A medieval greeting meaning ‘peace be with you’, I have been a passionate embroiderer for as long as I can remember, which must be close to 40 years. I started off with cross-stitch embroidery, which is still a firm favourite, and dabbled in whitework embroidery in my teens. When my archaeology job brought me to England, I fell head over heels in love with goldwork embroidery at the Royal School of Needlework. Although in the following years, I tried hard to be a ‘normal’ embroidery tutor with a vast repertoire of techniques, I kept returning to goldwork embroidery. But something was missing.

Usually, goldwork embroidery courses draw a crowd. I suspect that many embroiderers must have an ‘inner magpie’. So, making a career out of ‘only’ teaching goldwork embroidery would probably have worked just fine. But I wanted more. I somehow wanted to incorporate my academic credentials into my work as an embroidery tutor.

The penny dropped when I visited the exhibition ‘Middeleeuwse Borduurkunst uit de Nederlanden’ (Medieval Embroidered Art from the Netherlands) in 2015. Those medieval goldwork pieces fascinated me. They were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and so different from the goldwork pieces I had been making up until then. From then on, I studied medieval goldwork embroidery, made replicas and passed on my newly acquired knowledge to my students.

And that’s how Acupictrix – Dr Jessica Grimm was born. A one-woman business run from my dining room table in a two-room apartment overlooking the sleepy village of Ettal in the Bavarian Alps. By the way, acupictrix is the Latin form used for a female embroiderer in the Middle Ages. It means ‘she who paints with a needle’.

Happy painting stitching, Acupictrix – Dr Jessica Grimm