Elizabethan Elegance

As a part of Palmerston North’s Annual Shakespearean Festival celebrating William Shakespeare’s 445th birthday, Taylor-Jensen Fine Arts will present Elizabethan Elegance, featuring the work of the Manawatu Embroiderers’ Guild. The Elizabethan Elegance exhibition will display embroidery and other handcrafts in the styles popular during the period of Shakespeare’s life and times. Work for the exhibition includes embroidered textile wall panels bearing traditional Elizabethan-style embroidery; purses decorated with traditional or ‘blackwork’ embroidery; a chair seat with wool crewel-work; examples of ‘Scarlet work’ and many other pieces to surprise and delight. Shakespearean costumes will also be a part of this celebratory exhibition.

A major feat of embroidery work will also be celebrated during the Shakespearean Festival–the fifteenth anniversary of the presentation of the New Zealand-produced Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Hangings. In 1990/91, five hundred women from all over New Zealand produced four 3.6m high hangings from a fusion of hand and machine embroidery, dye and appliqué work; $1.3 million dollars in cash and kind was raised to see the project through. The hangings toured New Zealand, Australia, the USA and Canada before they were officially presented to the Patron of Shakespeare’s Globe, HRH Prince Philip in April 1994. The Globe Theatre opened in June 1997 and the hangings feature in a permanent exhibition on the theatre and its history.

Included among the intricate embroidery in Elizabethan Elegance will be ‘blackwork’–a technique of counted thread embroidery, usually in black silk on white linen or cotton. Blackwork developed as a way to ornament shirts, chemises and smocks; modern embroiderers create stand-alone artwork such as maps, tudor houses, animals and chessboard designs usually framed for personal display. Today ‘blackwork’ refers to this type of embroidery not specifically to the colour of the threads used as they could be red as well as black and include gold and silver threadwork.

The Manawatu Embroiderers’ Guild was established in 1969 by a small group of keen needlewomen eager to promote and foster the art of the needle in the Manawatu. Since then it has grown to over 70 members. The Guild meets monthly and holds classes and social events for its members. It not only offers opportunities for sharing the wide variety of traditional needle-working skills, but also it provides an active environment for artistic endeavour in the textile arts generally. Most of its founding members remain active within the Guild, either as mentors, advisors and tutors for Guild activities, or as well-known textile artists in their own right. The Manawatu Embroiderers' Guild will celebrate its 40th year with its ‘Ruby Celebrations’ in June. The Guild plans to hold meetings to remember ‘where we have been’ and to develop plans to take them into the future. Members will be challenged to create embroidery based on their founding year “which will give the members a wide variety of stitching ideas from what they were doing forty years ago to what was happening in the world of music, politics, weather or social economics…the moon landing, the Beatles, Pop Art or even The Year of the Rooster.” The Manawatu Embroiderers’ Guild invites any past member of the Guild to come to their 40th Ruby Celebration Luncheon at Wharerata, Massey University, Palmerston North on 7th June 2009. Past members should contact Sandra Hall on 06 354 5749 or email to Sandra@sandrahall.co.nz for further information.

The Manawatu Embroiderers’ Guild is a member of the Association of New Zealand Embroiderers’ Guilds Inc. (ANZEG), one of 59 such groups across New Zealand. The Guild offers workshops and classes to members at all levels taught by both local and international instructors. Those that seek further challenges can work through a New Zealand Certificate in Embroidery. For further information visit the Guild’s website at www.anzeg.org.nz.

Event listed by Stuart Schwartz

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