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On Thursday, Michele Goldman – a guest lecturer at the Page Home Farm Museum – unveiled a topic not usually discussed in history books. “Subversive Stitches: the embroidered war between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I” outlined the subliminal messages Queen Mary wove into her creations, as well as the technical aspects of the skill required to yield desired effects.
During Elizabethan times, fine embroidery epitomized the wealth and status of those in power: the church and royalty. Women’s options for acceptable forms of leisure were limited. Thus, embroidery emerged as an important form of entertainment.
While most needlework art had its roots in glorifying the Catholic Church, Goldman’s talk focused primarily on Queen Mary’s pining and indignation for the English crown. As Queen Mary was denied succession to the throne, Queen Elizabeth kept her imprisoned for 19 years until her execution. After Queen Mary’s countless thwarted plots to regain her freedom, around 30 textile creations remained to document her torment.
Despite depicting Queen Mary as the least shrewd of the queens, Goldman was empathetic to Mary’s plight, even as she called Queen Mary naive for not considering all of the possible reactions to her own embroidery. One of the most provocative tapestries was the Norfolk panel, which illustrated God’s hand pruning a vine, representing the barren Queen Elizabeth, with a caption that roughly translated to, “Together we will rip off that fruitless vine.”
“Textile art can be as edgy as other media – you’re just using fiber instead of clay or paint,” Goldman said. The owner of Fiberphilia, Goldman has been involved with needlework for 39 years and added that her interest in Queen Mary’s story supports her belief that “not all stitching is pretty and sweet.”
Not all of it is for simple decoration, either. Queen Elizabeth, who never formally acknowledged any of the disparaging symbolic needlework created by her prisoner, employed her skills as well as the labor-intensive efforts of others to perpetuate the image of a powerful queen.
For example, the famous “Ditchley Portrait” by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, where the queen poses in a white, jeweled dress with a showy, frilled collar, is such an expression of embroidery used to show status. Goldman explained that the collar shown in the painting was the result of a technique called “reticella,” a method that would require 75 hours of work for only two square inches.
Although embroidery may not be used by modern rulers to create an atmosphere of tension, according to Goldman, many of the artistic developments in Elizabethan times are still in popular use today.
