Stumpwork, a specific type of raised embroidery that was at its height in the mid to late 17th century, was once deemed unfashionable. But today the immense skill and time involved in this technique is recognised and much celebrated
FEATURE EMMA LONGSTAFF
n her book Needlework as Art, published in 1886, Marion Alford poured scorn on stumpwork. She derided the 17th-century raised embroidery as ‘mostly very ugly’, and ‘childish’, finding the ‘ignorance of all rules of composition’ and ‘absence of any sort of style’ to be ‘ridiculously bad’. Needless to say, modern-day fans of stumpwork don’t agree with Lady Alford’s critique.
Didie Inglis Hall, an embroideress who makes stumpwork inspired by antique examples, admires its colourful jumble of techniques and motifs. She likes the way kings and queens, lions, mythical beasts, exotic flowers, fruit, birds and insects all jostle for space with no regard for scale. ‘Compared to something like tapestry, it’s less precise, so I find it much more liberating,’ she says.
Stumpwork-making was at its peak between around 1650 and 1690, and had its roots in padded ecclesiastical embroidery. Girls from wealthy households were expected to learn to embroider, usually starting on a sampler, filled with rows of repeating patterns worked in coloured silks, and progressing to their grand finale – a piece of stumpwork. However, the term ‘stumpwork’ wasn’t actually invented until the 19th century – in the 1600s it would have been known as raised or embossed work. The origins of the more recent description ‘stumpwork’ are slightly obscure, but probably refer to the small pieces of wood that were sometimes incorporated into the embroidery to create three-dimensional effects.
‘I prefer the description ‘raised embroidery’,’ says antique needlework expert Rebecca Scott of Witney Antiques. ‘It’s more respectful, and also a more accurate way of describing the many different techniques that were used in the 17th century to raise the embroidery from the backing fabric. They range from tiny wooden hands and faces covered in silk and painted, to appliqué pieces padded with wool, to human hair and peacocks’ feathers, beads and pearls. I’ve even seen an example that incorporated a real bird’s skeleton.’
Popular motifs included the Stuart monarchs and scenes from the Old Testament, explains Rebecca: ‘They were intended to teach feminine virtues like obedience, charity and fidelit
