I had learned the style of German counted thread satin stitch from Master Wymarc’s Compleat Anachronist (CA), “A Stitch Out of Time”, which is also available on his website. Along with the pouches and such that were common for secular use, he briefly discusses the “larger pieces”, which include the Hildesheim Cope. This religious garment is a half circle cloak covered with interconnected circles of vignettes of the martyrdoms of different saints, all executed in stem/outline stitch and brick stitch in variously colored silks.

I happened to show the CA to a friend of mine from choir, Magda, who took a liking to the drawn vignette of the saint being sawed in half the long way. She asked if I could make that into a pouch for her, and of course I agreed! Besides that, I had once had a brief e-mail conversation with Master Wymarc himself, during which we were discussing some particulars for Countess Kaaren’s queen’s rose pouch that I made for her in this style. He admitted that he had hoped I was going to embroider an image similar to the vignette depicted in his CA, which I admitted was a really cool idea. So Magda’s interest only resparked that desire.

I only had the image Master Wymarc had drawn from the cope to work from, along with the black and white pictures of it in Erica Wilson’s Embroidery Book. Page 114 shows a larger image of almost half the cope, while page 115 shows a closeup where you can see stitches and lack thereof. I used these three images to create my own line drawing to the size I wanted for the pouch, which only slightly differs from the original in character placement (I’m not the best hand-drawer). As the original cope had a ground fabric of linen, I then transferred this design to some white Wichelt 32-count evenweave art linen I had on hand and strung it up into a frame. For colors, I had to go with my gut on this one – as I saw later from pictures Master Wymarc graciously sent me, the original is mostly composed of dull green, yellow, pink and blue silk:

To my eye, the colors look faded from once brilliant hues. It is my opinion that whomever designed the cope wanted people to see what was on there, so they would have had it executed in colors that would stand out, not the faded ones that we see today. So I chose brighter versions of the colors I saw in the picture, all in Splendor silk. The background will be a bright gold, while all the characters will be in bright colors. And of course, our poor becleaved saint will have a mess of bright red running down his chest. Although in most graphic scenes like this in embroidery there is no blood or gore, there is a suspicious looking shape running down the saint’s chest in the original. I’m taking artistic license here and going with a bloody mess. All the lines will be done in outline/stem stitch, and all the interiors will be done in over-two brick stitch. Everything will be done with either three or four (can’t remember, it’s been a while) strands of Splendor silk.

The subject matter has received mixed reviews to those I’ve shown it to. Some are appalled while others are disturbingly entertained. I can certainly understand the appalled reactions, but what must be remembered here is that we’re looking at a piece that was created by the medieval mindset, notably the German medieval mindset. This was a warrior society which had great religious fervor. It is my opinion that the artist who designed this was most likely influenced by their country’s military and religious characteristics, and wanted to create a great mass of scenes that would glorify the horrific deaths of their saints in a way that would speak to their fellow Germans. So yes, these scenes are gruesome to us the modern viewer. But that very nature was probably designed to evoke a sense of the great specialness and spirituality of the saints to those who saw the cope. And Magda is tickled pink with what I’ve done so far, and since this is her pouch, that’s all that matters to me.

I recently strung the piece back into a frame as I am currently between projects. My current downtime is perfect to work on something that I had in the past put so much time and effort into creating. Below are the original sketch, the final ink drawing, and the current state of the piece. All scans/pictures below were taken by me.

I’ve worked on it some more and have taken a few more pictures. Although I’ll have to put it down for a while, it’s come far enough to where I’m happy with the way it’s turning out. I am bothered by the fact that sometimes the white linen shows through the stitching, which is confounded by the fact that although three strands of silk is almost not enough to cover the ground, four strands is definitely too much. Grf! Ah, well; I’ll keep working on it when I have time, and hopefully the stitching around the spacey areas will squish them inward. I am also giving serious thought to making a back to the pouch with solid stitching like my other German work items, which is my all-time favorite technique.

The color image of the Hildesheim Cope on this page was sent to me by Master Wymarc (Timothy Mitchell).

The remaining scans and pictures on this page were taken by myself on 6/1/2006 and 9/21/2006.