads were developing and flourishing, so were the
embroidery styles of China, and what emerged were four primary
schools of embroidery. Each one was associated with a different
region of the country. Shoe embroidery is associated with the
Sichuan province, and its style is incredibly intricate, to the

(11:46):
point of looking in some cases almost like photographs created
from threads. The stitching is very tight, so with colors
that blends together rather than showing any sharp lines of
color blocking nature imagery is very posh and pandas, which
are associated with the city of Chengdu. They're commonly seen
in this style of embroidery. Xang embroidery is associated with

(12:08):
Hunan Province and it tends to be very bold in
its designs. The intricacy of this style is evidenced in
the fact that the backside of the embroidery is not
just beautiful, but it is also usually a different image.
So the embroiderer is creating two pieces of art at once.
So if you look at a piece say oh my gosh,
this is beautiful and flip it over, you're going to

(12:30):
see a different image that is also beautiful. These designs
often use animals with high contrast between colors. Su embroidery,
which is named for the city of su Chau and
the Jangsu province, remains the most popular of the Chinese
embroidery schools today. It is characterized by very fine needlework
with very narrow needles and thin threads to create this

(12:52):
incredibly rich detailed imagery. There are often many many colors
at play in any given design, and some feature mirrored
designs on the back of the work. The last of
the four schools is yue embroidery, which is also called
Cantonese embroidery. This is a very old style. This embroidery
is often very colorful, but it doesn't have the photographic

(13:14):
quality of some of the other styles, and it's also
usually worked in cotton thread rather than silk. But all
four of these styles are officially recognized as part of
China's Intangible Cultural heritage. Other early surviving examples of embroidery
come from the Scythian Empire. The Scythian culture dates back
to the span of time from nine hundred to two

(13:37):
hundred BCE. This was a nomadic warrior culture there primarily
associated with southern Siberia and modern day Ukraine, had a
reputation for being fearsome. According to the writings of Herodotus quote,
none who attacks them can escape, and none can catch
them if they desire not to be found but in

(13:58):
addition to that interesting part of their legacy, the Scythians
also valued art and personal adornment.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
They cast metal jewelry, and they had tattoos, and they
also embroidered. Felt pieces, possibly part of burial lacuterment, have
been found with shapes embroidered on them, but those old
ones are far more basic than the more recent discoveries.
One of the interesting aspects of some of those more
recent discoveries of Scythian embroidery shows the way that their

(14:26):
nomadic lifestyle offered them the opportunity to borrow motifs from
other cultures over the centuries, and once again this goes
back to how deeply connected all humans are. Motifs like
lotus flowers have been tracked by researchers as they appeared
on textiles embroidered in China and then seem to have
slowly been adopted by other cultures who came in contact

(14:48):
with China and then made their way to Inner Asian cultures.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Including the Scythians. Similarly, Greek and Persian designs also appear
on Sythian embroidered textiles, so over time the Scythians were
really incorporating designs into their embroidery that they borrowed from
seeing them in a lot of places elsewhere. The use
of embroidery on Scythian clothing is also unique as a
stylistic element in terms of placement. Archaeologist Margherita Gliba mentioned

(15:16):
in the book Dressing the Past in two thousand and
eight that quote, the decorative elements on garments have been
placed in such a manner as to highlight the edges
and the seams. Seams especially were emphasized with embroidery. Gliba
notes that there are some historians that have stated that
using decorations at garment edges like neck and sleeve openings,

(15:37):
was part of a way to keep evil spirits from
entering the clothing. I think Holly wants to embroider all
the hems and seams and edges that way, every keep
evil spirits. Yeah, tell everybody, that's the reason. Scythian embroidery
is also known to have been a way that the

(15:59):
embroiderers tried to imbue their garments with luck. The idea
of amulet embroidery, which often appears on things like loose
fitting tunic style shirts, has continued into the present day.
One aspect of Sythian embroidery that also applies to a
lot of other cultures is that the work is attributed
almost exclusively to women and girls, and that's not entirely surprising.

