The St Cuthbert Maniple Recreation Project Part IV - Creation Stages

This post shows you the process of making the St Cuthbert Maniple Recreation Embroidery through images. It starts at the very beginning, when the design was transferred onto the silk fabric using vellum and pounce, through the many stages of stitching to the finished piece before it is taken off the embroidery frame.
The St Cuthbert maniple is an early 10th-century church vestment, hand embroidered in gold and silk threads. It is worked in split stitch, stem stitch, two forms of goldwork surface couching and tracery stitch.
The maniple, along with a matching stole, were re-discovered in the tomb of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral, England, in 1827. Both were stitched by embroiderers in early medieval England, who were commissioned to make them by Queen AElfflaed (Ælfflæd). She wanted to give them as a present to the Bishop of Winchester but it's thought he never received them...
You can also read about the stole, maniple and a set of embroidered ribbons that were also found in St Cuthbert's tomb, in my book, 'The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World: the sacred and secular power of embroidery'. It can be bought at either
www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-Art-Ang...
or
www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/the-...
You can also read about how the stole and maniple were viewed by early medieval society in my latest article, 'Embroidery and its early medieval audience: a case study of sensory engagement', published in World Archaeology. Copies can be bought here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...
You can watch The St Cuthbert Maniple Recreation Project Part I - The Origin Story here: • The St Cuthbert Manipl...
You can watch The St Cuthbert Maniple Recreation Project Part II - The Materials here: • The St Cuthbert Manipl...
You can watch The St Cuthbert Maniple Recreation Project Part III - Stitches here: • The St Cuthbert Manipl...
You can check out some of the goldwork embroidery being stitched here:
• A glimpse at goldwork ...
Dr Alexandra Makin
Early Medieval Embroidery
Professional Embroiderer
#embroidery #embroider #goldwork #textiles #alexandramakin

[@MonksModernMedievalCuisine]

Great to see how it builds up.

[@EarlyMedievalEmbroidery]

Thanks! I like seeing things like this so I was hoping other people would too.

[@arsamalie3652]

I'm so in awe of this whole project!! I am an amateur embroiderer also interested in English medieval embroidery, so it is super exciting to see someone with a background in archeology doing this work using research and methodological best practices. I'm really curious about your choice to use the prick and pounce transfer method for this - was that chosen to best replicate historical practice, or was the choice made for more practical purposes? I've been trying to track down the earliest definitive uses of that practice, and have only been able to trace it as far as the first half of the 16th century, so I'm really curious what your research has uncovered! Thank you so much for sharing your amazing research!!

[@EarlyMedievalEmbroidery]

Hi, I'm so pleased you enjoyed the video! We don't have any evidence for how embroidery designs were transferred during the 10th century but we do have evidence that drawings for the carpet pages in illuminated manuscripts were transferred via this method during the early medieval period. That's the reason I went with the prick and pounce method on the project. However, as I mentioned in the video, tracing would have been a better option and it is possible that this was the method used instead. That's one of the exciting things about this research, you learn that sometimes what seems like the obvious option theoretically, may not the the most practical.

[@stefanwild326]

[@EarlyMedievalEmbroidery]

Thank you 🙂