A return to Blyth House today. My last opportunity to look at most of the objects before the archive closes. I decided on this first (of three) final visits that I would look at the first three objects of my research, the sampler, the coif and the cap. The sampler and the coif I have good scans of, and I have already done quite a bit of work with these.

With the sampler, I made some initial experiments in drawing and diagrams, looking at ways of mapping stitch paths and documenting patterns in a standard way. I think the making of these sparked my thinking around drawing as a method of close looking. More importantly, the mapping diagrams quickly revealed one of my initial assumptions of this research, that I might be able to emulate the embroideries by copying the stitch paths, to be essentially futile. However, I was struck by the similarity of this object with a sampler I made over 10 years ago when I first discovered Blackwork. This got me thinking about resonances between myself and the past embroiderers, how there is a connection through the act of stitching. The making of embroidered objects, samplers and test pieces positions me in a lineage of embroidery practice. While we may not be able to recreate the hand traces of the original makers, there is something more fundamental happening in my attempts to ‘copy’ from these objects, something in the gesture of stitching, the feel of the materials and tools in my hands that feels like a whispered conversation with a past maker THROUGH the object…

In order to explore this idea further, I am planning on a full reconstruction of the coif (T12-1948), recording and reflecting on the process of [re]making.

I wanted, today, to get a final look at these objects. SN took some thread samples from the sampler – I want to get a firm date on this to see if, as we suspect, it is a later example of Blackwork (even though a lot of the patterns are worked in colour). If it is a later piece, it might support my theory that the pattern fading technique is a later development, one possibly inspired by the already decaying state of the 16^th/17^th century embroideries. I also wanted to check the thread count of the linen on all the objects – especially the coif. Even though I am not attempting to make a ‘authentic’ replica, I am trying to capture the experience of its making and so want the materials to be as close in scale to the original as possible.

I spent most of today drawing. I spent a lot of time working with the cap (T308 – 1902) during my last visit. I’ve been thinking a lot about creating digital objects with a physical presence and want to experiment with projection mapping. I plan for the cap to be the first of these digital experiments. I’m hoping to create an animated drawing of the motif that will then be projected onto a blank copy of the cap form. I’m thinking about the ‘digital object’ as a multi-layered artefact, one that is able to express different stages in the ‘life cycle’ of the embroidery – as it exists now, how it might exist in future and how it may have existed in the past. During my last visit, I really struggled to ‘plot’ the motif accurately, I couldn’t seem to translate the design from the curved 3D surface of the cap to a 2D flat. I tried all sorts of measuring techniques, took hundreds of photos but I’ve been unable to get a design that isn’t distorted.

Today I tried a different approach.

I sat for almost an hour just looking at the cap, turning it occasionally to view a different side or a slightly different angle, slowly taking in the details, trying to get the ‘feel’ of it. I then tried writing a simple description of what I’d observed, but that just didn’t seem right, trying to use words for something so MATERIAL (and it didn’t end up making much sense anyway). What I realised in my looking is that attempting to accurately ‘plot’ the motif was a futile exercise and somehow didn’t resonate with the sprit of the thing. It is handmade, the motif was drawn by hand (not to mention the distortions that occurred through use), the thing is organic – the motif on each side is intended to be the same, but each is slightly different. This did make me wonder if trying to create a digital version of the object is the ‘right’ thing to do, you could run the risk of creating something too clean, too perfect – a proper simulacrum. But perhaps this will give me the chance to explore the ‘digitally handmade’…

Anyway, having realised that trying to ‘plot’ the motif was impractical and probably not worthwhile, I decided to simply draw the design ‘by eye’. Each of the cap’s four sides has a basically identical design (though with variations), so I thought I would try to draw a basic ‘master’ version of the motif, getting the placement and proportions of each element by observing the composition on each side and combining them.

The drawing itself, done with a mechanical pencil (the only kind allowed in the archive), took many hours and is not quite right or finished. But it was pleasant to draw free hand, positioning the lines in relation to each other, working and reworking the curves. It’s a different experience drawing this way, feeling your way around the lines you are looking at. Tricky too, trying to draw a curved surface flat – all your views are distorted so you must vary the position of your eyes to get a ‘composite’ view, keep adjusting your lines, rub out and re-draw. Indeed, the whole process of making this ‘master’ design was a composite – it’s not one specific panel of the cap, rather a mixture of all four sides.