(16:22):
Swing of any kind has been considered women's work in
a lot of cultures, not universally, but a lot. Some
of the writing about this work on Cythian garments, specifically
as it relates to luck, suggests that there was a
certain power in the act of creation for the women
who may have sung or repeated specific phrases while working

(16:43):
to manifest that luck in the stitches. There are also
mentions if these lucky or protective garments being worn by
men under their armor when they went into battle, as
they believed in the power of the embroidered amulets.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
One particularly striking example of Scythian embroidery made the Rounds
online in the early twenty twenties, although it had been
discovered decades before that. It's a leather boot that has
been embellished with thread and beadwork, even on the soul.
This example, which is estimated to be around twenty three
hundred years old, was found in a burial ground in

(17:19):
Siberia's Altaime Mountains in the mid twentieth century, so it
likely wasn't intended for real world use if it was
a burial garment, which is why it is more intact
than footwear that would have been part of someone's everyday wardrobe,
and the embellishment on it is ornate. Along the uppers
of the boot is a beautiful scrollwork that incorporates beads

(17:40):
into the silk stitches. The carefully pleated toe is joined
to the soul in a way that looks exactly like
modern ballet slippers, and the soul itself has three diamond
shapes of different sizes outlined would bead it embroidery, and
then filled in with additional embroidery and beadwork. It's an
incredibly beautiful piece and it's part of the collection of

(18:01):
the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Modern day Ukraine honors the embroidery tradition of the Scythians.
In two thousand and six, a student led initiative started
with the intent to make May sixteenth Embroidery Day that
slowly spread and gained traction until it got government support.
In twenty fifteen. This is not the only Embroidery Day
that there is in the world. Sweden is credited with

(18:26):
creating World Embroidery Day in twenty eleven, for example, and
that falls on July thirtieth.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
We're going to take a break to hear from the
sponsors that keep the show going, and when we're back,
we are going to talk about prehistoric embroidery in Peru.
Peru has a.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Rich prehistoric embroidery story as well, and as is the
case with ancient Egypt, we have examples due to their
rituals of mummifying the dead and including lots of handworked
articles with them in burial. Centuries before the Incan Empire
was present in the area, indigenous Peruvian peoples were creating
incredibly intricate textile art. The archaeological site known as Pachika Mauk,

(19:11):
which sits southeast of Lima, has a cemetery which has
been the source of a lot of embroidery finds. The
Peruvian examples show multiple kinds of embellishment being combined, so
for example, sometimes designs woven into a fabric on a
loom would then be embellished with embroidery. The motifs of
these examples are graphic representations of things from the natural world,

(19:35):
mostly things like octopus, fish, and wild cats. While some
look like blocky, stylized animals that are pretty easy to recognize,
others are more abstract and their forms have been altered
to fit a space or a design. A lot of
early Peruvian embroidery samples feature imagery that's heavily filled in
creating full detailed pictures rather than being an assembly of

(19:59):
different design motifs. There are also a lot of historical
instances of embroidery being used as a way to create
substitutions for other textiles that were otherwise unattainable. So as
fabrics with interwoven designs started to be made in places
like Greece and Egypt after the invention of the warp
weighted loom in the fifteenth century BCE, those textiles would

(20:23):
have been extremely costly and available only to the extremely wealthy,
so people who wanted a similar look but couldn't afford
those woven in designs turned to embroidery embellishments. Later examples
of this come from the Cops, the indigenous Christian Ethno
religious community of Egypt. Starting from the first century CE.

(20:44):
One Coptic embroidery technique involved weaving the embellishment thread into
the base fabric in a way that created motifs that
would often outlive the original fabric itself, and so when
those garments wore out or broke down that embroidery piece,
those would often be used as an applicate, almost like
a patch that would be stitched onto a new garment.

