...More like month-of-Saturdays, actually.

Here's the outfit that accompanies the hat I showed off in my last post:

You can't see the watch-type pendant and magnifying glass hanging from the chains at her waist.

The blouse and vest were flea market finds, along with the buttons and broken necklace chains that adorn it. We made the skirt and petticoat, the hat and the woven ribbon bag. The hat is a cut down New Year's Eve party top hat, plus feathers and other adornments. The belt is an 80s-era retread from my closet, and the gear necklace and earrings were holiday presents this year past.

Here's a close-up of the skirt trim. It's a wide strip of brown ribbon, edged with black ribbon, folded and ironed into points:

I don't remember where I first read about doing the points - possibly in an ancient Threads magazine, before they abandoned fine handwork, possibly in a Victorian era ladies magazine or millinery guide. The ribbon folding isn't quite ruching, since no gathers are stitched, and it isn't pleating, because the folds are not perpendicular to the ribbon. I used it once before, to make teeth on a dinosaur costume, when Elder Daughter was a toddler.

Wherever this trick came from was, it's a very useful technique for producing custom, flexible trim that eases nicely around corners. I did mine in inexpensive double sided satin ribbon. A two-tone ribbon with different colors on each side would make points of alternating colors. Here's how:

Fold a triangle, tucking the leading edge underneath. Then do an inverse triangle. Finally, flip the inverse triangle up so that it lies on top of the completed one.

You can see that if you wanted to make rick-rack instead of a row of upward pointing triangles, that second fold step would be done so that the "good side" landed on top, and the third step would be omitted.

Here's the same process in actual ribbon, with firm steam pressing on the silk setting in between manipulations:

and the final product, ready to be pinned and sewn in place. Note the flexibility that can accommodate both inner and outer curves:

Younger daughter wore this to the Waltham Watch City Steampunk Festival, at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation. After planning and accumulating the bits for the better part of the year, she was thrilled to do so, and had a great time.

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We're quite busy these days at String Central. I continue to work on the long green sampler. Here's the latest strip, photographed in early dawn light. This pattern is also in TNCM2, albeit without the gridded voiding. The little complementing border was stolen from a different TNCM2 pair.

TNCM2 as a whole also progresses. And to top it off, Younger Daughter and I are hard at work on an outfit for her to wear to the Waltham Watch City Festival steampunk gala.

Long time readers here may remember that last year at this time, Younger Daughter spent quite a bit of April and May in Children's Hospital, in the throes of an argument with her burst appendix. She had wanted to attend the festival last year, and was very disappointed to have missed it. As a distraction, we planned out the outfit she would have liked to have worn. Being on the young side, what we designed for her was more steampunk than steamy-punk (no exterior corsets, hip high hemlines, or fishnet stockings). As incentive for cooperation with often uncomfortable hospital requests, I promised to make said outfit.

Now a year later, she's totally better and my promise has been called in. We're about halfway through the venture. A blouse/waist has been obtained (an antique barn bargain retread). We're just finishing up a camel wool walking skirt, and will be trimming it next week with black and brown point folded ribbon. She'll be decorating a brown suede bolero with copious brass buttons, plus a watch, a compass and a magnifying glass. The bolero and buttons were also flea market finds. Pix of all of these as they near completion. But I can present her hat:

She started with an costume top hat, and excised about 2 inches of height. She covered the surgical scar with a brown ribbon, complete with a bow and streamers in the back; then added feathers and gears.

Cute, no?

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Done with this strip, on to the next!

I spent some time noodling out what the next one will be. I tried out some complex Punto Spina Pesce patterns - the ones that use either Montenegrin or a Montenegrin-like long armed cross stitch variant to trace interlaces and intersecting lines, to make a linear design that's fairly heavy. Unfortunately more experimentation is warranted. I've got a basic understanding of these stitches and how they merge horizontal, vertical and diagonal elements, but the designs I'm looking at make those changes very quickly, sometimes after a run of only one graph unit. The methods I've learned from the Autopsy of the Montenegrin Stitch Exhumed book take two or three units to complete directional transitions. I'll have to play with these more off line to figure out "speed changes" and triple line conjunctions.

What am I working as the next strip instead? Stay tuned!

