Edmund Harrison (1591-1667) – the King’s embroiderer



One of Harrison's pictures now in the
National Museums of Scotland
click to see further information from the museum site

There is often a general assumption that embroidery is a domestic, non-professional occupation, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries much work was done by members of the Broderers Guild, which received its first charter in 1561, though it appears to have been around from a considerably earlier date. Edmund Harrison was one of the most important members of the Company which still owns the cup he gave to them, engraved with comment  “The Gift of Edmund Harrison Imbroiderer to our late Soveraigne King James deceased and unto O’Soveraigne Lord King Charles that now is 24 Janry 1628”

 Edmund Harrison was born in London in 1591, the son of a merchant tailor he attended the Merchant Taylors’ School. He may have been trained by two men who were also embroiderers to the King, and his predecessors and/ or contemporaries, William Broderick (died 1620) and John Shipley (or Shepley, died 1631). Harrison continued as a King’s embroiderer until the Civil War. According to Wardle during the interregnum he traded in coal. (Wardle, 2008) Harrison also headed one of the consortiums at the time of the second list. This is the second list drawn up in January 1651 of “about 970 of the said creditors and servants” that is people who were owed money by the late King Charles. Harrison, who at one point is described as a wood monger, sold on about £500 worth of paintings that he had received, including two Titians and a Rubens. (Brotton, 2006) After the Restoration he was reinstated when the Broderers’ Guild wrote to Charles II that he was ‘the ablest worker living’, at that time he was seventy years of age. Charles II granted him £341 yearly for his living, and another £159 12s. for embroidering 250 coats for the yeomen of the chamber, yeomen waiters of the tower, yeomen of the robes and wardrobes, and 42 messengers of the chamber. (Holford, 1910) When he died in 1667 he was worth about £6946 10s, his will and probate inventory are available from the National Archives.

What type of work did Harrison do?

 Ceremonial : Much of Harrison’s work was ceremonial and related to the court, cloths for ceremonies of state and the state barges, banners and standards, for the orders of chivalry, and livery for the heralds, a slightly later herald's tabard is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while a tabard from the period, unfortunately without a colour photograph, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. From 1627, when the Garter Star was introduced, Harrison supplied  stars of the order for cloaks and coats, 34 in 1633-34 and 40 in 1665-66, one of these stars, which may or may not be by Harrison himself, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. (Wardle, 1995)

 Religious: Harrison is also known to have completed altar frontals and similar both for the King and for private patrons. The Victoria and Albert Museum has in its collection both a pulpit hanging, attributed to Harrison by Wardle with arms of the Sandys of the Vyne family and dated to 1633, and an altar dossal also from the 1630s depicting the Last Supper.

Clothing: Harrison appears quite frequently in the Wardrobe accounts providing clothing for the King. One of the richest suits purchased in 1633/4 cost £226 18s 8½d, part of which went to Harrison for “embroidering the said doublet, hose and cloke, upon watched (i.e. watchet) satin wrought all over verie rich with fine needle gould, and fine twists and flagon cheines and lace purle of fine damaske gold and naple silk at being furnished by him.” (Strong, 1980) Harrison also provided embroidered costume for court masques.

 Embroidered pictures:  The series of embroidered pictures by Harrison, known as the Corby Castle pictures, were split up after a sale in the 1920s. They are dated to 1637 and depict the life of the Virgin. They are in a technique known as or nue, a type of goldwork where the gold threads are couched down with coloured silk threads, the density of the couching threads creating shading in the design. (Synge, 2001)  Two of the pictures are in the National Museums of Scotland; one depicts the Annunciation and the other the Circumcision of Christ .  Another in the series, depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (unfortunately there is no image attached to the record).

This article is very heavily indebted to Patricia Wardle’s extensive work on Harrison, which should be read for further information on him. (Wardle, 1994) (Wardle, 1995)

Brotton, J., 2006. The sale of the late king's goods.. London: Macmillan.

Holford, C., 1910. A chat about the Broderers' Company. London: Allen.

Strong, R., 1980. Charles I's clothes for the years 1633-1635. Costume, Volume 14.

Synge, L., 2001. Art of embroidery: history of style and technique.. London: Royal School of Needlework.

Wardle, P., 1994. The Kings's Embroiderer: Edmund Harrison (1590-1667), part 1. Textile History, Volume 25, pp. 29-59.

Wardle, P., 1995. The Kings's Embroiderer: Edmund Harrison (1590-1667), part 2. Textile History, Volume 26, pp. 139-184.

