St Lawrence, 15th Century Embroidery

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

Decoration of English Stone Crosses

Illustration: Stone monument at Kirk Michael, Isle of Man.

Large stone crosses litter the islands of Britain and Ireland from one end to the other. They derive from more than one culture, although superficially at least, they appear to be decoratively Celtic in style. The crosses have decorative work that belong primarily to Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse cultural heritages though not necessarily exclusive to one specific culture. Many of the crosses have either fusion or crossover decorative work that apply themselves to a mixed heritage with the Celtic underlying both Anglo-Saxon and Norse traditions. This blending, on occassion, produced a further unique tradition of its own, particularly when considering such cultures as Manx on the Isle of Man.

The three examples shown in this article come from Northern England and the Isle of Man. The two from England are said to be Anglo-Saxon in origin, while the one from the Isle of Man is said to be Norse. Interestingly, the two English crosses which have lost their upper portions, were said to have been damaged by Norse raiders, while the Isle of Man cross is said to have been created by the Norse.

Another level of interest is added when considering the date of the actual illustrations themselves, which derive from the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. This was a period when mainstream British culture was only beginning to analyse, understand and produce a level of appreciation of what was in many respects the three founding cultures of the islands. The Celtic, Germanic and Scandinavian cultural heritage were in many respects the building blocks that were to produce the modern nations of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. Each had a unique and specific identity and each added to the cultural heritage of the separate but linked nations that now occupy the islands.

Illustration: Head Stone Cross, St Andrew's Church, Aycliffe, Durham, England, 10th century.

More specifically each culture had a confident and identifiable decorative style that, although unique and rooted in specific yet different cultural origins, somehow complemented each other so that when one or more cultures came together to produce decorative work, the overlapping elements of uniqueness, blended, balanced and harmonised to a degree that was not always possible in other cross-cultural endeavours.

What is also interesting about the illustrations themselves, are the lack of specific details. Although, these examples can be identified with the stone crosses that are still in existence today, they tend towards a generalised view with few close details and many imaginative interpretations. Some examples of medieval and pre-medieval work that were reproduced during this period even tried to change the cultural emphasis of the decoration, so that truly indigenous work was transformed into a decorative format that was much more classically inspired.

In many ways this was a formula that was produced in order for the classically trained British elite to understand what they were attempting to appreciate. It was still considered by many that because cultures that had little interaction with classical Greece and Rome, particularly those in Britain and Ireland that either preceded or post-dated the Roman occupation, they were somehow incapable of portraying the world as it should be seen. Therefore, even work such as the Bayeux Tapestry, which had a specific decorative style of its own, was often reinterpreted in illustrations as if it were a classical Roman or Greek frieze. This lost all the uniqueness of the original and also, perhaps tellingly, lost all reference points to a culture that was decidedly and independently non-classical in origin and focus.

Illustration: Head stone cross, St Oswald's church, Hawkswell, Yorkshire, England, 10th century.

Decoration is such a pervasive human style that it is sometimes difficult to disentangle the many elements that go into its pattern work. These can include social, cultural and political dimensions that are not always as obviously apparent as the pattern itself, but they are there nonetheless. Even such things as the projection of one culture by another, such as these three illustrations, becomes a complicated vision of interpretation and reinterpretation, with elements and overtones that can also entail the complex relationship between overlord and subject, master and slave, depending on which culture you feel emotionally bonded to.

That an imported decorative style such as that of the classical world, was deemed by many to be infinitely superior to any form of indigenous style, says much about the disconnectedness between British culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and its native past. Admittedly, many books and magazines during this period began to explore Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse artefacts and remains across Britain, such as the stone crosses illustrated. However, they were explored with a certain detachment, as if the cultures belonged to people that no longer existed, lost to time. That they belonged in fact to the past of many of the contemporary working people of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England and in some respects were still part of their everyday culture, says much about the divorced reality between the cultural elite of Britain and the ordinary people.



Further reading links:
Old Stone Crosses of West Gloucestershire
The Sandbach Crosses: Sign and Symbolism in Anglo-Saxon Sculpture
Stone Crosses in East Cornwall (Including Parts of Bodmin Moor) (Cornish Cross)
Stone Crosses in West Penwith (Cornish Cross)
Stone Crosses in North Cornwall (Cornish Cross)
Stone Crosses in Mid Cornwall (Publication Series / Industrial Development Authority Irelan)
The stone crosses of the county of Northhampton
Old stone crosses of the vale of Clwyd and neighbouring parishes, together with some account of the ancient manners and customs and legendary lore connected with the parishes
Celtic Crosses of Britain and Ireland (Shire Archaeology)
The Trailblazer Guide to Crosses and Stones on the North York Moors
Ancient Stone Crosses of England
Crucial Guide to Crosses and Stones on the North York Moors (Crucial guides)
The Early Christian Cross Slabs, Pillar Stones and Related Monuments of County Galway, Ireland (British Archaeological Reports (BAR) International) (Parts 1-2)
The ancient stone crosses of Dartmoor and its borderland