Twixt Art and Nature

This is truly a stupendous book, in size and content.

I can barely pick it up, and it only just fits on my scanner.

When I first opened it, I got stuck on the frontspiece piece of embroidery for awhile before I could proceed.

The first half is essays, the second the catalogue.

Essays :

• Collecting English Domestic Embroidery/Melinda Watt
• Embroidered Furnishings: Questions of Production and Usage/Kathleen Staples
• "An instrument of profit, pleasure and of ornament": Embroidered Tudor and Jacobean Dress Accessories/Susan North
• Embroidered Biblical Narratives and the Their Social Context
• Regaining Eden : Representations of Nature in Seventeenth Century English Embroidery

and my favourite, a page of which is shown below,

• Materials and Techniques of Secular Embroideries/Christina Balloffet Carr

The Catalogue is divided into

• The Royal Image
• Embroidery and Education
• Accessories of Dress
• Interior Furnishings
• Biblical Subjects
• Nature and Pastoral Imagery

I show the pages for 2 items below. An item may have up to 4 pages on it.

You can see the quality of the photography.

The words on an item might include some history in general of the items, history of the particular item, discussion of the item's elements and their meanings and comments on techniques used.


(this are all full pages)