(21:05):
The Byzantine empires love of embroidery is well known, in
part because that empire lasted long enough that we have
some good examples of it today. Because the Byzantine Empire
had very specific rules about what people could wear based
on their place in society, we have a clear picture
of who wore what types of embroidery. A linen and

(21:27):
wool military tunic dated to sometime in the fourth or
fifth century, for example, has repeating isolated motifs embroidered on
it in purple. High ranking military officials had entire panels
of their cloaks covered in embroidery, suggesting that the value
of the handiwork was recognized, and the higher you were

(21:47):
in rank, the more embellishment you could have. In the
seventh and eighth centuries, heads of state wore large draped
cloths around their torso called loros, and those are covered
an embroidery that also incorporated gemstones. By the fifth century,
Japan had picked up the embroidery tradition that began in

(22:08):
China and started to develop their own unique styles. In Japan,
early embroidery was almost all religious in nature, and embellished
fabrics were usually pictures of Buddha. Those fabrics are known
as shibutsu. These began as adornment for temples, and then
over time they were adopted as decor for private homes.

(22:29):
In the eighth century, when Kyoto became the country's capital,
embroidery experienced this huge surge in popularity as it started
to be used as decoration for clothing, although at that
point only theatrical costumes and the clothing of the aristocracy
included it. It expanded into use in religious garments in
the fourteenth century, and then onto samurai uniforms in the

(22:50):
seventeenth century. In the Edo period, embroidery became incredibly opulent
and very detailed. Embroidery in Korea developed and estimated two
thousand years ago. One story is linked to the Scilla
Kingdom of the first century and Queen Jinduk, who had
a special embroidery made featuring one hundred Chinese characters with

(23:14):
decoration to give to China's Tang dynasty. Embroidery really started
to flourish in Korea starting in the fourteenth century during
the Josun dynasty, and like China, four different styles of
embroidery called chasu developed. There was Pokeshik chasu for clothing,
kyung chashu for items used in the royal palace, Kamsang

(23:38):
chasu for styles of artistic work, and Buddhist chasu for
temple decor. Within these styles, there are of course different
stitching techniques to create the various designs and artwork created
by the stitcher. During the Lao dynasty in China, which
lasted from nine oh seven to eleven twenty five, an

(23:58):
important heavily garment originated which would become, in fact so
important in its role in court culture that it was
eventually tightly regulated.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
And that is the dragon robe. The dragon robe, which
is as the name suggests, a garment with multiple dragons
embroidered on it as well as other motifs, is a
long garment with an asymmetrical neckline closure. These robes have
an incredibly rich history. People have written books on just them,
but the design of them is what we're focusing on today.

(24:28):
In seventeen fifty nine, a document titled the Regulations for
the Ceremonial Paraphernalia of the Qing Dynasty was completed after
a decade of work, and that decade had been spent
reviewing the styles of clothing worn at court, and specifically
the dragon robes, and it came up with a very
strict code of regulations as to how those garments could

(24:48):
be worn and who could wear them going forward. And
so for this reason you will often see the origin
of the dragon robe linked to the year seventeen fifty nine,
because that is when the robes as we know them
to were codified.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Those eighteenth century regulations included things like the rule that
only the Emperor, the Empress, Dowager the Empress, and first
rank consorts could wear bright yellow. This had been a
standard practice in previous dynasties, but it became a lot
more rigid from this point on. Other colors were also
regulated to various levels of status, within the royal court,

(25:25):
although people were not restricted to only those colors.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
The Emperor did not only wear yellow, for example.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Additionally, the embroidery designs on the robes were governed by rules.
Five clawed dragons were only for men in the immediate
royal family. Grandsons of the Emperor, for example, were not
considered immediate and they could only wear dragons with four claws.
Other symbols were also designated for different ranks. All of

(25:55):
this regulation over the embroidery of court dress might seem fussy,
but it served as a communication tool. A visiting dignitary
would immediately know if he was speaking with one of
the emperor's sons.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
For example. In the seventh and eighth centuries, embroidery in
the British Isles really starts to be trackable, as religious
orders started to employ it for garments. This needlework was
typically performed by nuns and monks, and this was the
beginning of a stitching tradition in England that would become
a legacy tied closely to religion and royalty, and known

