Embellishment: To Make Something More Attractive

Illustration: Embroidered velvet cover of a Bible, 1583.

In many ways embellishment is the ultimate tool of the decorator. It can be seen, with some degree of accuracy, as the heart and soul of the decorative world. To understand and accept embellishment is to understand and accept decoration. 

Picking up a dictionary, Collins English, the easy definition of the word embellish is:

to make something more attractive by adding decorations

or

to make a story more interesting by adding details which may not be true

Collins Thesaurus makes an addition to the word embellish by adding: decorate, enhance, adorn, dress, grace, deck, trim, dress up, enrich, garnish, ornament, gild, festoon, bedeck, tart up, beautify.

 Illustration: Decorative iron work from the doors of Notre Dame, Paris, 13th century.

To make an addition to, or to enhance the sum of, seems to be an integral part of human nature. We have always felt the need to embroider, using the word in its loosest term, whether that be through design or craft, or indeed through fact or fiction. In this we are as one species, as no matter what culture or era we think of, all used decoration to enhance and embellish most elements of the artificial world that they created around them. 

Textiles in particular has a long and full tradition of embellishment. Additions to fabric can take the form of nearly anything, from the addition of pure stitching to other fabrics, beads, metals, wood, glass, precious stones, animal products, and so on.

Embellishment can also take many forms, with pattern work following the suggestion of nature, the geometrical abstract, fonts and lettering. It can be perceived as a subtlety, the changing of colour, line and texture, or it can be much bolder, using large-scale shapes and patterns. Whatever the technique or suggestion for composition, the end result is always nearly the same, to make something more than it was, to add decoration to enhance its attraction to the individual.

 Illustration: Henry William Arrowsmith. Decorative design, 1811.

However, embellishment was by no means limited to textiles. Ceramics, glass, metal, wood in fact all the major and minor decorative arts used embellishment as a legitimate tool in which to decoratively enhance their results and it was seen by generation after generation as an integral addition to the skills base of the discipline, rather than as a filler or by-product of the main event.

This relatively intense and symbiotic human attraction to the decorative is something that Modernism, on the whole, failed to take into account. In many respects, Modernism saw one of its tasks as the declaring of war on the traditions of human nature and human decorative art, seeing decoration and pattern as the addition of extraneous embellishment through dishonesty to the form and function of the product. To be fair this does have some merit, embellishment can well be seen as a form of tarting up, a disguise or distraction of the practical purpose of the product if you will, even to the point of the deflection of the truth, anyone who has bought a frozen pizza in a box will know exactly what I mean. Even the second definition of the Collins English dictionary stated above, although being an application towards fiction and story-telling, does make the implication clear as far as at least a proportion of embellishment is concerned: adding details which may not be true.

 Illustration: Decorative ornamental detail, 1826.

Having said that, was it strictly necessary to have a near iconoclastic crusade against the world of embellishment, decoration and pattern? Probably not. A number of minimal Modernist enthusiasts had frankly disturbing ideas as to where they stood in the time frame of the decorative arts, compared to those who embellished. Many of those ideas and analogies bordered on cultural bigotry, with traditional decoration being seen by many as belonging to a world of the non-sophisticated and the culturally backward. It is perhaps an unsavoury aspect of some of the twentieth century theories on design and decoration, theories which are often stripped of their more contentious aspects by today's world.   

In many respects, the iconoclastic approach the Modernists took to decoration had a mixed result, at least on the level of the removal of pattern. The twentieth century history of textile pattern work is just as rich, if not more so, than the previous nineteenth century. However, embellishment is not quite what it used to be. We have no arabesques or curlicues to embellish our phones, TVs, cars, laptops, building exteriors, pavements. We live in an environment where embellishment is often limited and contained, leaving much of our artificial world often with a stark and plain prospect. In some respects, is it any wonder then that graffiti, apart from the sanctioned graffiti of the advertising world, is often the only outward appearance of colour, intensity and expression, and even this is frowned on as a departure from the norm, in other words an attack on the minimal by the decorative. 

 Illustration: Transylvanian embroidered woman's winter jacket.

There is always more than one way of looking at things and there are of course merits within the decorative and non-decorative worlds. However, personally I would be more than happy to own a piece of technology that favoured the flamboyant, and would love to walk down a high street that favoured pattern through tessellation, rather than grey flagstones and tarmac. In other words, long live the human capacity for embellishment.

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Examples of Medieval Textile Patterns

Illustration: Jean Froissart. Coronation of Henry IV, c1470.