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In Part III of this series I mentioned two pieces now held in two different museums that I suspect were cut from the same original artifact. That would make them bona fide twins, separated at birth. I don't believe that was an unusual happenstance. Here is another example of a pair of items, now separated in two different collections, that I believe to have a common origin:

"Border," Art Institute of Chicago. Accession 1907.664. 17th century, Italy. 8.5 x 31.4cm (3 3/8 x 12 3/8 inches).

"Embroidery," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Accession 95.1126. Undated. Italy. 17 x 78 cm (6 11/16 x 30 11/16 inches). Dimensions include several repeats and a considerable chunk of unworked linen.

The Art Institute's photo is sharper, but these are spot-on identical in pattern count and execution, color placement, stitch and edging detail. The Chicago write-up details the stitches used as being "back, hem, satin, and split stitches; edged with silk floss in buttonhole and detached buttonhole stitches." The MFA says "worked with line stitch, chain stitch, and laid work, and with red and yellow silk... The linen is joined by fagoting, and is edged with buttonhole stitch and loops and knots."

I am not daunted by the discrepancy. This is pretty typical. Terminology for stitching techniques and stitches isn't universal over time or place. One expert's "line stitch" may well be another expert's "back stitch." And neither one may be back stitch as we know it today. Sometimes that term is used for double running, even though the two stitches are produced differently and can be distinguished from each other by looking at the work's reverse. It's almost impossible to know from the descriptions posted on line when they were written or by whom. In fact, descriptions within a single museum's collection may not be consistent - having been written by different curators of varying degrees of familiarity with the type of work, decades apart. I would trust Santina M. Levey's descriptions the V&A in totality. But I'm not so sure I'd trust an unattributed blurb in another museum that may or may not have accompanied the piece when it was originally donated in 1909, and may not have been revisited since.

I've worked in a museum and I know that the archivists and curators, no matter how educated and experienced, do not know everything about every artifact; and not every artifact in the collection has been studied and corroborated by experts in that specific area of endeavor. Lots of times an artifact languishes for decades in a storage case with the tag that was on it when it was donated. It would not be unusual for something acquired before 1925 to have a "best guess" attribution that's never been re-evaluated. Documentation standards have risen over the years, but these older acquisitions are not upgraded and retagged unless they have a bearing on a specific line of (funded) inquiry. So artifacts just sit there with speculative provenances and dates. One of the problems dilettantes like me face is that having no academic yardstick, we accept all published or museum attributions at face value. Or we reject them, or cherry pick the ones that fit our pet theories. (I'm no different in this. My pet theory du jour is that these are from the same original.) My point is that without validated and serious study, even the grandest and most augustly respectable museum's taggings can be incomplete or open to question.

I'd love to see these two items in person, and I'd love to see their reverse sides. Just looking at them I know I could re-create them using several techniques, depending on whether or not the originals were one or two sided. Double running stitch for the red and yellow linear elements, and carefully laid satin stitch on the count for the yellow diamonds? Sure! Providing ends were carefully managed, that would be the same on the front and back. Back stitch and pattern darning? Also would work on the front, although that would result in a one-sided finished product.

So until I have the entree to actually peruse these in person, I'll just contemplate the photos. I don't know if these two museums know of the commonality of their holdings. But I do posit with some amusement that somewhere back around the turn of the last century, a dealer in Europe made a killing, snipping an original (possibly already damaged), and selling the fragments to two wandering American collectors; who in all probability each went home each thinking he or she had snatched up the only remains of this masterwork.

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Yes, I'm still chugging along on the long green sampler. Here's the progress on the latest strip, and an "on the edge" view of the last one, so you can see the dimensionality of the Montenegrin stitch accents in the last one:

I was originally going to work the entire background of the center urn motif voided in long-armed cross stitch, just like the pepper-sporting companion edge strips. I'm still thinking on that one. That much green might overwhelm the piece. It's hard to judge visual balance when the previously completed parts are rolled on the scroll bar, but here are all the strips to date, in order (apologies for varying lighting, angles, etc. - a photographer, I'm not).

Opinions on working the urn section voided would be gratefully accepted.

Finally - are these odd bud shapes really peppers? I haven't a clue. New World peppers would have been a recent introduction when this design was new. They might be, or they might be some other vegetation as yet unknown to me.

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More duplicates!

First off, I've found two more examples of the spinx, urn, and pelican pattern I showed in the first note of this series. Both of the new examples are in the Cooper Hewitt. Here are just the center urn sections from both. Please visit the links to view the entire works:

Border, Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt, Accession 1931-66-144. 17th Century, North Africa

Band, Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum. Accession 1931-66-142. Undated, North Africa.

