content:

• Embroidery in Britain from 1200 - 1750, by Donald King, Santina Levey, 1993
• West European applied Arts in the 16th - 18th century, from the Hermitage Collection,
  by N. Biriukova (tapestry), T. Volchkova (fabrics), T. Kosourova (embroidery) and others
• Textile Kunst aus Tausend Jahren, Meisterwerke im Schnuetgen-Museum, Koeln
  by Gudrun Sporbeck
• Faszination in Seide, Gold und Silber, Benediktinerstift Admont, barocke Sakralstickereien im kunsthistorischen Museum, by Dr Christl Eger
• Samplers, by Carol Humphrey
• Orphan Objects. Facets of the Textiles Collection, of the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, by Daniel M. Swetschinski, Julie-Marthe Cohen and Stephen Hartog
• Prachtige vrachten. Exotisch textiel in Nederland, in: Antiek, April 1997, pp.402-419, by Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis
• Nur Jahan’s Embroidery Trade and Flowers of the Taj Mahal, in: Asian Art & Culture, Vol. 9, No 2, pp. 7-23, 1996, by Ellison Banks Findly
• Stickerei, von der Vorzeit bis zur Gegenwart, 1995, by Ruth Groenwoldt
• Title: Russian Embroidery. Tradtitonal Motifs, The Museum of Folk Art, Moscow, 1990
  

Part from coverlet, second quarter 18th, T 381-1970 Burse opened, probably London 1310-40, T 62-1938

reported by A.W:
The State Hermitage Museum in St.Peterburg shows since october 1996 an exhibition who is dedicated to the centenary of the opening of the Museum of the Stieglitz Higher School of Technical Drawing. Important parts from the former Stieglitz collection are now preserved in the State Hermitage.
In the catalogue the authors of the two textile chapters give a survey of the development of the textile collection. In 1886 two collections were bought in Frankfurt a.Main: the J.Kraut collection of about 2000 pieces and a large collection from L. Ricard-Abenheimer. Also in 1886 with the assistance of A.B. Lobanov-Rostovsky 400 vestments and embroideries were purchased. Still in the same year a collection of about 30 objects was purchased in Munich and finally 200 textiles were acquired which came from different countries. In 1902 about 1140 fabrics of the collection of Achile Cantoni of Milan joined the collection. An antique dealer of Paris, Desache Flandin also supplied artwork.
Russian collectors then began to appear more frequently on the artistic market. To the museum came: the collection of Mme Vonliarliarskaya, and also 200 fabrics of Ye.P. Sultanova, then, examples of italian fabrics were purchased by N.P. Riabushinsky. The antique dealer of Moscow, N.S. Kakurin regularly sold textiles to the museum, and objects of the family Polovtsov were given to the collection.
The catalogue shows some of these pieces together with a description. There is e.g. a stripe with grotesque pattern, Italy 16th c.; a vestment with satin stitch embroidery, France late 17th cent.; a wool and silk embroidery showing the reign of Flora, French late 17th from a painting of P.Mignard in the castle of St. Cloud, 4 pieces for a camsole, with satin-stitch silk embroidery, France 1760s - 1780s and so on.

Embroidery on crimson velvet with silver threads and silk, in gold-green shades, Italy, late 16th c. Inv.Nr.T2628

summary by A.W.:
This picturebook gives a selection of 28 textile works of art, half of them embroideries. They come from the collection of Alexander Schnuetgen (1843-1918) in Cologne and include ecclesiastical textiles and embroideries acquired since 1956. Each textile mentioned is illustrated in colour. The pieces range from Byzantine silks of c. 1000 to the 18th century vestments presented by Maria Theresa.
The introductory text refers to the size of the collection - around 3’500 woven textiles, embroideries and tapestries and over 3’000 liturgical vestments - and gives the history of the Schnuetgen Museum.

Embroideries
The earliest embroidery in the booklet is a ciborium of the second half of the 13th century from lower Saxony made of embroidery and pearls on parchment. Then follows a silk net embroidery of 13th-14th century from the Rhineland. From 14th century there are a linen stole from Switzerland and a purse with love scenes from the Maas region, as well as chasuable orphreys from Cologne. 15th-century items are a South German printed chasuable with linen and silk embroidery, a burse for relics from the Rhineland, a cope and hood from Cologne, fragments of cross orphreys showing the Death of the Virgin in gold and silk embroidery from Cologne and another orphrey also in gold and silk embroidery.
English embroidery applied to velvet from a chasuable originates from the 16th century, as does a Spanish mourning dalmatic with applied embroidery. Finally there is the set of mass vestments donated by Maria Theresa and a vestment with Rhenish gold and silver embroidery from Altenburg Cathedral.

