Victorian Crocheted Purses and Bags

Illustration: French crochet bag patterns, 1855.

Not everything concerned with textiles, whether hand or machine produced, is necessarily always grand, open and public, sometimes it can also apply to the small, personal and intimate. Crochet in particular tends to have the ability to both apply itself to an individual, and perhaps more importantly, be associated by many with being intrinsically personal in both adornment and intimate domestic settings.

Crochet as a craft has run through the highs and lows of social fashion across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and seeing something of yet another revival in our own twenty-first. The nineteenth century saw it invade both costume and the domestic interior, being used for practically every eventuality. Within costume the little personal purse or bag was an ideal crochet project. Although by no means all personal purses and bags were crochet based, many were and descriptions abounded in all of the major women's magazines of the period either giving selections of styles, or detailed patterns for construction.

Illustration: Matilda Marian Pullan. Short purse in crochet, 1856.

The examples that illustrate this article, all ranging from a small period in the latter half of the 1850s, give a good impression of how wide-ranging the fashion styles were and therefore how unique these personal adornments could become. Many were too small to carry much bar a few coins and personal mementoes or small toiletries, but then they were not really meant for practical necessity but more a case of textile embellishment, which they did, often in great style.

These purses and personal bags ranged across the Victorian world and could be found across Europe and North America, as too could the pattern work. There seems to have been little regional variation, with the French styling of the first illustration for example, appearing to be just as appealing in Chicago as it was in Edinburgh. The nineteenth century was to see the internationalising of consumption on a massive scale. For the first time consumers in North America and Europe were able to pursue fashion, if not simultaneously, then at least with only a small modicum of delay. The expansion of relatively cheap magazine titles helped to fuel this expectation and as the century progressed the magazine market matured giving rise to titles that filled niche markets as well as those that appealed to the general public.

 Illustration: Matilda Marian Pullan. Sovereign purse in crochet, 1856.

Although crochet has often been seen by many as a relatively lowly textile craft, possibly due to its lack of complex hand tools and the fact that it was often produced by the lower working classes, this does not negate the fact that at its best crochet can hold its own with the lace craft of which it is a form. Crochet has such a wide spectrum from extreme and robust simplicity to some of the most complex and delicate pattern work that can be produced by using one small hooked tool. It is therefore hardly surprising that it is seen by those within the craft as one of the most diverse of textile disciplines. That it is also one that will perhaps forever be associated with the amateur is not altogether a necessarily negative attribute. We have to ask ourselves why we sometimes feel that a discipline needs to be associated with a professional stance and why it should try to distance itself from its humble background.  

 Illustration: Crocheted watch pocket, 1860.

While the professional craft world moves ever closer to a fine art definition of itself, we have to wonder whether perhaps some connection with the generations of individuals and groups that made up the differing craft disciplines in the past, has been lost, disconnected in some way by the need to outwardly appear professional and perhaps more seriously as a validation of purpose, so that craft has to appear to be questioning and expanding, rather than just being.

Whatever the direction of craft professionals, it is perhaps heartening to know that possibly for generations still to come the craft of crochet will continue its highs and lows, appearing and disappearing over the coming century and possibly into the next. We can only hope.

Further reading links:

Shift | The Arts University College Bournemouth Postgraduate Show Opens Today

Opening today, the highly anticipated Arts University College at Bournemouth postgraduate show features graduates from fine art, photography, graphic design, and many more, runs until the 8 September. The exhibition, entitled Shift, reflects the interdisciplinary nature of postgraduate study and represents the culmination of a meaningful, transformative and personal journey for the students involved.

Work in the show features Yves Findling who uses screen prints from the Internet and YouTube which, even if they reflect the production run of the mass-production of goods in the industry, have a hand-made character and a unique connection to the illustrator as the creator of the artworks; and Araki Shiro who investigates the complexity between architectural form and surreal sculpture and assemblage, creating objects by hand that resemble organic form using inorganic material such as carbon fibre and glass fibre, looking at the relationships between objects and the body in a subconscious form.

