Stumpwork
By Adeline Panamaroff
Adeline, a freelance writer/proofreader, located in Edmonton, Alberta can be contacted at www.adelinepanamaroff.com for writing and marketing requests.
History: Stumpwork, originally used exclusively for religious vestments and church decorations, first became popular among the wealthy class in England during the 17th Century. It was considered the pinnacle of a young stitcher’s education and skill. The ultimate project for an advanced stitcher was an object called a casket, a small box that was covered with scenes and motifs that were worked with stumpwork. These boxes were used to hold treasured personal items, letters, needle working tools, jewelry, or anything else that the owner wanted.
Other objects that featured stumpwork pieces were mirror frames, book covers, trays, gloves and cushion covers. This stitching technique later became popular in France within the royal court of Louis XV, in the late 18th Century, where stumpwork was used to adorn women’s clothing, particularly wide collars.
The motifs used were often drawn from nature, ranging from butterflies, birds, leaves, flowers, people and horses. As the popularity of stumpwork increased, designers started to build kits for those stitchers who may have had the skill to do the stitching, but did not want to create their own patterns. These kits often had the shape of the design stamped right on the fabric to be stitched. Scenes from the Bible were the common source of inspiration for these kits. Other themes where the current kings and queens, or young men and ladies in the fashions of the day. This technique has enjoyed continued popularity and today can be seen in the creation of elaborate wall hangings.
The word stumpwork is more of a modern term for the technique, which came into use around 1890 CE. Before this stumpwork was called raised work, embroidery on the stamp, embossed, or cut canvas work. Stumpwork may have come to be the term used in reference to these techniques because of the use of stamping the patterns onto cloth for kits, or because often small pieces of wood were used to give raised shape to pieces of works, so the stitches are worked on a stump of wood.
Technique: One of the appeals of stumpwork is the free range that it gives to the stitcher. There is no limit on what stitches can be used, anything from lace work, satin stitch or anything else the stitcher feels will give texture to the work. Additionally, often a design will be out of proportion, with say a bird being larger than the person who is standing in front of it. This creates a sense of freedom for the worker to not have to stitch to artistic standards.
This 3-D embroidery technique uses a wide variety of materials such as wire, pieces of carved wood, layers of felt, soft rubber foam, and anything else the stitcher feels will create the effect desired. These various materials are shaped into the final desired form, attached to the backing material and then stitched over with colored embroidery floss, purl cotton, metallic threads, or other fibers to create both color and texture to the final design. The stitches that are used to overlay these materials can vary depending on the desired result.
Examples of stumpwork include this beautifully crafted passionflower (figure 1). Utilizing wire, colored mesh, colored beads, and other materials this flower has been worked to create all the fine details that a person can see a live passionflower, including the numerous stamen and pistils that make this flower such a radiant specimen.
Figure 2: “Spring in Seville” - Designed & worked by Paula B.
In this other example (figure 2), styrofoam balls were used to form the oranges which were then covered with a net of fine needle lace. The leaves were formed from wire and then stitched over with green threads. These were then stitched in place onto the backing fabric to create this wonderful 3-D wall hanging.
Innovation: While stumpwork has enjoyed a revival in many stitching circles, when worked by hand it has mostly remained unchanged throughout history, except for the materials used. The one area that has shown massive innovation with stumpwork has been with machine embroidery. Here stumpwork has taken off with its use in logos and other messages that are machine stitched onto hats, jackets, and bags, with soft foam being used to create the raised relief effect.
References and Further Reading:
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