Shakespeare's Flowers in Stumpwork

Wild flowers, herbs and gardens are a recurring feature in Shakespeare’s work: from Oberon’s ‘bank where the wild thyme blows’ and where oxlips, violets, woodbine, musk-roses and eglantine grow, to the Spring Song, ‘when daisies pied, and violets blue’, with lady-smocks and yellow cuckoo-buds ‘do paint the meadows with delight’. His plays are rich in the plant and herb lore of Tudor England, using plants to symbolise, among other virtues and vices, yearning, unrequited love, malice and mischief, triumph and glory.?The projects in this book, worked in stumpwork and surface embroidery, feature many of the flowers found in the gardens, fields and hedgerows of the time. Lavishly illustrated in colour, with detailed step-by-step instructions accompanied by explanatory diagrams, Shakespeare’s Flowers in Stumpwork will make a delightful addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in textured and dimensional embroidery. This embroidered border was inspired by the painted border of a letter written by Lady Anne Clifford to her father in 1598 - the time of Elizabeth I and Shakespeare. Worked on ivory silk satin, in stumpwork and surface embroidery, this design features fourteen assorted flowers and fruits popular at the time, including the Apothecary rose, Sweet briar and Heartsease, Barberries, Bellflower, Borage and Periwinkle, Cornflower, Gillyflower and Knapweed, and Grapes, Plums, Redcurrants and Strawberries. As in the original letter, the panel is outlined with pairs of fine red lines - these have been worked in back stitch. This border may be used to surround a mirror, or to enclose a special photograph, a monogram, a precious memento, or perhaps a tiny stumpwork figure.