Wardle, P., 2008. Harrison, Edmund (bap. 1591, d. 1667), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn. [Online] Available at: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40418 [Accessed 1 May 2013].

 

Shoehorns by Robert Mindum (active 1593-1612)



Shoehorn by Robert Mindum in the Museum of Design in Plastics

Shoehorns are something I had never really thought about until I went to the Painted Pomp exhibition at the Holburne Museum, Bath and saw a 1598 engraved shoehorn, isn’t it nice when makers put dates on things.

So how old are shoehorns? According to collector Sue Brandon (1998) a 'schoying horne' was first mentioned in the fifteenth century. Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry 1523–34 speaks of “Shoyng horne, boget, and shoes”, a boget is a pouch, bag or wallet usually of leather. (Oxford English Dictionary, n.d.) Elizabeth I purchased eighteen shoehorns from her shoemaker Garrett Johnson six in1563, six in 1564 and a further six in 1566. , She also ordered steel shoehorns from the blacksmiths Gilbert Polson and Richard Jeffrey in 1567. She did not order any further shoehorns until 1586. (Arnold, 1988)

The shoehorn in the Painted Pomp exhibition is absolutely the same shape as most modern shoehorns, and was made by a man named Robert Mindum who, according to the details given by the museum caption, made eighteen surviving shoehorns and was active between 1593 and 1613. A short notice about Mindum’s shoehorns by Joan Evans appeared in a 1944 edition of the Burlington Magazine and is available online here.

The example in the exhibition has an inscription around the outer edge which reads: - THIS IS AMBRES BVCKELS SHOING HORN MADE BY ROBERT MINDVM ANNO DOMINI 1598. The shoehorn has feathers engraved at the top, a crown and rose in the middle and a shell pattern at the bottom. In this it is very similar to other designs by him.

I’m sure there are others but, apart from the horn in the exhibition, the following horns survive by Mindum and have images on the internet:

A 1593 example in the Salisbury Museum, made for Jane Ayers

A 1597 example that was sold at Christie’s in 2005, no details are given except for the price it fetched.

A 1598 example in a Sotheby’s catalogue from 2007, made for Rose Fales

A 1600 one on loan to the V&A from the Museum of London which says ‘THIS IS MATHEW WESTFELDES SHOOING HORNE MAD BY TH...ES OF ROBART MINDVM ANNO DOMINI 1600’ The V&A site does not have a photograph, and I can’t find it on the MoL site.

A 1604 example in the Smithsonian, the top is broken so the first name of the person it was made for is missing, it says it is for ...s Gamlet.

A 1612example from the Worshipful Companyof Horners collection, now in the Museum of Design In Plastics in Bournemouth, made for Ricard Gibon. This is a brilliant set of photographs showing the shoehorn from all angles, including the underside.

Another 1612 example, the details here are from a Cora Ginsburg catalogue, it was made for Mistris Blake. This was sold by Rowley’s Auctions in 2010 for £8,800.

Bibliography

Arnold, J. ed., 1988. Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe unlock'd. Leeds: Maney.

 Brandon, S., 1998. Buttonhooks and shoehorns. Princes Risborough: Shire.

Oxford English Dictionary, O., n.d.. [Online] Available at: www.oed.com/[Accessed 28 April 2013].

The Walton effigies (1620s)

I recently went to St Nicholas church in Gloucester and took photographs of the Walton tomb, which is in a side chapel, the chantry of St Mary. The tomb dates from the 1620s and depicts effigies of John Walton an alderman and goldsmith of Gloucester (died 1626) and his wife Alice (died 1620). The sides of the tomb depict kneeling two figures assumed to be a son and daughter of the couple.

Alice wears a hat very similar to one in the collection of the Museum of London (MoL), which unfortunately does not appear to be on their online catalogue. Five similar style hats are listed in Halls (1970) catalogue, and one of these, made of black velvet appears in Arnold (1985), though the patterns given in that book are from similar hats in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nurnberg. The black velvet hat in MoL, which is in the same material as a man’s suit in the collection, and the brown silk hat in Arnold, have pronounced folds, which are similar to those seen on the effigy. The hat has a somewhat squarer shape than that being worn by Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI, in a 1617 painting by Paul van Somers, but both have the large hatband. In the case of Alice it looks as though it is a roll of fabric which has been whipped round with a cord. Under the hat Alice wears a coif. Her husband is bareheaded.

