Taking Stock of 2013

As 2013 waned,  mainstream media reprised the year’s major events.    Deaths, births, natural disasters, and the inhumanity of war swamped our screens.  

Unkind to many, 2013 was generous to embroiderers.   Remarkably, a prime time TV program and several major needlework and textiles exhibitions introduced non-stitching culture vultures to art in thread.

In New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted Interwoven Globe, a retrospective of 300 -years in textile history during which embroideries figured prominently.  The influential New York Times reviewed the show positively and extensively.  And there were pictures on the paper’s website for those who could not make it to the show.

On the other side of the Atlantic, embroidery got another nod of artistic approval. The UK Art Fund named The William Morris Gallery in London, the best museum of 2013. During this award-winning season the Gallery featured an exhibition of embroidery designed by Nicola Jarvis, who creates modern stitchery echoing Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement.  The year’s best museum surely knows art when it sees it.  It would hardly squander its resources or reputation on just anyone or anything!

Still in the UK, BBC2 carried a mid-week evening TV program on The Wonder of Embroidery as part of its Fabric of Britain series. The broadcast concentrated on the Opus Anglicanum, a quintessentially English embroidery produced in the Middle Ages. It specialized in depicting figures on ecclesiastical robes using split stitch and back couching. English embroidery was highly prized throughout Christendom and became a major export product, we learned.

The program makers travelled to the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court, misnamed the Royal School of Embroidery--ok a nit -- where a young master embroiderer demonstrated Opus Anglicanum stitches. Viewers couldn’t miss how seriously the perpetuation of quality stitching is taken in contemporary Britain. 

Further burnishing embroidery’s image, the program treated viewers to the intrigues around the English copes in Italian churches, treasures that got stolen and sold for millions to art collectors.  What a good TV viewing. And quite a boost for embroidery’s image among a wider audience too. 

The BBC’s Antiques Road Show, which predictably values authentic 17^th and 18^th century embroideries around the £1500 ($2250), broke with tradition when it showed off a meters long contemporary copy of the Bayeux Tapestry.  The very- much- alive embroiderer, a man, single-handedly had been stitching this project for more than a decade. 

This was just a cameo appearance—so quick I didn’t catch his name. But it was enough. During the Road Show’s year-end round up, Fiona Bruce reported that as a result of his appearance, the Bayeaux Museum invited the reproduction to be exhibited alongside the original. And the embroiderer had been invited to speak to groups.  Did we ever  doubt  the power of mainstream media to influence perceptions?

                                                     

Across the Channel in the Netherlands, embroidery got still more  mainstream attention. But it was a bit of a backhanded compliment. 

Rotterdam’s prestigious Museum Boijmans van Beuningen   organized an exhibition Hand Made: Long Live Crafts.  Embroiderers along with weavers, potters, silversmiths were rallied to introduce the public to métiers that are in retreat if not in demise. The museum did not mince words. 

Snapshot of  the museum's  statement.

Embroidery is craft-- ambacht in Dutch.  Ambacht implies skill, training and professionalism, as opposed to handicrafts or amateurism.  Regretfully, the curators preferred to confirm widely held  preconceptions about embroidery rather than stimulate interest in an activity that can offer  its exponents—male and female-- so much more than “stress relief.”

As if to drive home the point that needlework is becoming an anachronism, the curator displayed exquisite chasubles encrusted with stump work in gold. Their quality is unparalleled. 

Element in gold work from  a cope

The needlework looks cast in metal, not stitched in gold threads. These sophisticated rich pieces contrasted with humble domestic wall hanging near by. 

Wall hanging from 1917.

If we were paying attention we were to know which pieces were stitched by men or  women.

Predictably, neither work probably resonates with a modern  Dutch visitor, living in a secular society where homes are trend/design sensitive rather than individualistic.  That was the intent I suspect. 

You would pardon any contemporary embroiderer for feeling less than uplifted by this exhibition. Let down would better describe it.

Why is this important? Because as Grayson Perry, a very hot artist in London’s hot art market, pointed out museums are no longer repositories or attics, but orchestrators of taste and value. They are trend setters.

On a brighter note, The Fries Museum, in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands reopened so enthusiasts can visit its remarkable  sampler collection, in person. 

But 2013 brought sadness and loss as well. The Scottish Museum of Costume and German Sampler Museum both closed in 2013, victims of the recession.

In a world filled with so many existential problems,  should anyone beyond embroiderers care about embroidery’s reputation in a wider world?  Probably not. Yet, to me embroidery is a bit like the canary in the mine.

How people react to embroidery as an activity, to embroiderers, and their products reflects the socio-economic eco-system we all inhabit.  This facet fascinates me as much as embroidery's  role as a form of expression. 

What things will 2014 bring into my embroidery-skewed world? Well, for one thing Beating around the Bush , an international jamboree of committed embroiderers in Australia.  I’ve been invited to teach. Now that is something to look forward to as I stitch and observe  life through the eye of my needle.