Two William and Mary Crewel-Work Hangings, Late 17th Century

The collection of the Wykeham-Martin family, Leeds Castle, Kent;

Mallett, London;

From whom acquired by Aso O. Tavitian, 26 October 1999.

L. Synge, Mallett Millennium, London p.224-225, fig.286

L. Synge, The Art of Embroidery: History of Style and Technique, Woodbridge 2001, p.149, fig.134

These hangings are exceptional and rare survivors of a popular embroidery form practised across Britain known as crewelwork. This technique has a long history and refers to the surface embroidery in domestically-produced twisted wool (known as ‘crewel’, ‘crule’ or ‘croyl’) instead of richer threads like silk. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, this technique was particularly prominent both in the context of professional workshops and in amateur craft produced in the home – a pair of bed hangings from this period, though with a different style of design, was signed by its amateur embroiderer Abigail Pett and is on display in the British Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum (T.13 to I-1929). As in these examples by Pett, a frequent application of crewelwork panels was to adorn the piece of furniture that was often the most prominent and prestigious in a domestic interior, the four-poster bed.

The stylistic influences for a crewelwork panel like the present pair are both multiple and global, reflecting a taste for ornament that was fertilised by ever-increasing international trade. While they derive from Elizabethan monochromatic embroidery called ‘blackwork’, the thick and boldly curved leaves demonstrate the influence of the sub-category of Flemish tapestry often described as chou-fleur style (lit. ‘cabbage’) for the prominence of arched, well-rendered foliage in their designs. The famously sumptuous Mughal tent hangings known as qanat would also have been seen in England at this time, and Lanto Synge suggests that this is the origin for the low horizon of undulating ground at the base of panels like the present pair, from which the stylised tree grows (L. Synge, The Art of Embroidery: History of Style and Technique, Woodbridge 2001, p.151). The influence of Indian textiles over several centuries of English textiles is also well-documented, particularly the paisley pattern which would become more prominent in English textiles of the later eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, but which may influence the curving leaves on the present lot.

While crewelwork often varies considerably in style, there are some extant panels in public collections. At East Riddlesden Hall in West Yorkshire there is a panel (NT 201690), and the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum includes a pair of curtains (T.172-1923); both of these examples feature a similar hillocky ground and a dense composition of branches, tendrils, leaves and flowers on a cream-colored sky.