Alice wears a close fitting bodice/jacket still showing some of the original paint, and very similar in style to that worn by Lady Martha Suckling (d. 1617) and her daughters on her tomb in Norwich, which can be seen here. The jacket has wings at the shoulder and a tight curving sleeve, like this unstructured jacket of the same date in the collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She has ruffs at her neck and cuffs. Like Martha Suckling she is wearing a skirt which has been pinned up as though to go over a farthingale, though she does not appear to be wearing one, she may be wearing a bum roll instead. The pinning of the skirt does not appear to be as ornate as for a skirt that goes over a French farthingale, as has been described by Arnold (1985, pp. 116-7), and is like the pinning of the skirt in a portrait suspected of being Alice Spencer, Countess of Derby.

John wears a doublet and breeches with canions, similar in style to this more ornate suit of doublet and breeches with canions in the Victoria and Albert Museum dated to around 1618, and believed to be the suit that appears in a portrait by Mytens, supposedly of Richard Cotton. The painting was sold in 1961 and its current whereabouts are unknown. (Arnold, 1973). A pattern for the V&A suit is printed in both Waugh (1964, pp. 20-1) and Arnold (1985, pp. 88-9).

Over his suit John is wearing a gown. By the 1620s gowns were old fashioned being associated with the elderly, the professions, officials and academics.  Mytens portrait of the Earl of Arundel painted in 1618 shows him wearing a gown which, like John Walton’s, is furred at the front.  Arundel was a patron of artists and a collector of antiquities, which maybe why he is painted in a gown, a precursor of the eighteenth century comment that, “Studious men are always painted in gowns.” (Fortune, 2002). For John Walton however the gown probably helps to signify his position as an alderman of the town, he became an alderman in 1621 and died in 1626. There is a painting supposedly of John Faulkner, mayor of Gloucester in a very similar outfit, however John Faulkner died in 1545 and would not have worn a ruff such as that in the portrait, which is obviously later. Tittler (2012) has dated the portrait to c.1600-1620, which seems more likely. In the painting Faulkner wears a red robe, and traces of red paint can still be seen on John Walton’s robe. John Earle speaking about a London alderman in 1628 says “his scarlet gowne is a monument, and it lasts from generation to generation.”

John wears open sided latchet shoes with the slightly wedged heel that was popular in the first decade or two of the seventeenth century, similar to those that can be seen in this full length portrait of James I by de Critz. (Cunnington 1972)

The young kneeling man on the side of the tomb is in more fashionable garb and wears a rebato, rather than a ruff, at his neck.  A more elaborate version of the rebato can be seen being worn by the 1^st Earl of Carlisle in a portrait of 1628. Examples of several rebato, with patterns are given in Arnold (2008)

The young woman kneeling on the side of the tomb, wears a coif on her head, which is similar to some shown in Arnold (2008). She has a ruff at her neck, but she has turnback cuffs, and a wing at the top of her sleeve.

The production of a tomb of this quality for a town alderman and his wife is indicative of the rise of an urban elite and middle class, who also turned to portraiture to depict themselves. This desire of the newly wealthy to pay for portraits and tombs has recently been discussed in books by Cooper (2012), and Tittler (2012) (2013)

Arnold, J., 1973. Sir Richard Cotton’s suit. Burlington Magazine, May, pp. 326-329.

Arnold, J., 1985. Patterns of Fashion: the cut and construction of clothes for men and women c. 1560-1620.. London: Macmillan.

Arnold, J., 2008. Patterns of Fashion 4 : the cut and construction of linen shirts, smocks, neckwear, headwear and accessories for men and women. London: Macmillan.

Cooper, T., 2012. Citizen Portrait: Portrait Painting and the Urban Elite of Tudor and Jacobean England and Wales. New Haven: Yale U. Press.

Cunnington, C. W. and P., 1972. Handbook of English costume in the seventeenth century. 3rd ed.. London: Faber.

Fortune, B. B., 2002. “Studious Men are Always Painted in Gowns“: Charles Willson Peale's Benjamin Rush and the Question of Banyans in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Portraiture. Dress, Volume 29, pp. 27-40.

Halls, Z., 1970. Men's costume 1580-1750. London: HMSO for the London Museum.

Tittler, R., 2012. Portraits, Painters, and Publics in Provincial England, 1540-1640. Oxford: OUP.

Tittler, R., 2013. The Face of the City: Civic Portraiture and Civic Identity in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester U. P.

Waugh, N., 1964. The cut of men's clothes 1600-1900.. London: Faber.

