Detail of an Elizabethan (late 16th century) British embroidery (Cotsen collection, Los Angeles).On Sunday, 28th April 2019, Gillian Vogelsang writes:

My recent trip to Los Angeles was also intended to help with the TRC/Bloomsbury series about the history of world embroidery (the first volume came out in 2016, another on Central Asian, Iranian Plateau and Indian sub-continent embroidery will be available within 12 months).

I was invited by Lyssa Stapleton of the Cotsen Family Foundation to see an amazing group of embroideries. These form part of the Cotsen textile collection that will shortly be leaving LA for their new home in The Textile Museum, Washington D.C. They are to be the core of a new textile study centre that is going to be opened later this year.

I was able to examine a group of medieval embroideries, as well some fantastic 17th century English stumpwork and more ‘normal’ embroidery (tent stitch). We hope to study these embroideries in greater detail in due course.

Central and Eastern Europe were not forgotten, as the Fowler Museum has a wonderful collection of textiles and outfits from this part of the world. Marla Berns, the Director of the Fowler Museum, has very kindly agreed to allow me the use of their collection and to provide high resolution photographs of the objects for use in the relevant volume.

Two developments that mean that the Encyclopaedia of Embroidery series is going to be really well illustrated, which is so important for texitle and embroidery lovers!