I haven’t started any new slips yet and I’m sewing in a very halfhearted manner (mostly working on my thesis and such). But I did order a pile of historical needlework books last month, so reviews ahoy. Here’s the first one.

The Needlework at Traquair
Margaret Swain
1984, Traquair House

Traquair House in Scotland is like the Promised Land for enthusiasts of 16th and 17th century needlepoint. As this teeny 12-page pamphlet says in the introduction,

The needlework was made and put away…because of this, most of it has been preserved from light and dust, those to prime destroyers of textiles. We are able to look at the neat stitches and brilliant colours undimmed by time, as fresh as when they were first finished, the thread cut and the needle laid aside.

The pamphlet is black and white, and the pictures are fairly small. The cover, in color, shows a panel of uncut floral slips, some of which are charted in Imogen Stewart’s Classic Needlework, which I’ll review later. It turns out that my columbine is also based on this panel, although it is, I think, smaller and simpler! There’s some good, but basic information about the design and construction of slips. It also shows an unfinished panel of needlepoint which pretty clearly demonstrates that the black outlines were, at least some of the time, cross-stitch (which explains a lot of the stuff I’ve been trying to figure out from the V&A’s almost-but-not-quite-high-res-enough photos). There is a not-very-big photo of some knot-work trim, similar to a small fragment from Hardwick Hall (Traquair has “yards”).

The next section is about colifichets, 18th century French silk embroidery on paper. I’m not really interested in this kind of thing, so I’ll move to the next section.

There’s also a brief description of a secret set of priest’s vestments made from a 17th century white bed quilt (sadly, no picture–I’m trying to find more information about 16th and 17th century quilts), and a description of some bed furnishings (no pictures).

It’s a nice pamphlet with a few good tidbits, but the pictures are few, tiny, and black-and-white. There is also an insufficiency, for me, of dates and discussion of technique and style–but I also think someone badly needs to write a book for Traquair House similar to The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, only with charts included. It’s a good pamphlet to have in your historic needlework library, but tantalizingly brief (it doesn’t discuss the spectacular bird/tree/animal slips now sold as very expensive kits, either). In terms of photographs, though, there are better ones elsewhere (although not good enough!).

You can order the pamphlet from Traquair House. If you don’t live in the UK, shipping will probably cost more than the pamphlet itself.