Sulgrave Manor and their reproduction embroideries.  Wow.  What can I say but Wow.  If you aren’t familiar with this site and their embroideries, the next blogs will go over them.

First of all, Sulgrave Manor is the ancestral seat of George Washington’s family.  That is interesting in itself.  The lands were purchased as a result of Henry VIII’s redistribution of religious property.  The manor itself and its setting is beautiful and quaint.

But I was bowled over by two things – the embroideries and the personality behind them.  Chuck and I rolled in a bit late but Jenny Overton, director of the museum was waiting for us.  We arrived before the general public were let in but there were school groups dressed as little Tudors running around.  We sat in the central courtyard for awhile, talking about the jacket project and looking at the coif/forehead cloth.  Speaking to Jenny was like speaking to myself at times.  She is full of electric energy and understands how to harness the interest of the embroidery public in doing something meaningful for an institution.

Jenny orchestrated a workforce of unbelievable size to make a set of Elizabethan slips for bed hangings to decorate a 16th century bed.  She then did a second project – more on that one in the next blogs.

We laughed together over the stories of how the improbable projects we each were involved in got started.  In both situations, we agreed that if the rest of the institutions had understood what the project would take – the projects wouldn’t have gotten off the ground!  We discussed the organization of each project, our lessons learned, what long terms benefit it had on their museum, and what some of the thought processes were.  Fascinating – we had the same experiences and thoughts along the way.  I was impressed by the energy level that Jenny has – running the museum as well as having the time to conduct these large projects at the same time.  More on the projects in the next blog.

Tricia

Back to trying to finish up some earlier threads.

I visited a lovely small regional museum in Kent during my trip.  Maidstone is the county seat and its museum has a lovely collection of needlework and costume.  They have a handful of samplers, an enormous embroidered casket, a fantastic beaded christening basket, stumpwork and beadwork pictures, as well as the Maidstone embroidered jacket.  The linen jacket is stem stitched in a pattern of sprigs using a tangerine colored silk thread.  I was equally thrilled by the jacket as with the other pieces.  The casket is almost twice the width of most I have seen.  The lovely thing is that it has almost all of its original little bottles including a set of sixteen  1″ tall sent bottles with tiny dimples in the sides to allow your fingers to grip them better.

The christening basket had the only examples of fully made embroidered/beaded dolls on the sides that I am aware of.  Think 3-D versions of the stumpwork figures in pictures with intricately beaded clothing.  The jacket was again ’smaller’ than I expected.  Curator Fiona Woolley is delightful.  I very much enjoyed my visit and her tour of the rest of the museum.  I had to giggle when we went through the dinosaur section – seems some rare species were discovered nearby and a room is devoted to its history, complete with roaring sample for the kiddies to gawk at.  The 17th century furniture was something I really enjoyed there as well.  It’s an easy train ride from London if you ever get there.  The museum is just a short walk from the train station.

Tricia

I will be teaching in Chicago at the Lake Michigan Sampler Guild this summer on August 21st.  We have a few spots left in either of the two classes and so they are now open to those who may be in the area.  The lecture is open to all without taking a class.  There is a very small fee depending on membership in the guild or associate guilds (or not).

Anyone interested can view the details on the guild website at www.lakemichigansamplerguild.org or contact Lynn through the Contact Us link on the website or at programs@lakemichigansamplerguild.org to ask about membership fees to attend the workshop or to claim a spot in the lecture room.  We are closing registration to allow me to order materials – so if you are interested in a class, contact Lynn in the next week.  We will officially close the registration on June 25th.

The links to the classes, pictures, descriptions, and times are:

Jacobean Silk Purl Flower 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m

Abby Cozzens Family Register Sampler 1:15-4:15 pm

Lecture on Metal Threads and Creativity in the 17th Century 4:30-5:30 pm

Tricia

In the blog that is running with my Gold Master Class, there was a question about storing your finished embroidery with metal on it.  A hard thing – we don’t stitch them to keep them wrapped up in acid free tissue!  Here was my answer.  Tomorrow I will show a few of my pieces which have been stored in a few different ways to show some effects.