(26:29):
for a high degree of proficiency and artistry. But the
next piece that we're going to talk about has had
some debate over the years regarding whether it was even
made in England or not. That is a frequent subject
on the show, which is that in ten seventy seven
one of the most famous pieces of embroidery in history
was created, and that was the Bitte Tapestry. This famous

(26:53):
work of propaganda art depicts the period of time leading
up to and including the Battle of Hastings from ten
sixty four to ten sixty six and the conquest of
England by William, Duke of Normandy in ten sixty six.
The tapestry, which is actually a massive embroidery piece, was
the subject of a twenty eleven episode from prior hosts

(27:14):
Sarah and Doblina. I think they also did an update
on it. It's come up but a bunch of times
on an Earthed, including recently, so we will not rehash
all of that stuff from that earlier episode from Sarah
and Doblina that mostly talks about the events leading up
to the creation of this embroidery that are depicted in
the stitches. So this piece of art combines the narrative

(27:37):
account with allegorical imagery related to honor and loyalty. Those
allegorical parts of it are along the border, and it
is huge. It's seventy meters long, it's a little less
than two hundred and thirty feet. It's made up of
nine panels of linen which are stitched together into one.
And this piece has had restoration work performed over the years,
and it is not all great. One of the problems

(27:59):
that has arisen with restoration were performed in the nineteenth
century is that the newer woolf fibers have not proven
as color fast as the originals, which were dyed with
Dyer's woad matter and Dyer's rocket. While some of the
original blue tones which were created with woad have faded, overall,
the original ten colors are in pretty good shape.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
From a slightly more technical standpoint, there's an interesting type
of stitch on the Bayou Tapestry that's been called at
various times biyou stitching. In addition to stem stitching, chain stitching,
and split stitching, there is couching. Couching is a technique
in which a cord or yarn doesn't pass through the

(28:41):
backing fabric itself. It's stitched down with another piece of
yarn or floss that does pass through the backing fabric.
This can be used for a variety of design purposes,
but in the case of the Bayou Tapestry, it is
the reason that the motifs and the characters and the
bigger Desase nine have completely filled in sections like the

(29:03):
clothes on the characters. In those cases, there are rows
and rows of couched yarns sit closely together to form
a solid block of color. Feel it closely at photos
of the tapestry you can clearly see this. And the kicker,
of course about this piece is that we don't know
who embroidered it. It had to have been a team

(29:25):
of people. And there's an often repeated but completely unsubstantiated
version that William the Conqueror's wife, Queen Matilda, worked on
it along with her ladies in waiting to commemorate and
honor William's achievement. Most historians write that off as pure romanticism.
The first known mention of the tapestry in writing appeared

(29:45):
four hundred years after its creation, in an inventory note
of the Bayoux Cathedral, describing it as quote a very
long and narrow hanging on which are embroidered figures and
inscriptions comprising a representation of the conquest of England and
mentioning that this was used as a special occasion decoration.
But it's a description of the piece. It doesn't say

(30:06):
anything about its provenance, nothing of its history other than
we own this. Uh.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
The more popular belief on its origin is that it
was commissioned by William's half brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux,
although that still leaves its crafts people without any kind
of credit, and there is debate about whether it was
crafted in France or in England, with some scholars believing
it was designed by monks at Saint Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury.

