Blackwork Fascination

On Tuesday evening this week Sheffield-based fine artist Toni Buckby treated us to a fascinating talk on the beautiful blackwork embroidery of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Blackwork is a particularly skilful type of counted thread embroidery which has been practised for centuries, but had its heyday between 1530 and 1630, when it was particularly fashionable amongst the most wealthy members of the English aristocracy and royalty.  The main reason for its exclusivity was the incredible amount of skilled work involved in creating even smaller items such as coifs (close-fitting caps) and partlets (sleeveless garments covering the neck and shoulders, used to fill in low-cut necklines for modesty or warmth).  These were made from extremely fine linen - sometimes with as many as 80-100 threads per inch.  The embroidery used a wider range of stitches than that commonly found in modern blackwork, and was made with black thread on white, often also incorporating gold.  

Credit: A beautiful example of blackwork with gold thread from the 1590s; Metropolitan Museum, New York

Toni explained to us the problems inherent in researching historic blackwork; both the linen and the thread used tend to decay badly, partly because of the iron oxide in the dye used to colour the thread. This meant that when she wanted to research the development of blackwork techniques as part of her PhD, Toni was unable to access many actual garments, and instead decided to resort to contemporary portraiture to help her trace possible changes in fashions and techniques. As a result she has been able to identify clear changes in the styles and designs available, and we listened in fascination as she took us through a wonderful parade of examples, vividly illustrated with beautiful portraiture, including Holbein's portrait of Jane Seymour, showing geometric bands of blackwork on her cuffs, to the broader areas of scrolled floral designs on the partlet worn by Elizabeth I in the 'Pelican Portrait' of 1575, and through to the more naturalistic and more widely popular panels of blackwork embroidery used in the 1620s, which Toni feels may well have been influenced by the growing availability of printed herbals and bestiaries.

​​Toni is an artist and maker with a wealth of practical experience of blackwork, and as well as explaining the changes in fashion and technique that she has documented, she was also able to give detailed insight into the way in which these designs were executed.  She finished with a description of the stunning 'Falkland Waistcoat', a rare extant garment now in the possession of the V&A, which is a particular focus of her research in an attempt to eventually be able to reproduce her own precise copy of it.  Her enthusiasm for this beautifully decorative embroidery shone through her talk, and kept us all enthralled!

if you wish to find out more about Toni's work, join her mailing list from her website here: blackworkembroidery.org 

A stunning example of Toni Buckby's own blackwork embroidery