Medieval bling to brighten gloomy days
It's not been the best of weeks as we were having a few problems with my mother at the beginning of the week, none of the news about Brexit alters my view that it will be a disaster and the prospect of President Trump fills me with deep disquiet. To add to this we have to go to a funeral today for an ex-colleague and friend of J's who died suddenly just before Christmas.
To dispel the gloom I took a chance on Southern Region actually deigning to run a train and escaped into London on Monday (possibly the cause of the problems with my mother). I've been meaning to go to the Opus Anglicanum exhibition at the V&A since it opened but getting into London has been grim thanks to the transport problems so it was only when I realised that the exhibition had just a month left to run that I was organised enough to get a ticket.
Opus Anglicanum is the name given to English embroidery of the medieval period. This is nothing like the embroidery I know, of counted cross-stitch kits, but huge, elaborate ecclesiastical copes and orphrys completely covered in gold thread and stunning religious imagery. Many of these works are very lucky survivals and wouldn’t exist if the work of English embroiderers hadn’t been so famous in the medieval period that much of their work was sent abroad as high status gifts and therefore missed the destruction of the Reformation. The exhibition included work that had been lent from museums in Spain, Italy and even Iceland. One of the highlights was the great Bologna Cope which was one of the first items to be seen. It is a huge piece of dense embroidery covered with scenes from the Nativity and the Crucifixion. Each element of the cope is a work of art in its own right and almost like an embroidered manuscript. Whoever designed it must have been fond of music as there are rows of angels playing all kinds of musical instruments and one of the shepherds is playing the bagpipes while his sheep cheerfully headbut each other. Two smiling donkeys are present at a nativity scene and Herod has a wonderful “hmm” look on his face as the Wise Men tell him they’ve come to find Jesus. Almost as an afterthought Thomas Becket is shown being murdered as if the designer had suddenly remembered he needed to put in the famous English saint. It’s a fantastic piece but the exhibition also had the Toledo Cope which interspersed its religious scenes with wonderful embroideries of birds almost like the marginalia of medieval manuscripts.
Even peering quite closely it was hard to see how the embroidery was done but a short film showed the use of split stitch and underside coaching. It seems that most of the embroidery was done in the City of London and though many of the embroiderers were men it was also work done by women. The exhibition showed how some of the same patterns were used in both manuscripts and embroidery and may have been designed by the same people. Another cope used Moorish patterns and there was material from Persia used as a base for another piece. Even faded and in dim lighting the glimmer of gold and silver thread and the bright colours of the better preserved items showed how spectacular it must have looked when new. Many of the embroideries would also have included pearls and other precious gems so the degree of bling must have been amazing. I couldn’t help thinking how extraordinary it must have looked in candlelight and quite unearthly to someone coming into a church unused to such riches in their everyday lives.
Most of the surviving work is ecclesiastical as obviously it was only used on special occasions but in an attempt to redress the balance the exhibition had borrowed the Black Prince’s surcoat from Canterbury as one of the very few examples of surviving secular embroidery of the same quality. Another striking piece was a horse covering probably made for Edward III with English heraldic lions posing fiercely (role models for Larry the Downing Street cat and Palmerston the Foreign Office cat obviously). Among the non-embroidered items included in the exhibition were the only two surviving painted panels from Henry III’s decorated chamber in the Palace of Westminster and though they are crude by later standards they do give an impression of how colourful medieval court life must have been.
The heyday of Opus Anglicanum was the 13th and 14th centuries but things began to change after the Black Death. Labour was short and the heavy embroidery began to be used just to decorate material rather than take up the whole cope. The work was still very splendid and the beautiful Fishmongers’ Pall showed that even in the early 16th century stunning embroideries were still being produced in London.
It was a very interesting exhibition to go to as it did a great job of showing that medieval art did not only consist of paintings and sculpture but in ceremonial items of dress produced by craftsmen of extraordinary skill. It also showed, sadly, how much English artwork was lost in the Reformation.
