Trip to the V&A Archives - Part Six - Orphrey Panel

Credit here at the V&A.

Here is an example of later English work - post-plague, that is. This piece is dated 1380-1410, and as the museum records specify, " It is not... the finest in quality." It is a panel from an orphrey, and depicts the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket. Again, as the museum records state, "the quality of English embroidery and design was starting to decline [at this date]". It is still using the same types of stitch in the main, but the execution is now flawed - as the plague years had certainly disrupted the craft and trade life of the country (and especially the inner-London guilds and workshops where the work mostly took place), it is perhaps to be assumed that the artisans who would earlier have passed on their skills to the apprentices had mostly been 'taken' with the sickness, and that the later work was a result of retrospective study of finished pieces. A few details of the piece:

Firstly, the faces of the knights, with underside-couched mail and laid silver thread for helmets, the silver having mostly oxidised and turned a dirty, dark grey. Especial care has been taken to differentiate between the knights with different styles of beard and moustache.

A detail of the altar here, which shows many different textured stitches, one of which interests me particularly - the diamonds at the lower edge of this photo. Take note also of the figure partially hidden by the icon. This face is a good example of the decline in stitching standards - compare it with the faces in my last post. The museum record remarks that the figure of Mary is "crudely drawn".

Lastly, a detail of Becket's cloak, which does hark back to earlier examples in that the direction of the stitching follows the stress of the fabric in the painted figure - but it looks as though there are only two colours used, which makes the contrast too defined. In earlier examples, the colour was slowly changed, or the stitching did the work in a single tone. This gives this example a stiff, crumpled look.

I had a brilliant day at the archives, and hope to return many times. All the images in this series are printed in low resolution, and are not to be copied! They are the property of the V&A.