For comparison, here are the urn/bird sections of the three I've previously posted:

Valence Embroidered with a Grotesque Motif, Hermitage Museum, 16th century, Italy
Border, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession 14.134.16a, 17th century, Italy.
Valence Embroidered with a Grotesque Motif. Hermitage Museum, 16th century, Italy.

So on sphinx-urn-pelican, we're up to five examples in at leat two different stitching styles.

Of the red mesh background examples, two retain their companion edgings, but they are different and unrelated to each other and to the main pattern panel. No two are alike, neither in the main motif or the companion edgings, although all of the main motifs are clearly descended from a common source.

As to North Africa vs. Italy as the source of the Cooper Hewitt pieces, Iv'e noted that some panels cited by Freida Lipperheide as being Moroccan in origin are now attributed by other museums as being Italian. The style of stitching apparently was called "Moorish," or "Moresque" at one time, and that label may have influenced the early attributions. Again, without academic and detailed materials analyses we're at the mercy of the occasionally musty museum attributions.

It's interesting to note that the most detailed piece is the 17th century Cooper Hewit holding; and that iteratino is most like the 16th century darned net sample (two baby birds; pomegranates growing from the urn base; other similarities)/ The other pieces are closer to each other (one baby bird, downward growning side urn decorations, etc.). I note that the tendency fo these patterns is to lose rather than gain detail over time. But in the absence of any scholarly examination of these pieces, I can't challenge the museum dates. But I can safely say that considerable leeway exists in pattern interpretation.

On to a new example. This one is an even better example of pattern conservatism over time. Centuries, in fact.

Band. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accession 09.50.1363, 16th to 17th century, Italy.

Border. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accession 09.50.3804. 16th to 17th century, Italy or Greek Islands

Band. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accession 09.50.61. 1th Century, Greek Islands

As you can see, I've found at least three examples of this one, spanning a possible 200-year range, done in different styles. The top one appears to have been worked in Italian two-sided cross stitch, but not pulled tightlly. Some of its side sprigs are in plain old cross stitch. The middle example features a pulled background mesh stitch - possibly the same Italian two-sided cross stitch, but tightly drawn. Jury is still out on this one, but up-close viewing reveals bundling rather than withdrawn or missing threads). The bottom example is worked in plain old cross stitch, with evidence of having been stitched in two colors (the vertical element in the fragmentary corner appears to have been done in a second color).

Now, not every pattern maintains recognizability and integrity over 200 years. But some clearly do, in spite of minor variations in detail (the side sprig flowers), and in stitch choice. Of course it's also possible that the original collectors bought items wihtout clear documentation of provenance or origin time; and that some of the examples we think of as being earlier, are in fact of later manufacture. Again we need serious inquiry on this, armed with all of the dating techniques at modern disposal. So I ask as a self-taught dilettante - Is anyone out there looking for a really meaty doctoral thesis topic in textile history?

I've got more of these multiples to show. Stay tuned!

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Yes, I'm still working on my long green sampler. Both of the patterns below will be in TNCM2:

Thanks to the Montenegrin book I've been able to do all those twisty, bendy parts where diagonals meet horizontals or verticals. It was a lifesaver! I really like this interlace. You'll note by comparing my piece with the original below that my ground cloth is off square - not quite even weave. So it goes. I'm working that distortion into my pattern selection and placement.

"Strip," Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession 79.1.13. 17th century, Italy, possibly Sicily

It's very hard to see, but it looks like there might have been spangles in the empty spaces between the internal curlicues. There may be a spangle in the upper left (better seen at the full photo at the link), where the work is the least damaged, plus some evidence of now empty holding stitches, and some corrosion aligning with where the spangles would have been. This pattern would make a killer coif or all-over sleeve panel with spangles there, and maybe a few more replacing the little four box free floating squares. I'm thinking of working it in black and gold with spangles for a modern envelope clutch style evening bag.

In any case, that strip is now done and I'm on to the next - a rather complex urn and branch with a very dark and solid background. It's going to take a lot of stitching to cover all that real estate in long armed cross stitch, so progress on the piece, once the double running foreground is all laid in will be very dull to watch for a while. Good thing I have other content lined up.

I am however less than pleased with the Zoundry Raven blogging composition software I've been using. The last few posts have killed it. I can get them composed and loaded if I do all the work in one session, but I can't call up a previously started piece for additional work - not even to copy out text and recompose in a new post. That means that I'll have to re-draft the next several Long Lost Twins pieces. Stay tuned!

