Countess Mari Alexander asked me to do the beading for Her Royal Highness Aurora’s superhumeral to be used at this coming October Crown. My Laurel Isela will do the other for His Royal Highness Rolf. I was sent a kit with the superhumeral prepped for needlework, all the beads and cord to be used in the project, and a couple pages of instructions and plans. There are 8 larger oval and square beads of mother of pearl to be couched in the embroidered bezel technique that I used in my white court Byzantine, smaller square pieces and pearls to be beaded on, and black cord to be couched on. For the research pertaining to the technique of the embroidered bezels, please read the report on my white court Byzantine dress.

Here’s your history lesson for the day: the Byzantine garb called superhumerals were jeweled/embroidered/whatever collars that were worn by royalty. They are seen in mosaics and paintings as closely fitting around the neck, shoulders, and upper chest and back. As far I know, there is only one such collar in existence, which is made completely out of metal and gems. There are other cloth collars, which are done entirely in embroidery in the Coptic style. Contemporary depictions, however, appear to point to a cloth-based collar as a solid ground fabric in a variety of colors that can be seen behind the other bits. Since it’s near impossible to draw construction details from broadly-detailed mosaics and the worn illuminations we have today, we are left to come to our own conclusions about what they may have looked like in period. Contemporary writings speak of gem-encrusted royals with jewels, gold, silver, and embroidery covering their clothing. So it is as safe as anything else to conclude that these adornments are acceptably period things to put on superhumerals.

After working on the superhumeral for a good while (I’m not keeping a time long for this project), I’ve marked fold lines for eventual completion, have tacked down all the larger beads and prepped the oval ones for bezeling, and completed most of three of the bezels. One unusual thing that is happening is that a dark line, almost like a pen line, is appearing around the gold stitching. It must be the way the surface fabric is reacting to the close stitching, but it is annoying and detracting. So I broached the idea of surrounding the larger beads with pearls or another light-colored bead to everyone involved in the project and they all liked it. In addition, surrounding the bezels with pearls is what was done on the original Austrian chasuble that this technique comes from, so it would be perfectly keeping with period. I have ordered some pearls and beads from Fire Mountain Gems and will do some test beadings for them all to decide which will work best.

After working on the superhumeral for a good while (I’m not keeping a time long for this project), I’ve marked fold lines for eventual completion, have tacked down all the larger beads and prepped the oval ones for bezeling, and completed most of three of the bezels. One unusual thing that is happening is that a dark line, almost like a pen line, is appearing around the gold stitching. It must be the way the surface fabric is reacting to the close stitching, but it is annoying and detracting. So I broached the idea of surrounding the larger beads with pearls or another light-colored bead to everyone involved in the project and they all liked it. In addition, surrounding the bezels with pearls is what was done on the original Austrian chasuble that this technique comes from, so it would be perfectly keeping with period. I have ordered some pearls and beads from Fire Mountain Gems and will do some test beadings for them all to decide which will work best.

I have finished the bezels for all of the large oval pieces and am now fighting with the square ones.

I discovered I needed to go to the source for help on these – Mistress Aldith. Theoretically, the shape of the opening over the gem is supposed to match the shape of the gem itself. Below are two pictures taken from the book Aldith first saw the Austrian chasuble in, which show the stitching over both an oval and rectangular gem.

In both cases, the stitching more of less follows the shape of the gem. The sides of the rectangle are slightly bent, but it’s still recognizable as a rectangle. Aldith suggested tacking down the corners of the cotton loop over the square, really packing the gold stitching in the corners, and stitching with a light hand along the sides. I am just starting this and it’s already turning out better than my first try, which resembled nothing so much as a circle.

Hopefully I can make them remain square; I’ll have to see how it goes. As for the surrounding beads, I have a shipment from Fire Mountain Gems on the way of potato pearls, which are most similar to the original and I think will look best.

After a couple days of intensive work, I have finished all square bezels, measured out where the midpoints are for the other beads, and marked and sewed down the black cording.

Even with Aldith’s tips, the shapes over the squares still turned out lopsided and rounded. But I’m done with them. I heard from Isela after the fact that she did the shisha mirror technique on the square ones, which I about kicked myself for not remembering, as that would have made it much easier and would have kept the square shape better. Oh well!  Stitching down the cording went remarkably quick, even though plunging the cord into the seams was darned near impossible. However, I’m pretty pleased with how straight I got the joins to look.