 

 

Mannish viragoes, or audacious men-women – complaints about women’s fashions in the early 17th century

I haven’t blogged for quite a while as I have been writing a paper which I gave last weekend. I’ve put a somewhat reworked section of it below. People have always complained about fashion whether it is Suetonius carping about Caligula’s dress in the first century, or the Winchester Psalter of about 1150 depicting the devil in a tightly laced woman’s dress, with the extraordinarily long sleeves of the period that had a knot tied in them to keep them off the ground. At the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century most of these complaints came from “puritans”. There were a lot of pamphlets published at this time, and in particular a lot of complaints about women “aping” men’s wear.

 

Three of the specific items of complaint were picked up in January of 1620 by the letter writer John Chamberlain (1553-1628), who was no puritan but a moderate in matters of religion. He said that the Bishop of London had been told by the King (James I) to get his clergy to preach against “The insolence of our women and their wearing of broad brimmed hats, pointed doublets, their hair cut short or shorn” The anonymous author of Hic-Mulier or the Man-woman, published in February 1620 by John Trundle (1575-1629), picked up on these as you can see from the title page. The cartoon says “Mistress will you be trimmed or trussed.”  Trimming in the cartoon refers to women cutting their hair short, and trussing to their adoption of something vaguely resembling a man’s doublet. Men’s doublets were trussed to their breeches.

 

Henrietta Maria by Van Dyck, 1633

In Hic Mulier the author says “You have take the monstrousness of your deformity in apparel, exchanging the modest attire of the comely hood, caul, coif, handsome dress or kerchief. To the cloudy, ruffianly broad brimmed hat and wanton feather, the modest upper parts of a concealing straight gown, to the loose, lascivious civil embracement of a French doublet, being all unbuttoned to entice, all of one shape to hide deformity, and extreme short waisted, to give a most easy way to every luxurious action; the glory of fair large hair to the shame of most ruffianly short locks.” So what did this aping of men’s wear look like in practice? Well a good example is probably this portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria painted by Van Dyck in 1633. Here you see the broad brimmed hat, trimmed with a “wanton” feather, the short hair style, and a front opening bodice cut with tabs like a man’s doublet.

 

 In his 1628 work The unloveliness of lovelocks, which is having a go at men with long hair, William Prynne (1600-1669) also complains that women were becoming shameless and immodest. He speaks of “the mannish viragoes, or audacious men-women [who] do unnaturally clip and cut their hair.” and says “in the unnatural tonsure and odious if not whoreish cutting and crisping of their hair, their natural vaile, their feminine glory and the very badge and character of their subjection both to God and man” I suspect that this last comment is what is worrying some men at the time, that women are forgetting their supposed subjugation to man.

Early modern scissors

We revisited the wonderful Musee le Secq des Tournelles in Rouen, a must visit if you are in the town. The Le Secq des Tournelles, father and son, were nineteenth century collectors of wrought, gilt, silvered and cast iron. The collection was given to Rouen in 1917 and has been on display there since. There are fine examples of sewing and needlework scissors on display.

The photo to the right is of 17th and 18th century scissor cases; there is a matching display of the scissors which I don't include. These cases though engraved and filigree are relatively plain, it you want to see what can really be done with them have a look at a c1650 case in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in enamelled gold decorated with tulips and other flowers. Could this be a case for the type of “Little French scissors” that one of Ralph Verney’s sisters asked him to send her when he was in exile in France at the time of the Civil War. (Verney, 1892) This style of scissors, with or without a case can been seen hanging from women’s waists, as for example in the one of the Hollar engravings, which is from his Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus, The Several Habits of Englishwomen, 1640.

These are all small pivot style scissors. Larger pivot style scissors can be seen in the photo to the left. Another pair of these, helpfully engraved with the date 1636, is in the Metropolitan Museum. The more ornate scissors would have been more expensive, but basic scissors appear in the probate inventory of the chapman Richard Riddings at 1 penny a pair in 1680. (Spufford, 1984)

The other style of scissors are shears, made in a single piece. The two central shears in the photo below are 16^th century, and very similar to those that appear in the famous painting of a tailor by Moroni in the National Gallery, the Gallery have put an item about the painting on YouTube.

Spufford, M., 1984. The great reclothing of rural England: petty chapmen and their wares in the seventeenth century. London: Hambledon Press.

Verney, L. F., 1892. Memoirs of the Verney family during the seventeenth century.. London: Longmans.

