Stuart pictorial embroideries with biblical subjects

 

Embroidery designs were available to purchase from print sellers in the mid seventeenth century. The best-known London sellers are probably Peter Stent (1613-1665) and his successor John Overton (1640-1713), who bought Stent’s business when Stent died of the plague. (1) These pattern books were often of individual motifs that could then be put together for a project. Examples of these works include Stent’s A Book of Slips of Fruit and A Book of Four-Footed Beasts, published by both Stent and later by Overton. An embroidered casket in the Metropolitan Museum New York, has a printed lining which states “Sold by John Overton at the White Harte.” It is nearly a century ago that John L. Nevinson wrote about these publishers. (2) Stent and Overton also sold “pictures lately printed in sheets.” Stent’s 1662 trade card, which is in the Bodleian Library, lists over five hundred titles. (3 pp. 25-7)

Figure 1: Unfinished panel showing Abigail and King David. Metropolitan Museum. Item: 64.101.1325

 

The designs would be copied from the prints using a prick and pounce technique, several surviving prints have the prick marks from this technique, and there is a good blogpost on this on the Huntingdon Library page. (4)  They could be drawn on the fabric by a professional pattern drawer. Several surviving unfinished pieces of work, such as the panel of King David and Abigail in the Metropolitan Museum New York (Figure 1) show the pattern drawing in the unfinished sections.

Figure 2: Embroidered box dated 1662. Minneapolis Institute of Art. Item 95.14a-bb

Figure 2 shows the front of an embroidered casket in the Minneapolis Institute of Art,    either side of the doors shows Esther and Ahasuerus. How do we know that this is Esther and Ahasuerus? Esther has her petition in her hand, and the king gestures to it with his sceptre. There is an embroidered picture of the same subject in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection. That picture is marked in ink with the initials MI and the date 1665 below the central scene. A version of this story on a casket in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, which has already been mentioned as having a lining saying the picture was sold by Overton, shows other episodes from the story on the sides of the casket, with Hamon being hung on the back panel. (Figure 3)

Figure 3: Back of embroidered box. Metropolitan Museum New York. Item  64.101.1335

Figure 4 shows Solomon and the Queen of Sheba on a cushion the Metropolitan Museum New York. Here Solomon is in his tent and Sheba approaches with a gift in her hand. Unlike the previous examples, which have been worked on linen or silk with raised figures, a form of embroidery sometimes called stumpwork, though that is a nineteenth century term, this cushion is canvas work, using tent stitch and Gobelin stitch, and Sheba’s crown has seed pearls.  The Art Institute of Chicago has a box with Solomon and Sheba depicted in the beadwork that was fashionable in the mid seventeenth century. The Solomon and Sheba picture in the Ashmolean collection is unframed and the vibrancy of the unfaded colours on back of it can be seen here.

 

Figure 4: Tentwork cushion. Metropolitan Museum New York. Item 64.101.1271

 

Where you have a casket or box, a variety of biblical subjects can be used. Hannah Smith’s casket in the Whitworth Gallery was embroidered between 1654-1656, there was a letter in the box saying that she started the embroidery when she was eleven. One side of the front doors depicts Jael killing Sisera (Figure 5) and the other side has Deborah and Barak, while the top shows Joseph and the pit.

 

 

Figure 5: Front of Hannah Smith's box. Whitworth Gallery, Manchester. Item T.8237.1

References

1. Globe, Alexander. Peter Stent. Dictionary of National Biography. [Online] [Cited: February 23, 2025.] https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50897.

2. Nevinson, John L. Peter Stent and John Overton, publishers of embroidery designs. Apollo. 1936, Vol. 24, 145, p.279-283.

3. Swain, Margart. Embroidered Stuart pictures. Princes Risborough : Shire, 1990.

4. Learner, Mary. Evidence of Pouncing in 17th-Century Print. Verso: The blog of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. [Online] 2019. [Cited: February 27, 2025.] https://huntington.org/verso/2019/07/evidence-pouncing-17th-century-print.

5. Parker, Rozsika. The subversive stitch. London : The Women's Press, 1984.

6. Vogelsang-Eastwood, Gillian and Vogelsang, Willem. Encyclopedia of Embroidery from Scandinavia and Western Europe. London : Bloomsbury, 2025.