That was one good thing this week as was a nice walk that J and I did on Tuesday to find another coffee shop. Pretty good lemon drizzle cake though not quite as good as last week's lemon tart :)
To dispel the gloom I took a chance on Southern Region actually deigning to run a train and escaped into London on Monday (possibly the cause of the problems with my mother). I've been meaning to go to the Opus Anglicanum exhibition at the V&A since it opened but getting into London has been grim thanks to the transport problems so it was only when I realised that the exhibition had just a month left to run that I was organised enough to get a ticket.
Opus Anglicanum is the name given to English embroidery of the medieval period. This is nothing like the embroidery I know, of counted cross-stitch kits, but huge, elaborate ecclesiastical copes and orphrys completely covered in gold thread and stunning religious imagery. Many of these works are very lucky survivals and wouldn’t exist if the work of English embroiderers hadn’t been so famous in the medieval period that much of their work was sent abroad as high status gifts and therefore missed the destruction of the Reformation. The exhibition included work that had been lent from museums in Spain, Italy and even Iceland. One of the highlights was the great Bologna Cope which was one of the first items to be seen. It is a huge piece of dense embroidery covered with scenes from the Nativity and the Crucifixion. Each element of the cope is a work of art in its own right and almost like an embroidered manuscript. Whoever designed it must have been fond of music as there are rows of angels playing all kinds of musical instruments and one of the shepherds is playing the bagpipes while his sheep cheerfully headbut each other. Two smiling donkeys are present at a nativity scene and Herod has a wonderful “hmm” look on his face as the Wise Men tell him they’ve come to find Jesus. Almost as an afterthought Thomas Becket is shown being murdered as if the designer had suddenly remembered he needed to put in the famous English saint. It’s a fantastic piece but the exhibition also had the Toledo Cope which interspersed its religious scenes with wonderful embroideries of birds almost like the marginalia of medieval manuscripts.
Even peering quite closely it was hard to see how the embroidery was done but a short film showed the use of split stitch and underside coaching. It seems that most of the embroidery was done in the City of London and though many of the embroiderers were men it was also work done by women. The exhibition showed how some of the same patterns were used in both manuscripts and embroidery and may have been designed by the same people. Another cope used Moorish patterns and there was material from Persia used as a base for another piece. Even faded and in dim lighting the glimmer of gold and silver thread and the bright colours of the better preserved items showed how spectacular it must have looked when new. Many of the embroideries would also have included pearls and other precious gems so the degree of bling must have been amazing. I couldn’t help thinking how extraordinary it must have looked in candlelight and quite unearthly to someone coming into a church unused to such riches in their everyday lives.
Most of the surviving work is ecclesiastical as obviously it was only used on special occasions but in an attempt to redress the balance the exhibition had borrowed the Black Prince’s surcoat from Canterbury as one of the very few examples of surviving secular embroidery of the same quality. Another striking piece was a horse covering probably made for Edward III with English heraldic lions posing fiercely (role models for Larry the Downing Street cat and Palmerston the Foreign Office cat obviously). Among the non-embroidered items included in the exhibition were the only two surviving painted panels from Henry III’s decorated chamber in the Palace of Westminster and though they are crude by later standards they do give an impression of how colourful medieval court life must have been.
The heyday of Opus Anglicanum was the 13th and 14th centuries but things began to change after the Black Death. Labour was short and the heavy embroidery began to be used just to decorate material rather than take up the whole cope. The work was still very splendid and the beautiful Fishmongers’ Pall showed that even in the early 16th century stunning embroideries were still being produced in London.
It was a very interesting exhibition to go to as it did a great job of showing that medieval art did not only consist of paintings and sculpture but in ceremonial items of dress produced by craftsmen of extraordinary skill. It also showed, sadly, how much English artwork was lost in the Reformation.
That was one good thing this week as was a nice walk that J and I did on Tuesday to find another coffee shop. Pretty good lemon drizzle cake though not quite as good as last week's lemon tart :)