page_title: English embroidery
section_title: Berlin work
hierarchical_section_title: English embroidery / Glorious Revolution to the Great War / Berlin work
caption_attribution_description: English: Woman's Purse c. 1840. Cotton canvas with wool needlepoint (Berlin work), silk-braided cord, and silk chenille tassels, Europe, 6 x 8 in. (15.24 x 20.32 cm), Costume and Textiles collection, M.2007.211.280.
context_page_description: English embroidery includes embroidery worked in England or by English people abroad from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. The oldest surviving English embroideries include items from the early 10th century preserved in Durham Cathedral and the 11th century Bayeux Tapestry, if it was worked in England. The professional workshops of Medieval England created rich embroidery in metal thread and silk for ecclesiastical and secular uses. This style was called Opus Anglicanum or "English work", and was famous throughout Europe.
  With the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, the focus of English embroidery increasingly turned to clothing and household furnishings, leading to another great flowering of English domestic embroidery in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. The end of this period saw the rise of the formal sampler as a record of the amateur stitcher's skills. Curious fashions of the mid-17th century were raised work or stumpwork, a pictorial style featuring detached and padded elements, and crewel work, featuring exotic leaf motifs worked in wool yarn.
context_section_description: In the early 19th century, canvaswork in tent or petit point stitch again became popular.  The new fashion, using printed patterns and coloured tapestry wools imported from Berlin, was called Berlin wool work. Patterns and wool for Berlin work appeared in London in 1831. Berlin work was stitched to hand-coloured or charted patterns, leaving little room for individual expression, and was so popular that "Berlin work" became synonymous with "canvaswork".  Its chief characteristic was intricate three-dimensional looks created by careful shading.  By mid-century, Berlin work was executed in bright colours made possible by the new synthetic dyes.  Berlin work was very durable and was made into furniture covers, cushions, bags, and slippers as well as for embroidered "copies" of popular paintings. The craze for Berlin work peaked around 1850 and died out in the 1870s, under the influence of a competing aesthetic that would become known as art needlework.
caption: Berlin wool work purse, c. 1840, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.2007.211.280.
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