This article presents the Indigenous, colonial and imperial history of harakeke (Phormium tenax, also known as New Zealand flax, a native New Zealand plant species) as represented in the Economic Botany Collection of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. The harakeke collection of raw and prepared (muka) plant materials and textiles starts in 1853 and includes donations from M & amacr;ori leaders, New Zealand field collectors, fibre entrepreneurs, world fair exhibitors and inventors. Kew's role in the global redistribution of harakeke, and the consequential impacts on economies and environments, is also discussed. The article publishes the collection for the first time.
This article examines working conditions in small-scale needlework production in eighteenth-century Stockholm, when many women turned to the needle trades to support themselves. Generally operating without formal recognition, their work was undocumented and thus difficult to trace. Employing a microhistorical approach, this article examines how personal circumstances as well as formal regulations shaped the work of individual practitioners. It highlights the working lives of two women who gained formal recognition by being granted manufacturing licences for needlework. While the benefits of institutional inclusion are hard to evaluate, the work was long-term and enabled one of the women to make strategic choices and thereby build a career to maintain independence.
This paper takes the methodology used for calculating time taken for embroidery on the Metropolitan Museum's bearing cloth (MET 2016.526) discussed in the second paper in this series and proposes a generic quantitative method, validated with actual stitching labour hours data, which can be applied to comparable embroideries. The methodology used for obtaining real-time data for making a stitch using data generated by a group of volunteer 'citizen scientist' embroiderers is set out. Case studies provide proof of concept while approaches to understanding stitch variations and anomalies on the bearing cloth are discussed. Finally, this detailed understanding is used as the foundation for calculating the value of the metal threads used in the embroidery, proposing a method that may be applied to other early modern embroideries made largely from such threads.
This paper presents results of detailed interdisciplinary technical and design analysis of the Metropolitan Museum's bearing cloth (MET 2016.526), contextualised in the first of this series of three papers. It examines the hypothesis that it was made in a professional workshop and frames deductions about its making. Mathematical modelling using needle moves to create stitch labour time equations enabled calculation of the amount of time required to work the whole embroidery, divided by the number of embroiderers to establish the chronological time the work took from start to finish. Study of the principles underlying the design and its application demonstrated techniques employed to speed up the embroidery work while also showing where there was latitude for individual embroiderers to interpret motifs and select stitches. Results show that this was a high-quality bearing cloth that was professionally worked and a group of embroiderers could actually complete the embroidery quite quickly, certainly to meet a deadline. The outcome is greater understanding of the way in which the type of embroidery on this bearing cloth was worked, managed and produced in an early modern professional embroidery workshop, by developing and applying a mathematical modelling methodology.
A pattern for an altar cloth sent to the Australian first wave feminist Rose Selwyn in 1876 is indicative of the capacity of women to make theological statements through sewing. This altar cloth created on Kamilaroi/Gumeroi and Anaiwon country drew on symbols that challenged the Anglican Church and perhaps male power itself. Close analysis of the materials used and the language of the pattern shows the diverse influences on the colonising culture of the north west.
In preparation for the opening of Young V&A in Bethnal Green, London, a knitted hanging from Strasbourg, dated to 1781, was prepared for display. During examination and treatment several questions were raised, leading to wider discussions about the production of such objects. This article highlights how physical examination and conservation work go together to fully understand the contemporary state of a historical object. The analysis, including stitch gauge and measurements, is recorded in detail to help facilitate engagement with this particularly rare type of object. The why and how of textile conservation, as they relate to this object, are also shared to further disseminate knowledge of the object's journey through the museum context. The investigation is shown to aid a complex textile conservation treatment, whilst the treatment itself allowed more to be revealed about the object's creation than would have previously been possible. Finally, a practical experiment and literature search by the author looks to answer unknowns about the knitted masterpiece's creation.
The goal of this paper is to explore the context of the Metropolitan Museum's striking embroidered textile (MET 2016.526) and to establish that it is indeed a bearing cloth. Contextual evidence has been drawn from contemporaneous images and texts, both factual and fictional, to examine the role of bearing cloths in the rite of baptism. The varied names, characteristics, users and social and financial values of bearing cloths are examined along with their function in sustaining familial memories and connections. A survey of known bearing cloths, examining their size, materials and ornamentation, situates the Metropolitan's piece in context and enables comparisons. Reasons for the survival-or otherwise-of a bearing cloth are considered. This contextualisation strongly indicates that the Metropolitan's textile is an exceptional bearing cloth from an unknown elite family, setting the scene for further technical and mathematical analysis in the subsequent two papers in the series, which outline and apply a new methodology for understanding and quantifying the making of seventeenth-century professional embroidery, compensating for the lack of written records about management and production in embroidery workshops.
