Blackwork is my thing. I taught it back at the Known World Art/Sci Symposium in Orlando where you taught the Gothic fitted gown a few years ago. It is more correctly known as "monochrome embroidery" and was mentioned by Chaucer in Canterbury Tales. Chaucer mentions her collar with blackwork inside and outside. It was also sited in Viking Embroidery. There technically are no limits to stitches used. However, what most people think of is the 16th century designs made popular by the Holbein paintings, therefore the Hobein stitch.
To see if something could have been done doublesided take graph paper and follow the design with a pencil. If you can do it, even with drawing back over the design with the pencil without lifting the pencil off the paper it can be done double sided. Look for designs on artifacts that can be done this way. Then check with the museums to see if they can tell you if it is done that way. That is the best I can offer you. I work mostly with duplicating designs.
I am not an embroiderer, and my knowledge of medeival embroidery is skeletal -- enough to recognize situations in which it occurs, and to know when to go to others with a question. This is one of those times. I'm talking with another researcher who's working with a text reference to embroidery. One possible interpretation of the reference would be that it describes embroidery that appears on both the inside and outside of the fabric. To me, that sounds like something on the line of blackwork, designed to be neat and finished looking on both the right and "wrong" side, and thus suited to things like cuff and collar edges that might be turned out. So, questions: 1. Is my memory correct -- is this indeed a characteristic of blackwork? Or any other kind of historic embroidery style?
Of one kind of border designs usually used on undergarments and tunic edges.
2. Is this characteristic actually documentable to any non-modern examples? (I know it's easy to assume that a standard definition of a technique must date back forever, but it might be done differently in different periods.) If so, how early? I mentally associate blackwork in particular with the Tudor period, but the reference in this case is about 1400.
Many, with many different stitches, in many different countries, including Persia.
3. Can anyone point me to a published source that would document the use of such a "two right sides" technique to a medieval artifact?
Not "two right sides" but the back side looks as good as the front.
Ultimately my friend would like to have a citation that shows the use of such inside/outside embroidery from around 1400. Doesn't have to be blackwork. Failing that, it would be helpful to have a citation of such a technique from a later period, even if it's not c. 1400.
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