Shift also features the work of Noelle Barnett who’s ethereal and emotive series of oil paints investigate the depiction of skin in painting producing images that eliminate unnecessary detail and leave more breathing space for the viewer to work in their own interpretations and Isobel Browse who's practice relates to the domestic interior, a space that exists between house and home. Aesthetica spoke to Noelle and Isobel about their work and what the future holds for them after AUBC.


What has the preparation process for Shift been like?

NB: Studying part-time has meant that I experienced last year’s show, and was aware that we should plan for it earlier than the previous year. I have worked alongside another student, Isobel Browse, and we canvassed the group to establish a title for the show so it could be professionally ‘branded’ with a uniform quality of information to distribute as early as possible. I particularly wanted to advertise outside of Bournemouth and try to get people coming to visit from London! To be honest, I was really disappointed with the general lack of initial enthusiasm for the show from other students. I feel it is a really important aspect of any course, and one can learn such a great deal from the process. I hoped it would build an element of team spirit prior to installing the show in August. Nevertheless, a small working group was established with others joining later.


IB: Absolutely, working with Noelle on a show with such a diverse set of disciplines has been a fantastic experience. We couldn't have done it without the fantastic core group of students working hard on all the details of the show.


With such a broad variety of media on display, curating the show must be a challenge. Who is responsible for curatorial decisions and is there an overall theme?

NB: Last year, as the group was small, they had a lot of space and the curatorial decisions for the Course Leader were easier. This year due to a higher number of students, the show is being held in the AUCB Gallery and Fine Art Studios and the decisions are more complex. Due to the nature of the course philosophy there is no overall conceptual theme to the show. Each of our individual practices is supported and recognised in their particular diversity. However, similar concepts and ideas have emerged and traverse the pathways, and for me this aspect serves to demonstrate the excellent qualities of the course.


IB: One of the exciting aspects of the course is the diverse disciplines you find yourself working alongside. I don’t have curatorial experience but I had a strong idea of where I would like to place the work and it is quite site specific. We worked collaboratively with Ronnie Inglis, MA Course Leader and it has been fantastic watching the spaces come together. The nature of the course determines that there is not an overall concept, simply a strong desire to show all the work at its absolute best, enhanced by the pieces around it. I certainly have more experience than I did previously and I hope to be involved in many more exhibitions in the future.

Could you talk us through your work on the MA? What pieces will you be showing in Shift?

NB: I started the MA after completing a five-year, part time, BA in Fine Art at the AUCB. I had reached a point where I knew I wanted to take my work much further, and am so glad I had the opportunity and support to achieve this. My initial aims were to develop my painting skills and knowledge as far as possible, to increase my confidence in my practice and to research how skin was depicted within painting. Going back to look at Renaissance painters and looking at techniques and issues of representation of beauty and ugliness, led me to more in depth research about peoples attitudes to their own and others skin, taking into account advertising and media pressures. I used various techniques within my practice to back up this research, such as digital scanning and watercolour studies. The final phase of the MA took this research into the studio and the development of a series of oil paintings. These works are a response to the research and I have deliberately moved away from representation into an abstract and ambiguous depiction. They are quieter and more reflective, and offer a glimpse of the ephemeral, the experience of the body within the world. I am showing the final three pieces I made, as they mark both a conclusion and departure point within my practice.


IB: My practice relates to the domestic interior: the space that exists between house and home. Initially, I drew inspiration from an archive of my family’s photographs that I inherited, muddled in boxes with hardly any contextual information. I began to question whether our surroundings and possessions shape or mask our identities. Using phenomenology and anthropology, I investigate our response to our domestic space. Architectural motifs and preoccupied figures explore the transient and the permanent, serving to alienate and distance the viewer. Opposing themes of the interior and the exterior, cropped simplicity and pattern, create a sense of dislocation and unease: a series of frozen moments, psychological remoteness evoking elements of the uncanny. I work both in the traditional and digital darkroom and many of my images are initially taken using a view camera. The pieces I have chosen to show in Shift are images that reflect all aspects of my work on the MA, showing a synthesis of both method and methodology. 