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I'm happy that folk are enjoying this series. These sets are some of the material I presented at my Hrim Schola talk. I did have a bit too much material to cover there (I should have requested a two-hour timeslot), so this series is filling in some of the detail I glossed over in my class.

Today's family branches out into two colors.

The first two are both from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:

#1 Punto di Milano, MFA Accession 93.193, late 16th century, Italy 4 1/8 x 13 3/8 inches (10.4 x 34 cm)

#2 Punto di Milano, MFA Accession 92.42, 4 1/8 x 20 7/8 inches (10.5 x 53cm)

They were both part of the Denman Waldo Ross collection and the museum acknowledges the resemblance in their on line listing, but does not provide any other context for the two items, or opine as to why they might be so similar. And they are similar - not identical. Both are stitched in that pulled thread mesh-producing technique we've seen before, and both are green. Differences between colors on the two photos are more likely relics of the photo process or of differential fading, and do not necessarily indicate that the two started out either the same or different colors. We'd need to see the backs of the two side by side to get a better feel for original color.

Some differences are quite obvious. #1 is a single width strip, and #2 is double wide, mirrored like the strips in Friday's post. But there are other differences. I've graphed out both of these for TNCM2, and they're not spot on. The wings on the center motif in the double wide are significantly longer than the narrower version, and those little triangles at the reflection points vary oddly in treatment, being somewhat similar piece to piece to piece, but having a fair amount of variation, even within the same piece. The presence or absence of the triangles in #2 may have more to do with some very evident mistakes made by the stitcher - look how the center line meanders across the piece.

We can't draw any conclusions based on the other obvious difference - the absence of edge patterns on the double wide strip because the museum sample was closely trimmed. It may have had companion edgings at one point, now lost to time and someone's aggressive scissors. Note that size of the artifact is given edge to edge of the snippet, and in this case does not represent a measurement across the stitched area alone. It's close on #2, there's not much unstitched area left on that sample, but there's a tiny bit more left on the single wide.

The edgings on #1 are of separate interest. It's unusual (but not unknown) to see a piece with two different edgings, rather than the same one appearing top and bottom. I also am amused by these edging. The stitcher chose to ignore all of the difficult bits where the mesh fits in and around the leaves of the companion motifs. He or she just left those bits bare, but did so consistently across the piece so we know it wasn't a mistake. (There is a mistake on top border of the single-wide - the first frond on the right is too short).

Were these part of the same original artifact? Perhaps a bedspread or towel, with narrow banding up the sides and a wider strip elsewhere, similar in design use proportion to this one?

Bed Spread with Border Embroidered in Grotesque Motif. Hermitage Museum (no accession number). Mid 16th century, Italy.

It's tempting to say so, but we can't be certain.

Finally I've stumbled across another iteration of this pattern:

Frontal (detail) Victoria & Albert Museum Accession 747-1892. 17th century (made), no provenance.


This one is even more problematic. Here is the whole artifact. It's an altar frontal, composed from pieces of older works. The V&A's date 17th century (made) acknowledges the fact that the item is composed of earlier bits:

But you can see that the borders at the left and right of this piece are clearly our friend, the Wandering Y pattern, presented with yet another companion border, complete with occasional and illogical presence of that little triangle center hat.

What can we learn from this grouping? Again we've got items identified by century, which is rather wide dating window. Might the red strips in the composed altar frontal be older than that artifact's dating, and in fact be contemporary with the green pieces? Perhaps. One rarely cuts up brand new work to reassemble into a recycled piece, and this piece is clearly pieced together in a rather eke it out and make do manner. Was the frontal assembled in Italy from Italian lacis and edging scraps, or was it made up elsewhere? Unknown. There are other examples of assembled altar pieces of this type, so they were not uncommon.

I would like to speculate that given the mistakes on the two blue-green pieces, that we have evidence here of a pattern copied by "loving hands at home." Were they from the same source artifact? We can't say. That conjecture is possible, and stylistically congruent with other pieces of the time, but there is no hard proof in the on-line descriptions.

Maybe there's more detail about these works in the museum archives, or in the archives of the the D. Waldo Ross collection. Wherever those are papers are today. But again we have a grouping that spans up to 200 years, sporting a recognizable core pattern, in multiple and varying expressions.

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