Tuesday 23 August 2011

A Victorian Gothic window filled with Flowers











This is rather a lovely 19th century Victorian woolwork panel, the design mimicking a gothic mullioned window filled with florals.

It has been worked in wool on canvas somewhere towards the end of the 19th century, an example of Berlin woolwork, I think, where women could purchase a painted paper pattern to follow or later, pre-printed canvas to embroider. The reverse shows the much brighter sometimes slightly garish colours fashionable during this period as new dyes were invented and sometimes overused due to their newness.
The colours on the front are now more pleasing as they

have become more muted over time.


I like this panel a lot, it would have been framed and hung somewhere about the house, perhaps in a room without large windows to evoke the world outside, but perhaps it also had a religious or devotional undertone as the window imagery evokes Church stained glass windows and the flowers such as the lilies shown here were often used as symbols in religious iconography.


www.morgaine-le-fay.co.uk

2 comments: