"Slips" Elizabethan and Stuart Embroidery
by Meg Andrews
 A 'slip' is an embroidered motif, usually a plant or flower with the heel or base showing, but insects and animals were also popular motifs. Embroidered 'slips' acquired their name from gardeners' slips or cuttings, used to propagate plants. This embroidery was popular from the mid-16th century to the mid-17th century. Worked in wool and silk on linen canvas in tent or cross stitch, slips were cut out and applied to a wool or velvet background for use as bed curtains, hangings, cushions etc. Sometimes many hundreds of small pieces were applied to one hanging. Often they were naive in design and out of scale, but nonetheless identifiable and accurate in their rendering. |
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The style of embroidering individual type of flowers, insects etc probably originates from illustrations in one of the many natural history, botanical or herbal books that were available at the time where motifs are presented independent of each other. John Gerard, in the introduction to his Herball of 1597, likened a garden to embroidery rather than the other way round: 'For if delight may provoke men's labour, what greater delight is there than to behold the earth apparelled with plants, as with a robe of embroidered worke......' |
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Bilbliography: |
Slips can be seen, amongst many
other places, at: |
There
was a great interest in England during this period in
horticulture and flowers which was translated into embroidery.
Slips were nearly always the work of amateur needlewoman, hence
their naive quality. The embroidered garden of the Elizabethan
period was seldom if ever taken directly from life and the
embroideress relied on pattern books for her designs. She might
also use woodcuts and engravings in contemporary herbals and
bestiaries, and other illustrated books, as sources of design.
Sometimes a professional draughtsman was employed to draw out
the design on the linen. In some of the existing pattern books
the outline has been pricked and it is clear that the design was
pounced on to the material by the needlewoman herself. Charcoal
was shaken over the paper pattern and the design translated onto
the linen through the holes. Linen, with the design already
drawn or printed on it, could also be bought ready to work.
Slips
can be seen on a great many 16th and 17th century embroidery.
Some of the most famous are at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire,
where inventories of 1601 include ' fyve peeces of
hangings....set with trees and slips and Griphons', and 'a
footestool of oring tawnie velvet set with nedleworke slips and
oring tawnie frenge' (Clabburn). The bedhangings in Mary Queen
of Scots room at Hardwick have applique slips, probably worked
by Mary during her imprisonment.
ANTIQUES
ANTIQUE PRINTS
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