I think that if you are putting your piece in a closed storage area and are not OK with the idea of the gold threads getting darker over a several year period of time, you can use some of the tarnish strips I mentioned before to reduce the amount of sulfur in the closed atmosphere.  With normal airflow, the room air should have a pretty uniform concentration of sulfur.  But in a closed space, it can increase over time.  Using scavenging strips would reduce that.  You can read the packaging to understand how often to replace them depending on how large of a closed space they are put into.

This is how we are working to control the corrosion on the Jacket.  We have used replaceable scavenging material in the base of the display cabinet.  For the jacket that also includes keeping a low relative humidity in the space.  A bit harder to do in your own home.

Tricia

I got a question yesterday from my Gold Master Class about how to store your metal threads.  A great question and one I had been meaning to write about.

The first thing to know if what type of ‘metal’ threads you have.  Kreinik and the #300 series of threads from both Benton and Johnson and Golden Threads are a plastic with a small amount of metal (often brass) evaporated onto one side.  These might have a very small darkening over a long period of time but will not tarnish (i.e. turn dark brown/black).  So they can be treated much as you would your silk fibers.

The rest of the metal threads “real gold”, “Gilt”, “Silver”, “2% Gold”, “90% Silver” are all combinations of copper and silver and/or gold in varying amounts.  Of these, the silver and copper are the culprits in tarnishing.  The gold is always broken during the rolling process or additional drawing, leaving some amount of the silver or copper exposed to the air.

Sulfur is the worst offender in tarnishing the silver and salts/water are for the copper.  Both are on our hands and so you should try to limit your handling of these threads and spangles.  Just don’t run your hands over the embroidery repeatedly.  But sometimes if you are under alot of stress, you can see that your body chemistry is off in the thread.

New wood is the worst place to store threads of this type.  A carrier or box can quickly tarnish a set of threads with the sulfur out-gassing.  This includes threadwinders.  As a matter of course, don’t use wood storage at all.  A plastic box is better for storage.

The companies who sell these thread will use acid free tissue paper to wrap the exposed thread to keep it from tarnishing by blocking the airflow to the thread surface.  You can also use anti-tarnish tissue which is manufactured specially for wrapping silver and gold objects instead if you plan on keeping the threads a long time in storage.   If you are particularly concerned about your environment and the possible sulfur levels (Iceland comes to mind), you can purchase silver protection strips which neutralize sulfur gasses in an enclosed container.  We have added these to the storage boxes for the coif and forehead cloth as well as jacket.

Talas Conservation Supplies sells all of these items.

The Silver Protection Strips (#TCD118005) run $7.93 for a packet of 8 – 2″ x 7″ strips.  They can be cut to put in small storage boxes or even in frames.

The Anti-Tarnish Tissue (#TPB003001) runs $61.00 for a ream of 500 sheets (20″ x 30″).

Talas also sells Acid-Free Unbuffered Tissue (#TPB002001) for 50 sheets of 20″ x 30″ at $15.25.  The unbuffered sheets are recommended for animal based fibers on textiles (i.e silk).  That was the recommendation for storing the jacket.

If there is enough interest in the anti-tarnish tissue, I might start carrying them to break down a ream into smaller packets.  The acid-free unbuffered tissue is often sold by finer embroidery stores in smaller quantities.

In general, you will never stop the aging process of the threads.  You can just slow it down by being smart with the storage.  Over the course of your life, you will notice a difference in the embroidery you have done.  If you care deeply about this, be careful with your storage and handling.  Buying the best threads is an extra guard – 2% gold and 90% silver have the longest lifetimes when held in the same conditions as a higher copper content thread.  If you REALLY want the color to remain true, buy faux threads (#300 series).

Tricia