(30:32):
In a bit of good fortune, an interesting paper about
the Bayou Tapestry came out just as Holly was starting
research on this episode. It's one that we mentioned briefly
in our recent Unearthed. In this paper, titled Chewing over
the Norman Conquest, the Bayou Tapestry is monastic meal time
Reading was written by Benjamin Paul and published in the

(30:54):
periodical Historical Research. The writing starts from the idea that
the tapestry was created in England and hung for a
time in Saint Augustine's Abbey. Paul's case is that the
Bayu Tapestry was always intended to be displayed in the
Abbey of Saint Augustine, and specifically that it was intended
for the monastery dining hall. His argument is that it

(31:16):
was to be displayed there as a piece of art
for the monks to meditate on and perhaps be entertained
by while they ate. He invokes the tapestry size and
compares it to a measure of a long blank space
in the abbey, and notes that these measurements more or
less match up, suggesting that the uniquely long embroidery was

(31:36):
made precisely to fit that space. He also notes that
the position of the tapestry, if hung as he describes,
makes sense of the scale and the imagery in lettering quote.
Hung roughly at head height or slightly higher, the Baye
Tapestry's details would have been perfectly discernible from the seated

(31:58):
position assumed by the monks and their guests during meal
times in the refectory. This is true not only of
the artifact's intricate iconography, but also and especially of its
textual inscriptions. The argument continues that this would have been
a place of silence, with the exception of a reader

(32:18):
something visual to focus on would have made sense, so
kind of like an eleventh century monk TV. There's a
lot more in depth discussion in the paper. That paper
we'll be linked in the show notes. And as we
mentioned on that recent installment of Unearthed, this is very
speculative and it came out of a class assignment that
was designed to come up with possible scenarios to explain

(32:40):
the providence of this famous work. Incidentally, and we mentioned
this briefly on On Earth as well as we record
this in early twenty twenty six, the Bayou Tapestry is
not on display at the Bayou Museum or anywhere right
this moment. The museum is undergoing a multi year renovation
and it is expected to reopen in mid to late
twenty two seven, but from September twenty twenty six until

(33:03):
July twenty twenty seven it is going to be on
loan to the British Museum. The Bayou Tapestry is a
UNESCO registered Memory of the World and it is priceless,
so this loan is a huge deal. I think we
also mentioned that the British Museum had to ensure it
for eight hundred million pounds, which is like a billion dollars.
I'm gonna weep you over embroidery.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
The cool thing is if you can't make it too
London to see it or byo, you can check out
the entire thing online. It's a scrollable digital file at
the Bayou Museum's website. You can look for couching. It's
very obvious. This is where we're going to end part
one of this episode. When we start part two, we

(33:46):
will pick up right where we left off and talk
about embroidery in the writing of Chaucer, and we'll finally
get to the discussion of Samplers.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
I have listener mail and it's embroidery related. Hooray, hooray,
I'm on target. This is from our listener Katie, who writes, Hi,
Holly and Tracy, we just heard the episode about Cranberry's
and of course enjoyed it. Did you ever hear of
the books set in the fictional town of Cranberry Port.
They're among the favorites of my family's holiday collections, Yes,
even with teens. Cranberry Thanksgiving, Cranberry Christmas, etc. By Wendy

(34:19):
and Harry Devlin feature Maggie her grandmother, their care free
neighbor mister Whiskers, and the town grouch mister Grape, along
with others. The stories are very sweet. All the books
include a recipe for a cranberry treat. I did not
know about these books, but that sounds adorable. No pets,
But here's a work in progress sewing picture of a
big crosstitch piece based as you can see on motifs

(34:40):
from the Haunted Mansion, one of my favorites, and I
think it's Holly's too. Best wishes Katie. It is, and
this is very cool. She is working this really beautiful
piece that is going to be when it's completed, a
design that includes the stretching room portraits but laid out
in a circular fashion around almost like a big clockface.

(35:02):
The clock, the famous clock you know, if you know,
is featured on it. And I can already see the
grave digger and his dog, which is the most upsetting
piece of that attraction for me and the opera singers,
and I bet it's going to be spectacular. So Katie,
I hope you send me a picture when it's all done,
because we love some Hanam mansion here in my house.
That's for sure. If you would like to send us

(35:25):
pictures of your embroidery or really anything else, you can
do that at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. And
if you haven't.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
Subscribed to the show and you want to make sure
you get part two, you could do that on the
iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(35:54):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Embroidery History Sampler, Part 1