In these Homeric passages, men's activities are dynamic and variable while women are meant to remain fixed in the interior of the house, engaged in the static occupation of wool-work.
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Original charted Berlin wool work patterns remain available in a number of books.e.g. Proctor, Molly (1986) Victorian Canvas Work: Berlin Wool Work London: Batsford, . Alford, Jane (2002) Beginner's Guide to Berlin Woolwork Tunbridge Wells, England: Search Press Ltd . Berlin wool work designs are still popular in trammed needlepoint canvases,e.g.
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Designs for articles were often taken from designs of Berlin wool work.
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Berlin wool work purse, c. 1840, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.2007.211.280. In the early 19th century, canvaswork in tent or petit point stitch again became popular. The new fashion, using printed patterns and coloured tapestry wools imported from Berlin, was called Berlin wool work.
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Boy's slippers, Berlin wool work, 1800–1850, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.2007.211.309a-b. Berlin wool work patterns were first published in Berlin, Germany, early in the 19th century. The first Berlin wool patterns were printed in black and white on grid paper and then hand-coloured. Previously, the stitcher was expected to draw the outlines on the canvas and then stitch following the colours on the pattern.
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Canvas is a popular base fabric for embroidery such as cross-stitch and Berlin wool work. Some specific types of embroidery canvases are Aida cloth (also called Java canvas), Penelope canvas, Chess canvas, and Binca canvas. Plastic canvas is a stiffer form of Binca canvas.
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Berlin wool work is a style of embroidery similar to today's needlepoint. It was typically executed with wool yarn on canvas.Beeton, Isabella, (1870) Beeton's Book of Needlework Ward, Lock & Tyler p.559. Beeton also considers the use of silk thread and/or beads as Berlin Work.
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They often incorporate animal heraldry and the coat of arms of the maker. Production continued through the 19th century. Victorian embroidered carpet compositions include highly illusionistic, 3-dimensional flowers. Patterns for tiled carpets made of a number of squares, called Berlin wool work, were introduced in Germany in 1804, and became extremely popular in England in the 1830s.
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Counted- thread embroidery is more easily worked on an even-weave foundation fabric such as embroidery canvas, aida cloth, or specially woven cotton and linen fabrics. Examples include cross-stitch and some forms of blackwork embroidery. While similar to counted thread in regards to technique, in canvas work or needlepoint, threads are stitched through a fabric mesh to create a dense pattern that completely covers the foundation fabric. Examples of canvas work include bargello and Berlin wool work.
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The double cross- stitch, also known as a Leviathan stitch or Smyrna cross-stitch, combines a cross-stitch with an upright cross-stitch. Berlin wool work and similar petit point stitchery resembles the heavily shaded, opulent styles of cross-stitch, and sometimes also used charted patterns on paper. Cross-stitch is often combined with other popular forms of embroidery, such as Hardanger embroidery or blackwork embroidery. Cross-stitch may also be combined with other work, such as canvaswork or drawn thread work.
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Cross stitches were typical of 16th century canvas work, falling out of fashion in favor of tent stitch toward the end of the century.Levey, S. M. and D. King, The Victoria and Albert Museum's Textile Collection Vol. 3: Embroidery in Britain from 1200 to 1750, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1993, Canvas work in cross stitch became popular again in the mid-19th century with the Berlin wool work craze. Herringbone, fishbone, Van Dyke, and related crossed stitches are used in crewel embroidery, especially to add texture to stems, leaves, and similar objects.
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In the 19th century, the craze for Berlin wool work, a canvaswork style using brightly coloured wool, contrasts with art needlework, associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement, which attempted to resurrect the artistic and expressive styles of medieval surface embroidery under the influence of the Gothic Revival and the Pre-Raphaelites.Embroiderers' Guild 1984, p. 54 Although continental fashions in needlework were adopted in England, a number of popular styles were purely English in origin, including the embroidered linen jackets of the turn of the 17th century, stumpwork, and art needlework.
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Subjects to be embroidered were influenced by Victorian Romanticism and included floral designs, Victorian paintings, biblical or allegorical motifs. Berlin work patterns could be applied to various kinds of clothing and home furnishings or could be made as stand-alone artworks, in the style of needlepaintings, which are works that copy well-known master paintings in thread.Rosika Desnoyers, Pictorial Embroidery in England: A Critical History of Needlepainting and Berlin Work (London: Bloomsbury, 2019). In the late 1880s, the demand for Berlin wool work decreased dramatically, largely because the tastes had changed, but Berlin work publishers failed to accommodate new tastes.
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Although there are many cross- stitchers who still employ it in this fashion, it is now increasingly popular to work the pattern on pieces of fabric and hang them on the wall for decoration. Cross-stitch is also often used to make greeting cards, pillowtops, or as inserts for box tops, coasters and trivets. Multicoloured, shaded, painting-like patterns as we know them today are a fairly modern development, deriving from similar shaded patterns of Berlin wool work of the mid-nineteenth century. Besides designs created expressly for cross-stitch, there are software programs that convert a photograph or a fine art image into a chart suitable for stitching.
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Screen embroidered in the art needlework style, 1885-1910, designed by John Henry Dearle, V&A; Museum no. CIRC.848-1956. Art needlework was a type of surface embroidery popular in the later nineteenth century under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts Movement. Artist and designer William Morris is credited with the resurrection of the techniques of freehand surface embroidery based on English embroidery styles of the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century, developing the retro-style which would be termed art needlework. Art needlework emphasized delicate shading in satin stitch with silk thread accompanied by a number of novelty stitches, in sharp contrast with the counted-thread technique of the brightly colored Berlin wool work needlepoint craze of the mid-nineteenth century.
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The roots of needlepoint go back thousands of years to the ancient Egyptians, who used small slanted stitches to sew up their canvas tents. Howard Carter, of Tutankhamen fame, found some needlepoint in the cave of a Pharaoh who had lived around 1500 BC. Modern needlepoint descends from the canvas work in tent stitch, done on an evenly woven open ground fabric that was a popular domestic craft in the 16th century. Further development of needlepoint was influenced in the 17th century by Bargello and in the 19th century by shaded Berlin wool work in brightly colored wool yarn. Upholstered furniture became fashionable in the 17th century, and this prompted the development of a more durable material to serve as a foundation for the embroidered works of art.
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Archibald H.): Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, London, John Hogg, 1912; e-text at Project Gutenberg; notes to Plate XIII. May Morris was an influential embroideress and designer, although her contributions are often overshadowed by those of her father, a towering figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. She continued his resurrection of free-form embroidery in the style which would be termed art needlework. Art needlework emphasized freehand stitching and delicate shading in silk thread thought to encourage self-expression in the needleworker in sharp contrast with the brightly coloured Berlin wool work needlepoint and its "paint by numbers" aesthetic which had gripped much of home embroidery in the mid-19th century. May Morris was also active in the Royal School of Art Needlework (now Royal School of Needlework), founded as a charity in 1872 under the patronage of Princess Helena to maintain and develop the art of needlework through structured apprenticeships. The school originally opened in the autumn of 1872 in rooms in Sloane Street, London, with a staff of twenty women overseen by Lady Welby and Mrs Dolby, an "authority in ecclesiastical work".
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