Therese De Dilmont's Encyclopedia of Needlework

(31st January 2021)

(opening music)

Liz

Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel

And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together, and love history, and also making stuff. So, what have you been up to this week? Or recently

Liz

So, I bought a pattern from Ravelry that, I cannot remember the name of the designer, but I will tweet a link to it, but it’s called Embrace Octopus

Hazel

(gasps)

Liz

It’s like this proper old-timey octopus on a jumper and, like, the tentacles go round the body and round the arms and stuff

Hazel

I know that pattern, I have been, like, lusting after it for, like, 6 years, I am so excited for you to make this

Liz

I’m also very excited

Hazel

Absolutely glorious, also, I’ve forgotten her name but the...one of the teachers in our department for archaeology, she had made it, she was the one who did the GIS stuff

Liz

Oh I didn’t do that one

Hazel

Ok, I can’t remember her name, but archaeology professor with big octopus jumper is great. Yeah. That is exciting, have you started it?

Liz

I have! I’m about a third of the way through the torso, it’s...I can’t remember the name of the thing, I’m just not good at words today, the thing where you, like, attach the sleeves to the body while you’re knitting the yolk

Hazel

Ok

Liz

So I’m, I’m getting there, I’m getting there, the tentacles are developing

Hazel

You’re getting into the tentacles?

Liz

Yeah it’s...I haven’t done colourwork for a while, it’s quite fun getting back into it

Hazel

I’m gonna need to see a picture of that

Liz

I think I put, I put a picture of it in the patreon Discord

Hazel

Ooh, ok, I need to check that

Liz

That’s patreon.com/breadandthread. So what have you been working on?

Hazel

I made a passionfruit and dark chocolate tart

Liz

That sounds amazing

Hazel

It’s quite possibly the fanciest dessert I have ever made

Liz

Definitely the sexiest

Hazel

Oh yeah, definitely, this one is smooth and sensual. I had this whole day off to myself and I was like “gonna make a very fancy thing”, and I hadn’t baked in a while so it was like a...I got the recipe from Good Food Magazine, which by the way you can get free through your library if you live in the UK, and it’s got like a chocolate pastry base, with, like, cocoa powder in, and then passionfruit curd, and then chocolate ganache on top. It’s like a mouth-splosion, it was good. It’s pretty...you don’t want a big slice, it’s pretty rich, but it’s the first time I ever made ganache as well, and it kind of worked out. It was a bit...I don’t know how it’s supposed to be, but it was quite dense after being in the fridge for a while

Liz

That’s fairly normal with a dark ganache

Hazel

Ok

Liz

The thing...if there’s more cocoa in it, it gets thicker and denser

Hazel

Ok

Liz

You just want to put in more cream or use a less cocoa-y chocolate if you want it thinner

Hazel

I see, I might give that a go. What’s...how ganache experienced are you?

Liz

Made and failed many ganaches. But I’m good at them now, I made a white chocolate ganache and everything

Hazel

Ooh, is that harder? I guess

Liz

I mean I found it harder

Hazel

There’s technically no cocoa in white chocolate, right?

Liz

Yeah it is, it’s not chocolate

Hazel

(inaudible) don’t hate us

Liz

Which is why it’s a lot harder to work with white chocolate

Hazel

But yeah I’m pretty proud of myself

Liz

White chocolate ganache with, like, blueberries is very good

Hazel

Sounds good. I was thinking, I mean passionfruit is quite fancy and exotic to me, and it was really really nice, but it’s that kind of tangy flavour with the sweetness of the chocolate that was really good, so I was thinking you could probably make that a gooseberry curd and it would have the same kind of effect

Liz

Now that’s an idea

Hazel

So I might give that a go at some point

Liz

My parents have a gooseberry bush, I might make one of those next year

Hazel

Yes. So, yeah, that is the haps

Liz

Amazing. So, this is one of our book episodes I believe

Hazel

It is indeed, and I’m going a bit left-field for this one, ‘cause it’s not a cookbook, I hope that’s ok

Liz

I mean, it’s Bread and Thread, it’s not just bread

Hazel

Well there is a lot of thread involved in this. So I’m gonna be talking about Thérèse de Dillmont’s Encyclopedia of Needlework, first published in 1886

