Description of The Technique
Assisi work uses a method known as voiding in which the background is filled in while the motif itself is left blank. Cross-stitch is used for the background and Blackwork Embroidery, i.e. Holbein stitch is then used to outline the motif and create the surrounding decorative scrollwork.
Traditionally, Assisi embroidery was rarely executed in cross-stitch, but most often in long-armed cross-stitch. Examples employing other stitches are also known, such as cross-stitch, Italian cross-stitch and Algerian plait stitch. The colours of thread used were the traditional ones of red, blue, green or gold for the background, and black or brown for the outlines. Traditional motifs were largely heraldic, especially heraldic beasts, and typically featured symmetrically arranged pairs of animals and birds surrounded by ornate filigree borders.
In the oldest pieces, the figures were drawn on the fabric free-hand, surrounded with Holbein stitch and the background was filled as well as possible. For more modern pieces the pattern was constructed carefully on paper, in much the same way as cross-stitch patterns are created. Today Assisi embroidery is nearly always done this way.
Read more about this topic: Assisi Embroidery
Famous quotes containing the words description of the, description of, description and/or technique:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn’t worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)