A Parrot, A Leopard, A Lion

Description

This design was inspired by an early eighteenth century English picture executed in tent stitch: a magnificent example of the art of needle painting by the meticulous employment of silk threads on fine linen. This Arcadian scene illustrates new and exotic creatures, increasingly popular with the upper middle-class English audience, intrigued by the fascinating new discoveries being made by mariners and men of science as the world expanded. The exaggerated shapes suggest that this might have been a piece drawn by a pattern drawer whose vocation is described as follows: “Pattern drawers are employed in drawings Patterns for Embroiderers. They draw Patterns upon Paper, which they sell to Workmen that want them. This requires a fruitful Fancy, to invent new whims to please the changeable follies of the Ladies, for whose use their Work is chiefly intended. It requires no great Taste in Painting, nor the Principles of Drawing: but a wild kind of Imagination, to adorn their Works with a sort of regular confusion.” (The London Tradesman, 1747). Pattern drawers used published design books for their inspiration, as well as wild flights of imagination. The women who stitched these patterns invented their own color vocabulary, and that’s where their genius survives. Stitched over one thread of 35-count linen, this finished piece will measure approximately 8-1/4″ x 8-1/2″. Cross, tent, and backstitch are used to execute the piece over one thread of linen. The instructions include linen cuts required for stitching the piece over two threads of linen as well as one, on thread counts from 25 to 40. ERRATA: There is a simple error on the chart. Symbol # on the chart is the same as symbol ||, which is DMC color 733. Reproduced by the Scarlet Letter.