Liz

Do enjoy an encyclopedia

Hazel

Oh yeah, and it really is honestly, there is a lot in this book and it is...it deserves its fame. So, I actually first saw this book in a really old second-hand book shop, and it looked like...I was interested in needlework at the time, so I had a look, but it just kind of seemed like, you know, really old and weird to me at the time, but now that I’m a bit more interested in, like, historical methods of doing things, I’m like “damn, I wish I’d bought that.” But don’t worry, because it is quite...it was very popular in its day, and there’s a lot of them floating around, so I don’t think it would be too difficult to get hands on one if you wanted one, and also, as I discovered when I was looking up about this book, there is a copy on Project Gutenberg available for free

Liz

Ooh

Hazel

So if you’re at all interested in anything that I talk about in this book, then you can just and find it and have a read for yourself. And there’s...all of the images are reproduced as well, which is really good, and I think it’s one of the original editions, because, as we will find out, there were many many editions of this book going right up into the mid 20th century

Liz

That recent?!

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

Nice

Hazel

Yeah, it far outlived its author, because it was just so comprehensive, and it really hit at the right moment as well, because when this was published in the late 19th century there was, like, a real fashion for decorative needlework. I guess kind of similar to how there’s a revival of craft and that kind of thing today, but in this time period there was just so much more availability of, like, different kinds of thread, different materials, different colours than there had been before. Plus, a lot of people had more leisure time than they used to, so it...needlework as a hobby was really really popular at the time

Liz

‘Cause we’re talking, like, the back end of the Arts and Crafts movement, right?

Hazel

Yeah, that’s kind of 1870s/80s, right?

Liz

Like, started 1860s and then went on for a little bit

Hazel

Ok, cool. Yeah, so that plus the infamous Victorian fashion for decorating literally everything in your house somehow meant that this was a really popular book, and although there were a lot of, kind of, competitors to it at the time, it stood out for various reasons. So, Thérèse de Dillmont was an Austrian writer. She was born in the town of Wiener Neustadt in 1846, which is just south of Vienna, and she was the daughter of a professor of architecture at the military academy there, and her mother had the fantastic name of Franziska Schwendtenwein. That’s totally irrelevant

Liz

That is very good

Hazel

It’s totally irrelevant to anything, I just wanted to say it, because it’s excellent. So, she was actually educated as a governess and a teacher in Vienna, and as part of this education she studied needlework and got really really interested in it. She may have attended the needlework school that was founded by Empress Marie-Theresa, I think in the 18th century, and certainly she was a close friend of the director of the school for most of her life. So, she ran an embroidery shop in Vienna for a while, with her sister, selling just embroidery materials - designs, patterns, things like that, but it was after she started a partnership with the company DMC that her career really took off, and this is quite an interesting story, because she was like a real career woman, for the time.

So she had moved to Switzerland in 1884, and she, I think she had her own embroidery school there, but she also started working for the company DMC, which stands for Dollfus-Mieg et Compagnie, hope I pronounced that right, but better known as DMC, which is still in business today and is very well known as probably the most famous maker of cotton embroidery threads

Liz

Yeah, I think my embroidery starter set was DMC

Hazel

Yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me, they’re still going strong. In fact they’re doing quite well at the moment ‘cause of the resurgence of craft and stuff

Liz

Well, that and everyone’s stuck inside with nothing else to do

Hazel

Yeah, yeah that’s one reason. But they still do make their own patterns and things, and, you know, they don’t just sell the materials they also, you know, right from the start were, sort of, driving sales by doing patterns and designs, and techniques, and so DMC published her book, the Encyclopedia of Needlework. And they were based in Alsace, which interestingly is in Germany at this time, because it didn’t become part of France until after the First World War

Liz

Yeah that’s a whole geopolitical thing…

Hazel

It is, and I’m not gonna get into that, but it was a French-German company I guess, at the time? I’m not, like, that well read on Alsatian history so…

Liz

Mostly know about the dog

Hazel

I know nothing, I know less about the dog. I know more about the Alsatian textile industry than I do about the dogs

Liz

Well it goes woof

Hazel

Does it though?

Liz

Yes

Hazel

Ok

Liz

I’ve known several

Hazel

Known them well

(laughter)

Hazel

Yeah, so she had a contract with DMC to write for them, and she published over 100 books or leaflets were attributed to either her or her niece, who had the same name, and I’ll touch on that later, but the most famous is the Encyclopedia of Needlework published in 1886, and we’re gonna have a little flick-through of it in just a moment, but I, I just do want to talk about, kind of, how this partnership ended, ‘cause it’s quite interesting. So the book was really really popular, it had many reprints, it was translated into 17 languages, and it’s kind of unclear, this next bit, because there were...there was a chain of embroidery, like, needlework shops opened under her name, in Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London.