Truly, medieval textiles, rather than those in the style of, are not nearly as numerous as we would wish them to be. There are a number of reasons why this should be so. Apart from the obvious length of time between the medieval period and our own, there is also the fact that until recent times the idea of throwing away anything that could not be reused and recycled was not even a consideration. The same was certainly true for textiles, particularly those used domestically. 

Medieval wall hangings for example, were often used until obviously threadbare. They were then cut up into smaller segments and used for various other domestic tasks including upholstery, the better kept pieces taking a more prominent position. The original large hangings would, over the years, become increasingly smaller and smaller until they literally disintegrated. So in some ways we should be grateful that we don't have many examples as it meant that our ancestors in many ways understood the valuable lessons regarding sustainable wealth and certainly of sustainable textiles.

Illustration: Jean Froissart. Death of Evan de Foix, c1470.

To be fair, a number of good examples of medieval textile design do survive. However, a ready supply of imagery, giving a plethora of textile pattern work, or at least a strong indication as to how much of the rich textile design work was available and how it looked, both as a design and within a setting, can be seen through the use of illustrations in medieval manuscripts. Many contain interior scenes, admittedly of a wealthy kind, often at Court, but as much of the medieval textile pattern work was produced for this particular social class, that is where we must look for the finest in textile work produced during this era.

Many medieval pattern ideas and influences can be traced to previous sources, whether classical, Byzantine or Islamic. However, others are very much rooted in the medieval world of Europe with its crests and coats of arms being particularly important in the art of underlining and reiterating power within the framework of allegiance that formed such an important network across Europe, long before the days of the nation state.

Illustration: Jean Froissart. The King of Hungary in Council with his Lords and those of France, c1470.

Another important element and some would say the preeminent one, was nature. The often localised natural world filtered through to all aspects of the medieval world and certainly through that of its decorative arts. The first four illustrations for this article are taken from the fourteenth century work of Jean Froissart. They show a variety of large textile pieces that were very often used as a means of ceremonial theatricality, rather than private domesticity. However, we must remember that the medieval Court was very often a place of public ceremony and affirmation of allegiance, with little in the way of privacy. 

Although Froissart reproduced a number of different textile pattern pieces for his illustrations, I have chosen four pieces with pattern work that are closely aligned with each other. All the pieces have singular motifs as their main ingredient, often with an alternate colour scheme in order to vary the pattern. The bunches of flowers, which were always portrayed as growing out of the ground, rather than in a vase, were a popular theme in medieval textile work and turned up frequently in tapestry work, particularly to fill in large empty areas of composition. These proved so successful and so enduring that they were maintained throughout the medieval period and into the Renaissance led classically derived period. 

 Illustration: Jean Froissart. The Ransom paid to Bajazet for the Count de Nevers, etc, c1470.

Interestingly, these self-same motifs were again revived by Victorian medievalists such as William Morris. The last illustration in this article shows an early Morris textile piece from the 1860s. Daisy shows a similar penchant for the use of the flower bunch motif. He also used alternate colours and flower types to vary the pattern work. It is known that Morris derived this pattern scheme from tapestry work that was produced later than the medieval period. However, the same techniques, as stated earlier, were used long after the medieval period had ended.

It is interesting to see the same motif styles being used after Morris and can probably be seen, at least in some context, within pattern work of our own contemporary era. Rather than believing that we are merely indulging in a constant journey of reimagining the past through textiles, I would like to think more in the vein of themes portrayed in the medieval world being just as relevant and dynamic to succeeding generations as they were to the originals. Morris pattern work for example, is not a pastiche of the medieval; he merely used the original theme as a starting point. However, in many respects he came from the same belief system as the medieval designer, portraying the immediate and localised natural world around them, and in that respect, the connection between the medieval, Victorian and contemporary world, can certainly find common ground.

 Illustration: William Morris. Daisy textile design, 1864.

Medieval pattern work should not, ideally, be contained within its time frame. It has the capacity to appeal to later generations, as it clearly did through its pattern longevity. This decorative work was vibrant, colourful and imaginative. It appealed to our ancestors who used it both publicly and privately, domestically and within a religious context. It was one of the most important elements of medieval decorative life and was served by a huge industry. It has only lost its place through an obvious lack of large scale survival, compared to architectural remains, textile remains are woefully inadequate. There has also been the fairly recent movement away from highlighting craft-based disciplines, which are often seen as female-based and therefore both secondary and amateur, towards architecture which is often seen as male-based and therefore professional. Although this is perhaps an over simplification, many will be aware of the emphasis placed on different areas of the creative medieval world by the contemporary one. But that is a discussion for another day.

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