Victorian Woolwork Embroidery

I have a real soft spot for Victorian embroidery, especially the garish, somewhat cluttered designs that appear in Berlin woolwork. Sometime around the mid 1800s, aniline or artificial dyes were introduced, giving a different range of colour possibilities in textile production. For a while the Victorians used colour with gay abandon, sometimes quite harshly, but time generally mellows all but the most strident of colours in wool and silk, the decorative, typically Victorian embroidered pictures still have great appeal. Often worked from mass-produced painted cardboard gridded designs, and eventually on pre-printed canvas, the Victorians displayed an extraordinary sense of verve and colour in their work.

Please click on each photogragh to see the detail.