fragments from cross orphrey
with Death of the Virgin

reported by A.W.:
The small booklet gives information about the Abbey of Admont and the embroiderer and his work. Some other embroideries of the 18th century, e.g. devotional pictures, are shown here as well. There are four coloured and many black and white illustrations. The text is in German.
The Abbey of Admont presents liturgical textiles with the aim of giving visitors an impression of the divine office on feast days. This exhibition is open to the public in April and October daily 10-12/14-16 and from May through September 10-13/14-17.
The important embroiderer at Admont was Benno Haan (1631-1720). Born in Copenhagen, he entered the abbey in 1656 as a lay brother and lived and worked there until his death. In the monastery’s register of deaths he is characterized as an excellent master of the art of embroidery.
He is known to have bought some engravings in Graz in 1689, which he used as patterns for embroideries in silk and gold. Other brothers, such as Frater Joachim Lupperger (1680-1741), helped him. It is further known that after Haan’s death Abbot Antonius II von Mainersperg (1718-1751) had complex embroidery projects executed by the embroiderer Johan Siegmund Koeck in Graz and also in Vienna.

Vestments embroidered by Benno Haan and exhibited at the Abbey of Admont:
- vestment of guardian angels, c. 1660. The embroidery was begun under Abbot Urban Weber (1628-1659) and finished under Abbot Raimund von Rehling
- vestment for Penticost, with complicated metal embroidery
- vestment of St Catharine, with ornamental motifs from pattern books and the arms of Abbot Raimund von Rehling (1659-1675)
- vestment for Christmas, dated 1680, ordered by Abbot Adalbert Heuffler (1675 to 1696)
- vestment of St Benedict 1720-1723, this last big embroidery project was completed after Haan’s death by Johan Siegmund Koeck in Graz

In November 1996, there was a colloquium mainly on the conservation of liturgical textiles, at the Abbey of Admont. The papers and discussions will be published and can be ordered from: Benediktinerstift, Historische Sakraltextilien, A-8911 Admont 1

Details of embroideries
by Benno Haan

Title of the book: Samplers
author: Carol Humphrey
Fitzwilliam Museum Handbooks, Cambridge, 1997, ISBN 0-521-57300-9

Further information from:
Carol Humphrey, Honorary Keeper of Textiles, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Tel: +44 (0)1223 332 900 Fax: +44 (0)1223 332 923
Fiona Brown, Press Officer, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, CB2 1RB
Tel: +44 (0)1223 332 941 Fax: +44 (0)1223 332 923

Press Release.
This exhibition coincides with a new publication in the Fitzwilliam Museum’s handbook series called Samplers, which has been written by the Museum’s Honorary Keeper of Textiles, Carol Humphrey and published by Cambridge University Press. All the samplers pictured in the book will be on display.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is fortunate in having received two major bequests of samplers from collectors with varying viewpoints and will be exhibiting a selection of these and others.

Samplers have been worked wherever embroidery has enjoyed a sustained popularity as a decorative art, however, it is only in the last 100 years or so that they have been seriously collected. Almost a third of the Museum’s sampler collection comes from the bequest of Dr J W L Glaisher FRS - better known for his collecting of pottery and porcelain - and another significant portion from the bequest of Mrs Longman.
Dr Glaisher’s collection, received by the Musem in 1928 was collected mainly at a time when samplers were not widely sought and it is clear that he intended to collate a comprehensive, dated selection of examples from the seventeenth century. The result was a wealth of dated samplers giving sound chronological evidence of the changing style, including one piece dating from 1629 which was the earliest known dated example until 1960, when the Victoria and Albert Museum purchased a sampler by Jane Bostocke from 1598.
Mrs Longman’s bequest supplemented Dr Glaisher’s collection and widened its scope. She was part of the publishing family and there is evidence from her letters that she asked her well-travelled friends and relatives to look out for possible additions to her collection on their trips abroad. In this way she managed to acquire a number of continental examples and a more cosmopolitan (if less focussed) collection than Dr Glaisher’s.

The combination of these two bequests, plus the addition of a number of English and Continental samplers over the years has resulted in a range unusual in a single collection. The Museum’s collection therefore represents an important holding in the history of this particular art form.

Title of the catalogue: Orphan Objects. Facets of the Textiles Collection
of the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam
authors: Daniel M. Swetschinski in collaboration with Julie-Marthe Cohen and Stephen Hartog
price ƒ 65 (paperback, obtainable at the exhibition only) or ƒ 85 (hardback, special price for the duration of the exhibition).

