So my latest project for the Society for Creative Anachronism is going to be my own rendition of a decorative pillow that was found in the grave of a very medieval bishop in Italy.
Bishop Agli was a parish priest in the small town of Impruneta from 1439 until 1477. His sealed tomb was opened at the end of World War II, where a small pillow, roughly 12" in size, was found underneath the Bishop's head. What is most remarkable about the pillow is that both the front and back faces are pieced. Other than a few extant clothing pieces, small relic bag from a Buddhist Cave (dated 600-900 CE) and the jupon of Edward The Black Prince, we can only look at the paintings and frescoes of the era and wonder if the patchwork clothing and wall cloths that we see depicted are in fact evidence of piecework or interesting weaving techniques.
It is hard in some of these portraits to not immediately scream "Evidence! Evidence!", but we cannot know for certain how the rendered textiles were manufactured. The Impruneta Cushion and a wall cloth found in a well shaft of a castle in Budapest that dates to roughly 1301-1387, both shed some light that piecework was not entirely unknown and provided some evidence that some of the textiles we see in the pictorial evidence may in fact have been manufactured using piecework. An excellent article based upon the conservation of the wall cloth is available at the International Centre for the study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, and it does show that not only was the cloth pieced, it was also quilted. While most research tells you that all quilting prior to the Victorian era was whole cloth quilting, these two textiles gives us a window into a time, where piecework may have been more available than we have previously believed.
The Impruneta Pillow has a pieced top done in a variety of silk fabrics (velvet, lampas, brocades, satins and plain silks) and the back is pieced in wool squares in green, blue,red, black, and pale yellow. The piecing on the front side is a variation of the following block Rolling Star quilt Block
while the back is done on point in the modern design we know as The Trip Around the World.
In the Impruneta cushion the solid squares or the Rolling Star Block in the design are finished off as octagons. Then Nine of these octagons are pieced together to make the face of the pillow.
The back of the pillow of which I have not been able to find a photograph on the internet is described as having been pieced together in what modern quilters would call the Trip Around the World Pattern. Lisa Evans in her paper Survivor or Sole Anomaly, gives a very detailed description of the size of the diamonds, and how the colors radiate out from the center.
In turn I'd like to make my own rendition of the pillow. I quite simply cannot see as I used to do, and the smallest of the pieces on the front of the pillow is about the size of half of pinky fingernail, so it means that I will be blowing it up some so that I can manage the pieces. I also want to do the front and back as separate wall-hangings, simply so that I can display them better at events and for use in my own home. While I don't think that medieval castles had "wall-hangings" of piecework on them as such is shown in the pillow, I don't wish to spend hundreds of hours on a project that will be thrown in my floor and wallowed on by my boys.
I started with this block that I made in EQ and I made my templates and gave it ago. I got the first star set made and decided that I had gone WAY too big.
So now I'm back at it again this time with smaller templates. Will see this weekend how it goes, and if it goes well, I'll post a tutorial next week.
Cathy
Bishop Agli was a parish priest in the small town of Impruneta from 1439 until 1477. His sealed tomb was opened at the end of World War II, where a small pillow, roughly 12" in size, was found underneath the Bishop's head. What is most remarkable about the pillow is that both the front and back faces are pieced. Other than a few extant clothing pieces, small relic bag from a Buddhist Cave (dated 600-900 CE) and the jupon of Edward The Black Prince, we can only look at the paintings and frescoes of the era and wonder if the patchwork clothing and wall cloths that we see depicted are in fact evidence of piecework or interesting weaving techniques.
It is hard in some of these portraits to not immediately scream "Evidence! Evidence!", but we cannot know for certain how the rendered textiles were manufactured. The Impruneta Cushion and a wall cloth found in a well shaft of a castle in Budapest that dates to roughly 1301-1387, both shed some light that piecework was not entirely unknown and provided some evidence that some of the textiles we see in the pictorial evidence may in fact have been manufactured using piecework. An excellent article based upon the conservation of the wall cloth is available at the International Centre for the study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, and it does show that not only was the cloth pieced, it was also quilted. While most research tells you that all quilting prior to the Victorian era was whole cloth quilting, these two textiles gives us a window into a time, where piecework may have been more available than we have previously believed.
The Impruneta Pillow has a pieced top done in a variety of silk fabrics (velvet, lampas, brocades, satins and plain silks) and the back is pieced in wool squares in green, blue,red, black, and pale yellow. The piecing on the front side is a variation of the following block Rolling Star quilt Block
while the back is done on point in the modern design we know as The Trip Around the World.
In the Impruneta cushion the solid squares or the Rolling Star Block in the design are finished off as octagons. Then Nine of these octagons are pieced together to make the face of the pillow.
The back of the pillow of which I have not been able to find a photograph on the internet is described as having been pieced together in what modern quilters would call the Trip Around the World Pattern. Lisa Evans in her paper Survivor or Sole Anomaly, gives a very detailed description of the size of the diamonds, and how the colors radiate out from the center.
In turn I'd like to make my own rendition of the pillow. I quite simply cannot see as I used to do, and the smallest of the pieces on the front of the pillow is about the size of half of pinky fingernail, so it means that I will be blowing it up some so that I can manage the pieces. I also want to do the front and back as separate wall-hangings, simply so that I can display them better at events and for use in my own home. While I don't think that medieval castles had "wall-hangings" of piecework on them as such is shown in the pillow, I don't wish to spend hundreds of hours on a project that will be thrown in my floor and wallowed on by my boys.
I started with this block that I made in EQ and I made my templates and gave it ago. I got the first star set made and decided that I had gone WAY too big.
So now I'm back at it again this time with smaller templates. Will see this weekend how it goes, and if it goes well, I'll post a tutorial next week.
Cathy
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