Vika's Vexatious Vestments: London Arts Pilgrimage: There Were Some Embroideries

YAAAAASSSSS

As I mentioned previously, there's this little exhibit on at the V&A, and we put on our scallop shells and filled our scrips with travel rations and fared forth to see it. If at all you can go, you should; and if you can't, you should still order the exhibition catalogue, which is entirely the bomb. (Let me note, however, that the current sorry state of the pound sterling means that the catalogue is $45 if you buy it at the museum bookstore, and $75 if you get it from Amazon. So if you go in person, you are SAVING MONEY. Who loves you and is watching out for your well-being? That's right.)

Anyways.

So yes, as anticipated, photography was strictly verboten. The exhibition catalogue is almost good enough that it's OK, but I snuck the above photo of the Black Prince's jupon anyways, because it is THE BLACK PRINCE'S JUPON and I was never going to be that close to it again. Regrettably, even with my nose pressed against the glass like a Dickensian street urchin outside a pudding shop, the net they've put over the garment to preserve it keeps you from seeing any additional construction detail...and it's so worn away there's not a lot left to see...but it was still a Religious Moment for me. Fun fact: they clearly spent all this time and expense doing metal-work appliqué onto velvet...and then just ran the quilting channels right the hell over it. Well OK then.

Wool intarsia seal bag with
embroidered border, c. 1280.
Westminster Abbey, WAM 1494

There are about 80 objects in the exhibition altogether, and a lot of them are the Greatest Hits of Religious Garments you'd expect, like the Syon Cope (which the light in its case wasn't working the day we went, heck of a job there, Brownie) and the Butler-Bowdon cope; but they did a great job rounding up what few surviving secular and semi-secular articles were out there. So not only did I get to drool on the jupon, I also got to get real up-close and personal with the Cluny's horse trappings (and not just the usual big piece with the leopards of England on them, but some smaller scraps that still have their pearled bits intact!) and a royal seal bag that's of particular interest because it's wool appliqué with no metal-work, which is something we know existed but very little has survived (the Tristan Hanging is one, though it's onlaid rather than inlaid like this little guy) and a fascinating little heraldic number, now in the form of a burse (a case for carrying a cloth used in the Mass), showing a shield with the arms of Stafford impaled with the Woodstock differenced version of the royal arms (so it had something to do with the marriage of Edmund, Earl of Stafford, with Anne Plantagenet in 1398)--but what it was cut down from is entirely unclear. The exhibition people think it's from a banner, but my reading this summer suggests that you never saw arms on a shield shape used on banners, so my money's on some kind of domestic textile.

Other Moments:

Beth's contention that half our problems recreating these works are because we can't get the fineness/tightness of linen that the originals were created on

likewise, silk twill, Y U NO

Unexpected couched-and-laidwork on the Clare Chasuble
Crawling on the floor in front of the Syon Cope to look at the stitchery around the hem in the reflected light from the video playing across the room
Being blinded by the 100% intact cloth-of-gold of the Fishmongers' Pall
PEARLS ON THINGS
Seeing the strong repetition of motifs; not just "it's a cope and it's gotta have the Annunciation on it and that means a lily in a pot", but the almost carbon-copy design details across the board
The interlace patterns on the Hólar Vestments, which really need to be turned into trim

And then there was everything else we looked at. Even after cherry-picking all their special stuff for the exhibition, the V&A has a ridiculous amount of textiles; and we spent some quality time in the Museum of London and the National Gallery too. (And Buckingham Palace, but that was about QE2's Wardrobe Unlock'd, not QE1.) I haven't started processing the photos with any seriousness yet, but here are a couple of teasers: