Synopses & Reviews
These textiles provide both documentation on the development of needlework and serve as social history. Included are pictorial panels, a box samplers, costume items and fanciful novelty pieces from the Ashmolean Museum's fine embroidery collection. As textiles, they reveal the highest craftsmanship in their use of colorful silks and glinting metal threads. As history, they epitomize the ideal of feminine behavior of the 1500 and 1600s Many depictions are idyllic country scenes; others show the fashionable clothing and ceremonial textiles of the time. Produced during one of the most turbulent periods in English history, when religious and political beliefs were splitting the country, a number of these secular pieces also became controversial because of their biblical imagery.