An Oldie But Goodie: "Underneath a Dogwood Tree"

In graduate school, I took an amazing class, Pre-Industrial World Textiles, with Professor Susan Brandeis.  It was held at the Gregg Museum and we were introduced to historic textile techniques and traditions across the globe.  I enjoyed the class for many reasons--examining primary examples of the topics we were studying from the Gregg Collection and rich discussion with my peers and Susan about textile heritage. Additionally, each student was assigned a weekly topic or geographic area to serve as discussion leader.  I was assigned Western Europe!

Our final project for the class was to pick a piece from the Gregg Collection to study and then create a textile-based artifact inspired by it.  I chose a Callot Soeurs gown that remains one of my all time favorite pieces in the Gregg Collection.  I decided to take inspiration from the gown and combine it with my research into 17th Century stumpwork panels and caskets.

The research I did for leading the Western European week shaped this project.  In reading about British embroidered pictures of the 17^th Century, I was surprised by the fact that contemporary clothing was used for all the characters even though most of the stories portrayed were Biblical stories.  This detail added a quirkiness to the compositions that made them even more interesting to me as such care was taken in ensuring that Esther or whichever character they were embroidering was properly attired according to 17^th Century standards. 

Because there is so little written about Callot Soeurs, I focused more of my research on the embroidered pictures.  I decided to create an embroidered picture using the 1909 Callot Soeurs gown as my inspiration for the “contemporary” costume.  I wanted to maintain the sampler feel and keep the composition very informal.  I taught myself how to make needle lace and other detached buttonhole techniques.  I wanted the final piece to be a “sampler” for myself.  I used the traditional ground fabric of natural silk and combined metal thread techniques with needle lace, needle weaving, split stitch, and stem stitch combinations. 

I chose not to depict a Biblical scene as when I saw the dress, the image that popped into my mind was of a girl wearing the gown at an evening ball in the South in the early 1900s.   I saw a group of girls under a big tree with lots of twinkle lights around the yard chatting about which guy they were hoping would ask them to dance.  I decided to make the tree and the dresses the focus and use scattered spangles to re-create the twinkle lights. 

The colors I chose were from an antique Rococo couch that was passed from my grandmother to my mom that I absolutely love.  It is dark cherry or mahogany wood with soft green silk damask upholstery.  Because Callot Soeurs was known for incorporating antique textiles into their garments, I felt the color inspiration coming from a personal antique was appropriate.  I made the embroidered picture into a pillow so it could live on the antique couch. 

 

Now, I'm not going to lie here-- part of me wants to go back and replace those twisting purls.  The other part of me kind of loves that they are all twisty and thinks it feels more tree like.  I think the problem is that is needs to either be more twisty (or twisty in more areas) or not twisty at all.  Regardless, it has me really wanting to attempt a goldwork tree sometime in the near future.  I'll add that to another back burner!