Adam and Eve
on a pillow cover from Alsace

reported by Pat Griffiths:
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of its move from the old Weighhouse building to its present premises, the Jewish Historical Museum has mounted an exhibition of over a hundred textiles in its collection. These have all undergone restoration in a process which began in 1974. The prewar collection comprised over 700 objects, but only around 150 of these were recovered after the war. In the mid-fifties the collection began to be built up again, when, among other things, a number of costly 18th-century Torah covers were lent by the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. In 1979 a chest and its contents were given to the museum by the person to whom a German Jewish couple had entrusted it in 1939, after fleeing from Germany (they later perished at Sohibor), while other objects were acquired as a result of the dissolution of a great number of Jewish communities because of the decimation of the Jewish population in the Netherlands during the war. Thus the collection includes objects from such towns as Middelburg and Zierikzee as well as Amsterdam, e.g. an exceptionally fine frontal from the synagogue at Mideelburg which is embroidered with tabernacle attributes.
Some of the objects provide interesting examples of the re-use of textiles. The Hebrew text on a German frontal of 1728 proved originally to have come from a circumcision antependium, while a circumcision cloth from the synagogue at Utrecht is made from an embroidered bed coverlet possibly made in Macao at the end of the 18th-century.
A totally different kind of object is a pillow cover from Alsace embroidered with Adam and Eve, who are depicting a Jewish song that was sung in that area on the eve of a marriage.

The exhibition also includes a video on the conservation of an 18th-century Portuguese Torah cover and these is a computer programme with detailed descriptions of the objects.

Corner of a prayer shawl , of the Mendes da Costa family

The subject is also covered in an article:
title: Prachtige vrachten. Exotisch textiel in Nederland, in: Antiek, April 1997, pp.402-419,
autor: Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis
with various other textiles illustrated in colour and black and white

reported by Pat Griffiths:
This exhibition covers oriental carpets imported into the Netherlands from Turkey and Persia, chintzes and Cashmere shawls from India and painted textiles from China, as well as some fine examples of export embroidery. Embroidered items from North-west India include a bed coverlet with delicate bouquets of flowers tied with ribbons and a fragemt of cotton embroidered in coloured silks with a coiling stem pattern with large exotic leaves and flowers. The coverlet comes from Twickel, a country house in the eastern part of the Netherlands, which has

Detail of a bed coverlet, embroidered in coloured silks, North-west-India, c. 1730-50

reported by Pat Griffiths:
In this very interesting and well-illustrated article the author discusses the English embroideries supplied to Nur Jahan, who married the Mughal emperor Jahingir (reigned 1605-27) in 1611 and was his favourite wife, and their relation to contemporary Indian ornament.

summary by A.W.:
Stuttgart’s present museum, the "Wuerttembergisches Landesmuseum" comprises two earlier institutions, both initiated by the kings of Wuerttemberg.
The "Royal State Collection" of national art and antique monuments was founded in 1862 in the "new castle", where, with the property of the crown, it has been open to the public ever since. In 1947 its name was changed to "Wuerttembergisches Landesmuseum Stuttgart". Here there was no important textile collection, but the collection of decorative arts was incorporated into it in 1968-9 and in 1981-2.

embroidered Cope,
Swiss, Grisons, 17th century

embroidered Chasuable,
South Germany, 1640/50

summary by A.W.:
Embroidery as unique form of Russian folk art was discovered in the second half of the 19th c. In 1872 V. Stasov, art critic and art historian published an essay on Folk ornamental motifs.
The Museum of Folk Art in Moscow was launched in 1885 as the Commercial and Industrial Museum of the Art Crafts and for a hundred years the Museum kept acquiring specimen from collectors. Today the Museum’s stock numbers over 50’000 items, more than 10’000 are embroidered articles. The embroideries come from all parts of European Russia, they are mostly garments and household utensils belonging to rural life. Towels are the predominant article. They were decorated with symbolic images to protect from forces of nature but also with symbols of fertility, prosperity and rich harvest. The most lavishly decorated articles of clothing were shirts.
Early examples of embroidery in Russia date backd to 11th - 13th c. In Russian embroidery motifs from independent symbols are based on symmetry and their proportions have mathematical precision. Colours are important, white being colour light, red is associated with fire and fertility giving principle.
Sirin, the fabulous bird with a woman’s head, is current in Russian folklore. It is perched on a branch bearing blossoms. Above the wing is a large solar rosette.

Detail of a towel edge,
Olonets province, late 18th century

detail of a woman's headdresses
with plant motifs (central Russia)