Epstein 1998

Epstein, Kathleen. British Embroidery: Curious Works from the Seventeenth Century. Williamsburg: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1998.

The Fayre Maid of the Exchange, lines 168-170; mistress inspecting girls' embroidery projects (6-7)

Martha Edlin, dated and signed 4 extant embroideries completed between ages 8 and 13 (11)

Academy of Armory and Blazon

Fig. 10: casket worked on paper ground, instead of cloth

Barnabe Riche, Emilia, "who daydreams about passing her afternoons with her samples and 'with her Nedle'" (31)

John Rea, Flora: Seu de Florum Cultura, dedicatory poem to Lady Hanmer: "For (like Penelope) you stay / At home, and sweetly spend the day, / In Spring, when flow'rs your Gardens grace, / With Needle or pencil you can trace / Each curious Form, and various Dye So represent unto the Eye / Nobly proportion ev'ry part, / That Nature blushes at your art." (33)

Fig. 36 -- "an arrangement of slips -- embroidered botanical elements and figures worked on a separate ground, cut out, and applied to another piece of fabric. The name is well justified; in contemporary horticulture a cutting taken from a plant for grafting or planting was called a slips. Although it is likely that these slips were produced by an amateur needlewoman, panels of embroidered slips were available for sale, made by male London professionals and 'work women' in the trade. The purchaser had only to cut them out and stitch them to a panel (or have a household servant do so) to create an ornamental household furnishing textile." (33)

Lady Bridget Vere wrote her uncle Sir Robert Cecil in 1598: "as for the working of slips, it is some part of our daily exercise, and the drawing of them. I trust with exercise to frame in some sort to it." (qtd. 33-8)

"Bed and wall hangings decorated with applied embroidery were much cheaper to buy than woven tapestry and much less labor intensive to create than an all-over pattern of embroidery. Furthermore, when the background fabric wore out, the applied motifs could be taken off and used again." (38) -- from Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, Addenda, p. 105, entry 74

letter from Heneage Finch, March 27, 1656: "As for the Carpet and Chayr and stoole, I should despayre of seeing an end of them, if John Best [possibly a professional pattern drawer and/or embroiderer] had not found out a way to ease her [Finch's wife]. But now John takes those borders which my mother wrought and cutts out every single Flower and Leafe, and when they are so voyded, he draws some Turning Stalkes for my wife to work, upon which he will so place the Flowers and Leaves, that it shall seam as if all had been wrought together, and be perfectly sutable to the pattern on the Bedd." (qtd. 38) -- from Conway Letters, no. 74, quoted in Nevinson, Catalogue of English Domestic Embroidery (p. 26)

Fig. 40 caption; many designs in pattern books are plagiarized (39)

Fig. 46-8: embroidered bindings

George Chapman, Sir Gyles Goosecappe Knight, main character is a parody of the professional embroiderer (53)