Something, some biographies that I’ve looked at say that they were her shops, but then other information I’ve found says that they were opened by DMC under her name, but she does seem to have been involved in the running of them either way, because she was travelling between them

Liz

So it’s almost a franchise

Hazel

Yeah, at this point her name was basically a brand, and in fact, when she got married in 1889 DMC really did not approve. They were quite put out because she changed her name, and the name was the brand, so they were not happy about this and in fact...unfortunately she died only a few months later and her niece, who had the same name, took over the job, and in the niece’s contract it was, there was a clause that said that she wasn’t allowed to get married or change her name, because the name was the brand

Liz

It’s like idols

Hazel

Yeah, I was thinking that!

Liz

Embroidery idols!

Hazel

The OG embroidery idol

Liz

That’s amazing. I mean it’s awful, but it’s amazing

Hazel

I know, in terms of, like, you know…

Liz

Feminism?

Hazel

Right and working conditions, it’s not great, but just, it kind of illustrates the extent to which she was well-known at the time. I mean, this book was all over the place, and that’s why you can...it’s quite easy to pick it up in second hand shops and stuff. So, the book itself. I think that the edition that is on Gutenberg is either the edition...original one, or an early one, because of the prices. So, the English edition cost 3 shillings, which is not massively expensive. I mean, probably the people who are gonna be most interested in fancy-work are, like, the middle/upper classes who...probably the middle classes who are gonna have...like, a middle class lady probably has a lot more leisure time than someone

Liz

Yeah the upper classes would probably employ a middle class lady to do it for them

Hazel

Either buy them or have someone else make them for them, although it was also a popular hobby among the upper classes, so, like, I would say they would probably do it for hobby purposes as well, whereas a middle class lady might be looking to do it to look fancier, but didn’t have the money to, you know, pay for the real professional stuff. But, having said that, it wasn’t, like, totally out of reach, it was something that working class women could have afforded. Maybe not one a whim, but given the average age - average age? - the average wage at that time for a working class man was about £46 a year, this is in sort of regular employment, which according to my calculations is about 16 shillings a week, maybe, depending on what time of year it is

Liz

So he could maybe get his wife one as a birthday present or something

Hazel

Yeah, so it’s something that might be considered a worthwhile investment for a working class woman, because it does contain information on plain sewing as well, and mending, and all sorts of things you can do to make your clothes look a little bit more fancy when you’ve got the time. So that’s another reason why she became so well known, because, like, a lot of people had this book, and in fact it was reprinted. After her death it was still reprinted and added to, and in the 20th century there were even iron-on transfers that were added to the book, which is pretty interesting

Liz

Wow. I didn’t know those were that old

Hazel

Yeah I mean I don’t...I don’t know when those first became a thing, but the book went on long enough that they were, I guess. So it was still popular up until then. I imagine they would have taken out some of the more Victorian-ish things. And on the title page is a little illustration of an angel with the motto - you know Victorians and their mottos - the motto is...I don’t know Latin, so, I don’t know if this is right, but it’s “Tenui Filo Magnum Texitur Opus”, which apparently means “From One Fine Thread a Work of Art is Born”

Liz

I like that

Hazel

Yeah, I do like that, it’s the same kind of vein as “Mighty Oaks From Little Acorns Grow”. So, it’s an extremely comprehensive book, and that kind of sets it apart from some of its competitors at the time, because they would be, especially the ones published in English, would kind of be focusing more on English styles of embroidery whereas…

Liz

I mean, that is fair

Hazel

Yeah, and this included a lot of continental styles, and also segments on Chinese embroidery, tambor work from India, Turkish embroidery, so, like, a lot of different styles and things from all over the world. I mean, just looking at the chapters I can see Armenian Lace, Venetian Lace, Brussels Lace, Tambor Work, Smyrna Stitch, Turkish stitch…

Liz

Yeah, that is incredibly thorough

Hazel

There’s a lot of things, lot of things. I don’t know whether or not these were, you know, quote-unquote authentic, like, embroidery instructions, but they certainly represent the way that certain styles became popular in different cultures and, you know, people liked the idea of this thing and then changed it a little bit to fit in with what they were doing. It represents and interest in different kinds of techniques from around the world

Liz

Are you accusing Thérèse of appropriation?

