Sun Sep 30, 2018 08:35 AM

Morning Modelbuch (9/30/2018)

If you’ve been reading along for awhile, you may remember that part of my fascination with modrlbucher developed because I asked for historic patterns and was told to buy Vinciolo. Which I did. Them I had no idea what to do with it. This is a similar case. I wanted to get more historic patterns, but I was a broke college student in the mid 1990’s with no local embroidery shop that carried anything other than Prim style cross stitch or Aunt Martha’s iron on transfers. I had also been told Hedgehog Handworks was the place to shop. (I’m still upset she retired and closed.) So, I went into the historic embroidery book section and bought the least expensive book.

That book was Kathleen Epstein’s _A Book of Flowers, Fruits, Beasts, Birds, and Flies: Seventeenth-Century Patterns for Embroiderers ._ I got it, flipped through it, was mildly entertained by the monkey and a couple of other images, didn’t bother to read the introduction, and was generally unimpressed and didn’t know what to do with it. It pretty much sat on my shelf untouched until a couple of years ago when I got interested in embroidered caskets, mirrors, bags, and stumpwork embroidery of the late 16th and the 17th century.

I feel kind of like a doofus for having purchased yet another book I didn’t understand, but modelbuch research has made the purchase worthwhile. I ran across a similar book of prints by Paul Furst from 1652 not too long ago and couldn’t find out much info about it, so I finally got around to reading the really useful introduction of the book I already had on the shelf. Which then had me looking at books by Hoefnagel, John Payne, and Crispijn van de Passe with similar images and subtitles aiming them at craftspeople.

Here, therefore, are some of the plates from Curious Works Press collection of prints published by Peter Stent. I’ll be sharing the other books over the next few days.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/book-of-flowers-fruits-beasts-birds-and-flies-seventeenth-century-patterns-for-embroiderers-printed-and-sold-by-peter-stent/oclc/689815105&referer=brief_results