Illustration: St Lawrence. English embroidery panel, 15th century.
Professional embroidery has a long tradition in England dating back to the early Anglo-Saxon period. Whether Saxon immigrants brought the craft skill with them from mainland Europe is perhaps open to lengthy debate and question. Even after the invasion and occupation of England by the Normans, Anglo Saxon embroidery skills were still very much sought after, not only in England, but across Europe. The craft was busy, professional and popular up until the various political, religious and social upheavals, including the Black Death, whixh impacted heavily on England at the end of the fourteenth century.
The period between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries seems to have been the busiest period for professional English embroidery. Much of the finer work was produced using gold and silver threads and was used to particular effect within the Church where it was used to embellish a number of ceremonial vestments. However, Opus Anglicanum or English Work was also used domestically although most of the remaining examples are religiously based and therefore can sometimes give a misguided interpretation that the Church was the only market for this form of embroidery.
Interestingly, most of the professional embroiderers were men. However, this probably has less to do with men having any particularly innate skills in embroidery and much more to do with social, political and religious norms of the day. Women were denied most if not all forms of professional status and therefore even though many women would have been as good if not better embroiderers than men, and many women would have been involved within the embroidery craft, they would have been classed as amateurs. By denying women the status associated with the term professional, it also denied them any form of economic, social or political independence, which to be honest, was the point of denial in the first place.
Luckily, a number of examples of Opus Anglicanum survive, giving us at least a glimpse of later Anglo Saxon styled embroidery work. Unfortunately, much earlier work, particularly that produced before the Norman occupation of England, has not survived in any great numbers. That the surviving fragments appear to be of extraordinarily high workmanship says much about the decorative arts produced in the Anglo-Saxon period, an era that is often marginalised in favour of the later medieval.
One interesting and fascinating point in regard to the high skills level achieved by Anglo-Saxon embroiderers is the seemingly never-ending debate and sometimes imaginative guessing game as to the origin of the Bayeux Tapestry. To some critics, the embroidery skills associated with the Bayeux seem infinitely inferior to that achieved during the Anglo-Saxon period; some even suggest that it is an insult to associate it with Anglo-Saxon embroidery at all. Perhaps we will never know for sure. It seems difficult to make any true judgements with so little direct evidence of samples from either before the Norman occupation, or indeed immediately after.
At any rate, there are some excellent later medieval examples of Opus Anglicanum which are much prized and therefore scattered around the world in a number of prestigious, yet luckily public collections of which these are a small selection.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Victoria and Albert Museum
Historic Needlework Resource
Further reading links:
Materials, Methods, and Masterpieces of Medieval Art (Praeger Series on the Middle Ages)
Metal Thread Embroidery
Stumpwork Medieval Flora (Milner Craft Series)
Embroiderers (Medieval Craftsmen)
Threading Time: A Cultural History of Threadwork
The Rise & Fall of Art Needlework
The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece
The Bayeux Tapestry Embroiderers' Story
Anglo-Saxon England
Was the Bayeux Tapestry Made in France?: The Case for St. Florent of Saumur (The New Middle Ages)
Art and Society in the Middle Ages
Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500-1100
