Leaf with leaf filling from Intense Pattern II sampler;

Post-classic style--a simple shape filled completely with a counted pattern;

this pattern could be done reversibly.

(Ignore the arrow, the word OVERLAYS, and the little two-color pattern--

this is a modern blackwork technique.)

Blackwork was originally done mostly in black silk on white linen, though there is some blue, red and green blackwork also from the Tudor and classic periods. There was also some brown, but I assume that the brown was either originally red or black oxidized over the centuries. Incidentally, the classic period was during the reign of Elizabeth I. Her colors were black and white and so she wore a lot of blackwork. Browsing though Arnold’s Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, the 1600 inventory of the queen’s closet and an exegesis of it, we can see how much blackwork/Spanish work she wore.

The evolution of blackwork I have divided into seven periods: early (before 1494) for which I know of no extant clothing, but there is a reference for in Chaucer; Spanish work, 1494 (circa) through the demise of Queen Katherine of Aragon, around 1530; Tudor, the end of Henry VIII’s reign through the reigns of Mary I and Edward 6; classic or Elizabethan, during the reign of that queen; Stewart, through the reign of James I when the technique dies out. It was revived at the founding of the Embroiderers’ Guild in England from 1910 to 1920 and is called post-classic at that point. In the 1960s, the English started the modern period of blackwork. Modern and post-classic continue together up to this day done around the globe.

Post-classic work is what most people now learn as blackwork. It is certainly the easiest of the various ways to do blackwork. A simple shape is filled completely with one pattern. See the leaf illustration.

Blackwork: Compleat andUnabridged

Sunbonnet Sue in the lower right is post-classic;

this sampler has motifs six of the seven periods of blackwork worked on it.

There is a misapprehension about blackwork and its reversibility. Some national and international teachers are teaching that it has to be done entirely reversibly. This is not true according to classic Elizabethan technique. The various blackwork portraits by Holbein and others are cited as evidence that it was always done reversibly. In point of fact, not every blackwork pattern and especially ones from the Tudor periods and ones seen in Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe cannot be reversed and make any sense. Just because there is an embroidered sleeve fall in a portrait that could have been the same front and back, does not mean that it was a single piece of cloth embroidered reversibly. A sleeve could easily be two pieces sewn together with the same embroidery on each side of it. The Mermaid Napkin in the V & A that I believe in late classic is not reversible. It cannot be. Most classic blackwork patterns were done in short, straight stitches, backstitch, or even tiny chain stitch.

My sampler called Blackwork: Compleat and Unabridged has examples of six of the seven periods of blackwork on it. My sampler Intense Pattern is mostly all modern blackwork with some examples of post-classic.

Intense Pattern I

This sampler is about modern blackwork.

Arnold, Janet. Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd. W.S. Maney: Leeds, England, 1988.