Hardwick Hall Textiles

Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire. Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire.

The Hardwick Hall collection is some four hundred years old. It is the largest collection of sixteenth and seventeenth century embroidery, laces, tapestry and other textiles to have been preserved by a single, English private family. The objects include bedcovers, pillow covers, slips (including examples embroidered by Mary Queen of Scots), table covers (such as the Tobit table carpet), upholsteries and wall hangings.

In 1601, Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (1521-1608), more widely known as Bess of Hardwick, ordered an inventory of the household furnishings, including the textiles, in her three properties at Chatsworth, Hardwick and Chelsea. The inventory still survives. In her will she bequeathed all of the inventory items to her heirs, to be preserved in perpetuity.

The needlework collection includes a range of embroideries, and is housed at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, England (the house was built in 1590 and is now a National Trust property).

Hardwick Hall also houses the famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth, commissioned by Bess of Hardwick and dating to c. 1599, in which she wears a skirt that is embroidered in Jacobean style (click here for the entry).

Source: LEVEY, Santina M. (1998). Elizabethan Treasures: The Hardwick Hall Textiles, London: The National Trust.

Digital source of illustration (retrieved 25 May 2016)

GVE

Last modified on Sunday, 22 January 2017 18:18
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