Hazel

(laughing) I mean...no...I mean...I’m just saying that what is called “Chinese embroidery” in a Victorian needlework manual probably doesn’t represent, like, all of Chinese embroidery ever

Liz

Probably not

Hazel

But definitely represents an interest in people who are doing this embroidery in the West at the time in that kind of style. So, yeah, let’s take a look at this book. It starts with the instructions for plain sewing, and she has some comments to make on the place of hand sewing in the age of the sewing machine, which are quite interesting. So the sewing machine is going good at this time, but not everyone has one, but it is starting to become, maybe not common, but it’s starting to become not-uncommon to have one in the home, and so she says “many, on opening the Encyclopedia of Needlework, will be disposed to exclaim, as they read the heading of this first section, ‘what is the use of describing all the old, well known stitches, when machines have so nearly superseded the slower process of hand sewing?’. To this, our reply is that of all kinds of needlework plain sewing needs to be most thoroughly learned, as being the foundation of all. Those who are able to employ others to work for them should at least be able to distinguish good work from bad, and those who are in less fortunate circumstances have to be taught how to work for themselves.”

Liz

I mean she’s got a point

Hazel

I mean, she has indeed

Liz

Like, you’ve got to get the basics down

Hazel

Yeah, and you know, even today when we’ve got all sorts of technologies we still use hand sewing for things like finishing techniques and things that you just can’t get a machine to do, so, yeah, I would agree with you there Thérèse. So, she has a bunch of sections for, you know, things like backstitch, hemming, seams, all the basic stuff, but as this book is more aimed at the hobby market, there is a lot on various kinds of fancy work, and it’s not just sewing. Needlework at this time also encompassed crochet and knitting, so there’s a section on crochet work, there’s a section on knitting, tapestry, and linen embroidery, gold embroidery, white embroidery, open work, and cut work, netting, macramé, tatting, Irish lace, which is a kind of needle lace, and also Irish crochet, which is really amazing. It’s, like, a style of crochet with very very fine thread where you...they’re like 3D motifs where like...often flowers and leaves and things on a net background and it looks incredible

Liz

That’s cool, I haven’t heard of several of the things you listen there, I’m gonna have to look at the Gutenberg version of this

Hazel

I know. I mean, I don’t know them all, I don’t really know what netting is. Interestingly, there’s a lot of instructions on how to make different kinds of lace, both insertion lace and ending lace, and collars and things, and I think that’s possibly because a lot of these kinds of stuff...stuff that these laces are intended for, like linens and underwear and nightwear and stuff, was still often being made at home at this time, and the lace is a way that you can make it fancy, you know

Liz

And it’s personalisation as well, isn’t it, you don’t...you don’t want to know that everyone else has the same stuff as you, especially if you’re making it yourself

Hazel

Definitely, yeah, and if you’ve got the time, and it’s your hobby, and your other option is having, you know, boring plain underwear, then it’s a bit of a no-brainer

Liz

As someone with, let’s just say, substantial breasts, I have a lot of feelings about nice looking underwear

Hazel

That is, that is entirely fair. So, I, yeah, I kind of really like this DIY underwear kind of thing, like, it’s quite, it’s quite tempting. I just want to make a bunch of laces now and attach them to everything I own, which is very Victorian. She also includes instructions in the back for washing lace, washing, stiffening, ironing and pinning, and she makes an interesting distinction between “ordinary lace” and “real lace”, by which I think she means machine lace vs handmade lace

Liz

I’m guessing handmade is the “real lace”

Hazel

Yeah, I think so

Liz

The OG

Hazel

The real deal. So, yeah, it is interesting that this comes at a time when, as well, hand work is starting to be something that you do for pleasure rather than...machine made stuff is more available and cheaper, so to save time it’s, it’s just a lot easier so doing stuff, like, fancy stuff by hand is now a hobby pastime. So, yeah, in pinning out the lace she says that, if it’s machine made lace you can just iron it, but if it’s, like, real lace, then you’ve got to pin it out. I assume because it’s more delicate

Liz

It feels odd to me that the machine made would be more delicate but that might just be me being used to 21st century manufacturing

Hazel

Oh yeah, sorry, this is the real lace that’s more delicate

Liz

Oh, ok. That makes sense

Hazel

But yeah, I would that’s because they didn’t have the, kind of, delicacy of machine work to work with the really fine threads at the time, maybe? I don’t know, if you know about 1880s machine lace, then please do let me know

Liz

We need to bring Cate back just to talk about lace

Hazel

Yeah. I’ve gained a bit more of an appreciation for lace recently, ‘cause I used to think it looked kind of fussy and grandma-y, but not any more. I really have come around to it

