COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

King, Donald & Levey, Santana, Embroidery in Britain from 1200-1750, V&A Publishing, 1993, pl.88

Synge, Lanto, Art of Embroidery - History Style and Technique, Antique collects ors Club, 2001, pl.161

This panel is likely to have been from a set of bed hangings which would have been luxurious and expensive, and only owned by those privileged enough to afford them. In the 17th/early 18th century they are likely to have been drawn onto the ground fabric by a professional or copied from a pattern and if not worked by them, then worked by women in the household, with skills honed from childhood. The designs are influenced by the Indian design of the flowering tree motif from the painted and dyed cotton palampores (bedcovers), the central tree becoming a repeated pattern across the width of the English worked panels. The crewel work designs were influenced by the printed Indian chintzes which in turn were adapted for the British market and European markets and incorporated Indian and Chinese elements. The panel offered here is technically very adept and stylistically quintessentially British in interpretation and execution.

For another hanging of the set see Lanto Synge, Art of Embroidery, 2001, pl. 161. There is a large panel and narrow panel of hangings from the same set, 1700-1729, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Acc.no.T.172-1923) and another related panel, late 17th century, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Acc.no.08.186.a), both larger panels include single trees with very distinctive 'c' shaped leaves and have elephants and monkeys across the lower band amongst the hillocks.

There also is a comparable 'crewel work' embroidered bed cover panel, from a group of 17th century, Jacobean, bed hangings (which also includes two curtains and pelmets), that are on display and dress a tester bed at Aston Hall, Birmingham Museums, Birmingham. This cited bed panel has a similar design, although with particularly dense and exuberant leaf foliage, but also incorporating flowers and small exotic birds eating berries, and exotic animals and foliage flanking an exotic pavilion along the lower hillocks edge.