The earliest surviving embroideries are Scythian, dated to between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE. Roughly from 330 CE until the 15th century, Byzantium produced embroideries lavishly ornamented with gold. Ancient Chinese embroideries have been excavated, dating from the T’ang dynasty (618–907 CE), but the most famous extant Chinese examples are the imperial silk robes of the Ch’ing dynasty (1644–1911/12). In India embroidery was also an ancient craft, but it is from the Mughal period (from 1556) that numerous examples have survived, many finding their way to Europe from the late 17th to the early 18th century through the East India trade. Stylized plant and floral motifs, notably the flowering tree, influenced English embroidery. The Dutch East Indies also produced silk embroideries in the 17th and 18th centuries. In Islamic Persia, examples survive from the 16th and 17th centuries, when embroideries show geometric patterns far removed by stylization from the animal and plant shapes that inspired them, owing to the our proscription of depicting living forms. In the 18th century these gave way to less severe, though still formal, flowers, leaves, and stems. In the 18th and 19th centuries a sort of patchwork called Resht was produced. Of the Middle Eastern work in the first half of the 20th century, there is a colourful peasant embroidery made in Jordan. In western Turkestan, Bokhara work with floral sprays in bright colors was done on covers in the 18th and 19th centuries. From the 16th century, Turkey produced elaborate embroideries in gold and coloured silks with a repertoire of stylized forms such as pomegranates, the tulip motif eventually predominating. The Greek islands in the 18th and 19th centuries produced many geometric embroidery patterns, differing from island to island, those of the Ionian islands and Scyros showing Turkish influence.
Embroidery in 17th- and 18th-century North America reflected European skills and conventions, such as crewel work, although the designs were simpler and the stitches were often modified to save thread; samplers, embroidered pictures, and mourning pictures were the most popular.
In the early 19th century almost all other forms of embroidery in England and North America were superseded by a type of needlepoint known as Berlin wool work. A later fashion, influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, was “art needlework,” embroidery done on coarse, natural-coloured linen.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
The South American countries were influenced by Hispanic embroidery. The Indians of Central America produced a type of embroidery known as feather work, using actual feathers, and certain tribes of North America developed quill work, embroidering skins and bark with dyed porcupine quills.
Embroidery is also commonly used as an embellishment in the savanna of western Africa and in Congo (Kinshasa).
Much contemporary embroidery work is stitched with a computerized embroidery machine using patterns “digitized” with embroidery software. In machine embroidery, different types of “fills” add texture and design to the finished work. Machine embroidery is used to add logos and monograms to business shirts or jackets, gifts, and team apparel as well as to decorate household linens, draperies, and decorator fabrics that mimic the elaborate hand embroidery of the past. Many people are choosing embroidered logos placed on shirts and jackets to promote their company. Yes, embroidery has come a long way, both in style, technique and use. It also appears to maintain its intrigue as its popularity continues to grow with it.
Post time: Feb-20-2023