What has been your main source of inspiration for this body of work?


NB: My main inspiration is skin. I have read so much about it over the past two years, and looked at so much, it almost became obsessive, staring at people in the supermarket and wanting to photograph them! The concept that skin is a two-way membrane is really important- and that it is our interface with the world. We experience so much through touch, and skin memory intrigues me - how far can we remove our touch yet still feel the surface we were touching- like the meniscus on water? The fact we shed our skin, and that it makes up 90% of house dust, means it is in the air we breathe, so the whole world can be understood as skin. I want to capture the equivalent of our existence in the world, what we experience, and how we feel.


IB: I draw inspiration from a variety of sources but throughout my time on the MA, Hammershoi, Hopper and the painters of the Dutch Golden Age have continually influenced my practice.

What’s next for you after you graduate?

NB: I want to take a short time out to consider my options, but would really like to continue with further research. I will be looking at what options are available for the following year. I have work in an Art Fair in London this October, the Parallax Art Fair at La Galleria, Pall Mall, 14-16 October, and hope to get work into exhibitions in London in the future. I would also like to do some teaching, as I am very passionate about encouraging people into education.


IB: I am going to concentrate on exposure initially. I will continue to make new work and I already feel an intense pull to continue my practice and research at the next level.

Shift will be open daily from 10 – 4:30pm with a late night opening until 8pm on Thursday 8 September.

aucbshift.co.uk

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Image: Courtesy the artist

Hungarian Embroidery in Transylvania

Illustration: Torocko Man's costume.

All of the images in this article represent traditional examples of Romanian embroidery. However, the story is much more complex than at first appears. The images specifically represent Transylvanian embroidery and within that theme, they also represent the work of ethnic Hungarians living within Transylvania. To be even more distinct, these images portray embroidered jackets that originated in the Hungarian village of Torocko in western Transylvania.

Illustration: Satellite map of Transylvania

Toroczko, now also known by the more Romanian sounding Rimetea, was an important centre of embroidery skills. Transylvanian Hungarians tended towards similar decoration work as that of Hungary proper further to the west. However, a mixture of styles, at least to some extent, would have been seen within the work. Influences from both native Romanians and that of the Turkish Empire would have been particularly strong. There was also an added influence from outside the region, that of native German settlers who also occupied areas of Transylvania alongside both Hungarians and Romanians. 

Illustration: Torocko man's costume.

Torocko embroidery is specific and was traditionally coloured either red or blue, rather than a mixture of colours and tones. The illustrations shown in this article are of either leather or felted jackets, both sleeved and sleeveless, two with blue embroidery and one with red. The actual embroidery motif work was often floral as in Hungarian embroidery, with tulips being particularly important. The materials used were often the same as in many other areas of Transylvania and Romania as a whole, cotton or linen, but more often linen.

Interestingly, the illustrations shown here of Torocko costume, were originally produced by the Hungarian artist and craftsman Alador Kriesch-Korosfoi.

Illustration: Torocko woman's costume.

Romania itself, let alone the ethnically diverse Transylvania, has got to be one of the most complex and fascinatingly diverse areas of Europe. It is said that there are well over a hundred distinct and individual folk costume areas within the country, with countless smaller local variations. The way that today's Romania has incorporated independently distinctive ethnic areas, including Transylvanian Hungarians, has added to the richness of the culture and particularly the textile crafts, so that Romanian embroidery is now seen as one of the richest and most varied in Europe. 

This library of ethnic and cultural diversity is part of Romania's heritage and there are a number of online sites that now deal with this heritage. The RomanianMuseum.com is a particularly good site and is well worth visiting for anyone interested in the folk costumes of Romania. Also provided are a couple of links to Torocko/Rimetea, as well as a number of books and music of Transylvanian Hungarians all available at Amazon.com