The next step is to bead down the small pearls around the large gems, which I can’t do because I haven’t received them yet. The website says they’re still out of stock. Grrr . . I think I might give them a call tomorrow, because I cannot do the other beads until I get these done.

It is nearly a month later, and the darned website still says the pearls are out of stock. I am really disappointed by Fire Mountain on this round; they are usually so good, but this was just the wrong item to have out of stock for me right now. The collar is due on the 15th of this month!  Luckily, Isela saved the day by picking up some pearls at her local bead store and express mailing a couple strands out to me, for which I am very grateful for. I received the pearls today and immediately got to work, finally finishing a few minutes ago.

Although the pearls are larger than I would have liked to see, I am pleased with how they turned out. They really do make the mother of pearl pieces stand out. And they nicely cover the slight puckering and discoloration around the larger gems.

I used a technique adapted from Grizel’s beading handout to attach the pearls, which is a little difficult to understand but which I managed to make work for me. Due to their size and the need to make sure these things don’t ever fly off the garment, I only sewed down one or two pearls at a time. Luckily they usually fit around the larger gem without a gap at the meeting, which is harder to avoid the larger the surrounding beads used are.

To tie up tonight’s work, I marked with a pen where the remaining beads will go and will tackle it tomorrow. I think I will be able to finish this puppy either tomorrow or Friday, then get it mailed out to Mari shortly after that. Looking forward to getting another project done!

After attaching most of the pearls and gold pieces last night, I finished that part up this morning.

I sewed them down with ivory and gold sewing thread with a larger needle, which fit through most of the pearls (yay!). I knotted the thread after every bead, as these are these beads have the highest risk of flying off. And my forethought paid off, as just this morning my cat managed to chew off one pearl; don’t worry, she didn’t eat it. Since I had done a good knotting job, it was easy to replace just that one pearl. Here she is, meditating on which pearl to attack:

I anticipate finishing off the collar this weekend, whichever bits of time I can find to do that in. As I will most likely get the carpet piece back to work on next Monday night, I’d like to have this one out the door.

‘TIS DONE. I finished it at choir tonight, finally. Everything is done and it will be sent out in the mail tomorrow. Here is a picture that I took before I finished it, but of the finished side, and another one of the finished piece.

Today was the debut of the collars, and I took a few pictures of Their Majesties in them. They looked fabulous! Mari did an amazing job putting the outfits together.  Beads and pearls everywhere, just like in the paintings and mosaics. And the colors look spectacular together. Despite the struggles I had with the project, I am very happy to have been a part of it and see it so well received. Many people came up to me after court to compliment me on my work, which is always nice to hear!

This is an update on the historical inspiration for the collars. The fresco that was the basis for the superhumeral is the one of Constantine and St. Helen in the Gracanica Monastery near Pristina, Kosovo. This is north a bit from Greece, apparently in the crosshairs between Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Fyro Macedonia. Thank you, Yahoo, for being mostly useless in this regard. It looks like the monastery was built throughout the 14th century after a series of fires and raids. More information about the monastery itself can be found here: http://www.kosovo.net/egracanica.html

The following is a picture of the fresco. Don’t you just love depictions of clothing that defies gravity?

Although it’s over a year since this project was started, I wanted to add an additional picture that I found of the superhumeral. Martin of Rivenstar took this picture at October Crown; in it, Aurora stands between the consorts of the finalists, Bryne and Kara. Not long after this Kara became the Crown Princess of the West, and I was very happy to get to know her better later in the year.

But I just LOVE how the superhumeral looks!

The first three pictures on this page were taken by myself.

The second two pictures were scanned by Aldith Angharad St. George (Carolyn Eaton) from Mechtild Fleury-Lemberg's book Textile Conservation (Abegg Foundation, 1988).

The final picture from August 2 through the pictures from September 30 were taken by myself.

The picture from March 25 was taken by the folks at the Gracanica Monestary and can be found on their website.

The last picture was taken by Martin of Rivenstar (Pete Good), who gave me permission to reuse the picture on this website on when?