My embroidered recreation of the ‘Angel Choir’ is finished. It is based on a chasuble cross fragment kept at the Bayerische Nationalmuseum in Munich. The fragment is part of a much larger group of embroideries showing the life of Mary and Jesus. There is evidence that these mass-produced embroideries were made with the help of printing blocks. The design drawings were printed onto the embroidery linen. They prove that some embroiderers immediately incorporated the newest technology (printing) into their workshop workflow. The resulting embroideries are very standardised and have a lovely, primitive feel. They are perfect as teaching models. The techniques used are not very complicated, and the shading in the silk embroidery is relatively simple. Still, the result is quite striking!

To me, the most striking part of these embroideries is their background. They always consist of these sunny spirals. Most of them worked with red couching stitches, but yellow/white/beige suns also exist. And there is a myriad of ways in which these sunny spirals can be worked. A few examples are very neat and exact; the majority aren’t. Sometimes, the spirals are drawn (or printed?) onto the background fabric. In other cases, the embroiderer just started somewhere and probably used the length of his fingers to achieve a more or less regular pattern.

The spirals can be worked in a grid, or as I have in my embroidered recreation. The rectangular or triangular areas between the spirals can be filled with silk embroidery or with more gold. Either way, there’s a lot of fudging going on. Perfect for students to try to make their own embroidered recreation!

The background also has another interesting ‘function’. It tricks your eyes into believing that the angels hover above the golden background. As the spirals cause the gold threads to catch light from many directions, there is a lot of movement. Not unlike those spiral patterns seen in the 1960s. So, even though the angels and the gold are worked at the same level (i.e. the angels are not a slip), the background pattern creates depth. This is something a ‘normal’ diaper pattern cannot create.

The sunny spiral pattern probably first appears as a background filling in Bohemia and/or Poland in the late 14th century. But it became the hallmark of embroideries from the German-speaking lands in the 15th century. It is not seen on embroideries from the Netherlands or Southern Europe.

Literature
Fircks, J. von (2010): Serienproduktion im Medium mittelalterlicher Stickerei – Holzschnitte als Vorlagenmaterial für eine Gruppe mittelrheinischer Kaselkreuze des 15. Jahrhunderts. In: U-Ch. Bergemann, A. Stauffer (Eds.): Reiche Bilder. Aspekte zur Produktion und Funktion von Stickereien im Spätmittelalter. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, pp. 65–82.