Further reading links:
RomanianMuseum.com
Torocko.hu
Rimetea accommodation
Peasant Art in Austria and Hungary
Embroidered Textiles: A World Guide to Traditional PatternsTündérkert / Fairyland - Hungarian and Romanian Folkmusic from Transylvania (Collected by Zoltán Kallós, Edited by Ferenc Novák)
Hungarian Folk Music From Transylvania
Romanian and Hungarian Music from Transylvania
Hungarian Folk Music from the Kis-Küküll? Region of Central Transylvania, Romania
Hungarian Music from Transylvania
Transylvania: A land beyond fiction and myth
Ethnic History of Transylvania
The Land Beyond the Forest 2 Volume Paperback Set: The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania (Cambridge Library Collection - Women's Writing) (Volume 2)
Charted Peasant Designs from Saxon Transylvania (Dover Needlework)

Finnish Embroidery

Illustration: Finnish embroidery, 18th century.

The history of embroidery in Finland is made more complicated by the history of the country itself. For over five hundred years, Finland was considered an integral part of the Swedish Empire, only to end that era by becoming part of the Russian Empire for just over a century. When Finland did eventually manage to gain full independence in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, it was the end of over half a millennium of foreign domination, both politically and culturally.

Finland naturally enough has a number of traditions that derived from outside the region, particularly that of Sweden and Russia. Finns themselves however, although seen as Scandinavians, derive their original language and culture from much further east and have strong links with cultures and peoples across northern Russia. Scandinavia is really a crude but convenient regional political generalization. It would perhaps be more accurate to see the area as western and eastern Scandinavia. The eastern would include Finland, Estonia, and some areas of western Russia, all of which share similar craft and to some extent, cultural ties that are distinct from that of their western neighbours in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

 Illustration: Finnish embroidery.

Much of Finnish embroidery was used in costume and was stitched onto a plain, often white background with either whitework or contrasting coloured threads, very often red being a particular favourite. Interestingly whitework was often used in Russia, and the use of red thread in particular was one of the most frequently and popular colours used. Finnish embroidery shares many core values with that of its eastern neighbour Russia, including a number of the motifs and decorative borders. This is not to say that Finnish embroidery and craft skills in general were subservient to those of the Russian Empire. Finland always maintained, despite centuries of domination and forced integration into the cultures of firstly Sweden and then Russia, its own unique identity through its sense of history, mythology, and craft, and while embroiderers might well have borrowed or integrated a certain amount of decorative ideas and themes, Finnish embroiderers remained a separate craft region.

Illustration: Finnish embroidery, 18th century.

Embroidery was by no means the only craft skill that Finns excelled in, but it was one of the most widely and publicly accessible forms of craft, and as in most of Europe it was dominated by women who were often skilled to professional levels but seen as belonging to the amateur. Embroidery is often identified with the public face of a culture or indigenous group, and although a certain amount of the craft has been influenced by fashion and outside forces, the core value of this important and often-neglected skill remains. Finns, as in many other cultures, have access to their long cultural history through the often-anonymous work produced by generations of women and their embroidery. The craft, both living and historical, is an invaluable reference for the often complex cultural and craft history of the region.

Further reading links:
Finlands medeltida konsthantverk =: Arts and crafts in Medieval Finland (Swedish Edition)
The Vanishing Beauty Of Finnish Peasant Handicraft: Talonpoikaisesineiston Katoavaa Kauneutta
Finland: Nature, Design, Architecture
Ryijy Rugs from Finland: 200 Years of a Textile Art; Organized by the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design and the Smithsonian Instiution Traveling Exhibition Service
THE LANGUAGE OF WOOD; Wood in Finnish Sculpture, Design and Architecture
FINNISH ARTS AND CRAFTS.
The Vanishing Beauty Of Finnish Peasant Handicraft: Talonpoikaisesineiston Katoavaa Kauneutta
Finland: Nature, Design, Architecture
Scandinavian Design 
Nature as object: Craft and design from Japan, Finland, and Australia
Scandinavian Craft Today: 35 Artists from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden
Embroidered Textiles: A World Guide to Traditional Patterns
Embroidered Textiles: Traditional Patterns from Five Continents : With a Worldwide Guide to Identification
Embroidery of All Russia
Embroidery: Traditional Designs, Techniques, and Patterns from All over the World