Painted Pomp: art and fashion in the age of Shakespeare. Exhibition review

Painted Pomp: art and fashion in the age of Shakespeare. Holburne Museum, Bath. 26^th January to 6^th May 2013

The exhibition has three interconnecting strands. First there are the Lawson paintings, then some original clothing and accessories from the period that compliment and add to the paintings, and finally there are some reproductions of similar outfits to those depicted in the paintings, and related material from the Globe theatre.

There are nine full size portraits by William Lawson from the Suffolk collection. These are beautifully lit, and the colours are jewel like. The difference between seeing the paintings themselves and seeing reproductions is considerable. Look at the portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Newcastle, what you cannot see in this reproduction, which you can when you are close up to it in the exhibition, is that the gown is covered either in black braid or black embroidery. The black on black is very difficult to see, but the fact that Larkin nuanced his blacks says everything about the way he depicts fabrics.

There are also cases of original items which have been chosen specifically to go with the paintings. There is a beautifully embroidered jacket from the Museum of Fashion Collection at Bath, which mirrors the two paintings in which similar embroidered jackets are being worn, and particularly the portrait of Lady Dorothy Cary wearing a jacket closed with almost identical pink ribbons. There are three pairs and one single gauntleted glove from the collection of the Worshipful Company of Glovers.  Two of the glove designs show the pelican in her piety, one has flowers on the gauntlets, and the least ornamented pair has goldwork leaves and flowers. There is a pair of white pinked leather shoes, in a very small size, on loan from the Ashmolean.  There is a heavily decorated shoe horn, and a fan from the Royal Collection, with bone guards and a leather leaf cut in the style of reticella work.  There is a case of sixteenth and early seventeenth century cutwork and needle and bobbin laces, of the styles that are depicted in the paintings, and seven examples of ruff or band tassels. There are two shirts, one from the Museum of Fashion, covered in very fine blackwork embroidery, close ups of which can be seen on the Goodwyfe blog, and the other from the Somerset Museums Service with a lace collar and inset lace motif. Another item reflecting the paintings is a seventeenth century Turkish carpet, very similar in style to those that appear under the feet of Larkin’s subjects.

To round of the exhibition there are two complete outfits from productions at the Globe, Perdita from A Winter’s Tale, and Duke Vincentio from Measure for Measure. Accompanying them is a video showing how the two characters are dressed from their smock and shirt onward. There are also a few reproduction items, hat, gloves, ruff and collar, that can be tried on by members of the public.

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of related talks and workshops details of which can be found on the Museum’s website. The museum shop also stocks the recently published book The Suffolk Collection by Laura Houliston. (English Heritage, £50. 9781848020801 - cover above)

 

Doris Langley Moore and the Museum of Fashion at Bath

I spent a pleasant afternoon at the AGM of the West of England Costume Society where Rosemary Harden, curator of the Fashion Museum at Bath spoke about the origins of the Fashion Museum, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in the Assembly Rooms, and the museum’s creator Doris Langley Moore.

Doris Langley Moore’s collection started with fashion plates, but in 1928 she took part in a game of charades, and her hostess was so surprised that Doris could get into one of the garments that she had supplied for the protagonists to use, that she gave her the garment. Some months later Doris purchased another vintage gown which she was planning to cut up, however she balked at the idea, and thus her collection began.

Mrs Langley Moore had a wide collection of friends and acquaintances in the artistic and theatrical world of London, and when she published a book about her collection in 1949 – Women in Fashion - items from her collection where modelled by luminaries of the time such as the ballerinas Margot Forteyn and Beryl Grey, actresses Rachel Kempson and Vivien Leigh, the opera singer Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and many others. The young lady on the title page above is Vanessa Redgrave. Rosemary commented that many of the dresses in the book are no longer in the collection as it was never static. Mrs Langley Moore often sold off items as well as purchasing.

Even at this date Mrs Langley Moore was looking to open a museum. She acquired an Arts Council grant and was for a short period based in London, but in 1955 the collection moved to the home of the Marquess of Abergavenny at Eridge Castle in Kent, where it was opened by the Queen Mother. It was while the collection was at Eridge that a series of four, fifteen minute television programmes based on the collection where made. They were unusual in that, although there was no colour television in England at the time, they were made in colour. They can still be seen via the BBC archives.

The collection moved again, being based for a short period at the Royal Pavilion Brighton, before finally coming to rest at its current home in the Assembly Rooms in 1963. From that date on the Museum has instituted a “Dress of the Year” where a current fashion is chosen by a fashion journalist as exemplified by an outfit, from Mary Quant in 1963 to Sarah Burton in 2011. This year the museum is celebrating its 50^th anniversary with an exhibition of “50 Fabulous Frocks” which opened today.