Thursday, January 7, 2010

Breton style embroidery and beyond

I was skimming through  some pre 1900  New York Times newspaper articles  via googles Newspaper Archives  (my search keywords were "Embroidery design" )  and in one article was a mention of
Breton style embroidery.  I did not have a clue  what Breton style was   so  I began to google it
I think you can tell by now I'm addicted to googling.   My first stop was   Karen's Whimsy
 http://karenswhimsy.com/free-celtic-clip-art.shtm
where she had posted some Clip artshowing Breton Embroidery patterns.
So now I know Breton is a Celtic Embroidery style.
she mentioned the 1906 book
 "Styles of Ornament by Alexander Speltz"
as being  where she found the patterns   so then I googled the book title.  
and found some other  non embroidery designs from the book   at Flickr.com posted by origomi
at http://www.flickr.com/photos/origomi/sets/72057594090165249/
Origomi  noted  an online location where the book can be found and read.
The University of Wisconsin's
Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture :Image and Text Collections










http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/DLDecArts/DLDecArts-idx?id=DLDecArts.StyOrnSpeltz 

searching in their collection I find they also have some of

Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Magazines

Gustav was the founding designer of the Arts & Crafts Style.   


this Conventional design from Heminway Silk company  is typical of the Arts & Crafts style  










1915 Heminway  24

my want to read list just became Ohhh so much longer.
on a later google search I found out about the
Breton Embroidery stitch at
http://quietermoments.wordpress.com/category/breton-stitch/
my friend Shari added this tidbit

A short word on Breton embroidery/lace as I know it they are monochromatic pieces and worked on top of netting. It is hard to find old examples of this because the netting deteriorates and generally was a weight bearing support for the needlework 


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