Liz

I think it does have its place, but I think the problem is that when you think about lace you think about, like, doilies

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

Or those weird, like, lampshades with lace around them for no good reason that just get really dusty

Hazel

Yeah, and I suppose those are kind of relics of that Victorian decorate everything mania, but there are...so there are some photographs in this book of the crochet lace patterns, and they are absolutely beautiful. In particular, there is an incredible lace collar, and it looks kind of like those really fancy 17th century ones that are often in paintings, like this really fancy white lace against the black puritanical type clothing and it’s...yeah it’s just so beautiful and

Liz

You’re gonna have to put up some pictures

Hazel

Yeah, oh yeah, and it does kind of make you see it in a different light. So, there’s also some really interesting methods for changing the patterns, for like, transferring them and extending them, or sizing them up or down. So there’s one here “to transfer or repeat patterns by means of looking-glasses”

Liz

Ok

Hazel

So, yeah, so this is when you’re trying to adapt a pattern to the proportions of your table runner or your rug or your, you know, whatever you’re making. You use two unframed mirrors, and put them at, sort of, an angle to each other, so that you reflect the pattern, and then you can use this to, you know, make the pattern into a corner and see what you need to do, or sort of reflect a repeated pattern and see how it joins. It’s really cool. It’s really hard to describe this without, like, looking at the illustration, so yeah, if you’re interested in this please do give it a go, and have a look in the Practical Directions chapter at the end of the book, and the illustrations in there but, yeah, it’s really cool. So, she often...she also includes...let me see...I’ve talked about crochet lace. There’s knitting. Oh, so, in the goldwork there’s another nice little quote.

Liz

So, is that goldwork as in with gold thread?

Hazel

Yeah, so, goldwork is...it’s a bunch of different materials, so you use, sort of, gold thread...often it’s raised, so it’s kind of like stumpwork where you, like, pad out the base and then stitch over it, so it’s, like, a little bit 3D. There are sort of gold-ish leather that you can use, and various different materials, and it was quite popular in the 18th century as well, as she mentions. So she says “up to the present time, dating from the end of the 18th century, gold embroidery has been almost exclusively confined to those who made it a profession. Amateurs have seldom attempted what, it was commonly supposed, required an apprenticeship of nine years to attain any proficiency in”

Liz

Wow

Hazel

Mmm

Liz

Nine years seems like a long time to just get good at something

Hazel

Yeah, I mean…

Liz

‘Cause she doesn’t say to become an expert, she just says to be good at it

Hazel

Any proficiency, yeah

Liz

To be able to embroider gold takes nine years, you heard it here

Hazel

Yeah, so I think this is also representative of that shift from professional to hobby, amateur, so a lot of these professions, these very specific professions, are dying out at this stage, because they can’t really compete in the, the economy where mass manufactured goods are available, like, no-one can afford their stuff any more except super rich people, and there’s not a lot of that trade. So people who would specialise in these kinds of embroidery - so like in the 18th century they would have, kind of, embroidery workshops, and some of them would specialise in a certain thing, and they would just do that professionally - and so if you could afford that, you wouldn’t bother trying to do it yourself, because it’s, like, a professional thing, but now no-one can really...I mean, they weren’t making a lot of money in the first place, these people, but people can’t really afford to sustain this as a profession any more, and so it goes into the amateur, like, hobby kind of world. As with a lot of other things. So she says “but now, when it is the fashion to decorate every kind of fancy article, whether of leather, plush, or velvet with monograms and ingenious devices of all descriptions, the art of gold embroidery has revived, and is being taken up and practiced with success, even by those to whom needlework is nothing more than an agreeable recreation. We trust that the following directions and illustrations will enable our readers to dispense with the five years’ training which, even now, experts in the art consider necessary.” So that’s quite a humblebrag there

Liz

Yeah, but I mean, I feel like a lot of things of that era just read like that, just ‘cause of how people wrote

Hazel

Yeah, I mean, this does seem to be…

Liz

Just talking around it and going “well, by the way”

Hazel

I particularly like the phrase “even by those to whom needlework is nothing more than an agreeable recreation”

Liz

I just want to embroider the phrase “an agreeable recreation”

Hazel

There’s many things that you could call an agreeable recreation. I certainly find…

Liz

I don’t think that it counts as recreation otherwise

Hazel

I certainly find needlework an agreeable recreation. But, I mean, I assume she means, like, “even if you’re not a professional, with my book, you can do this”

Liz

Oh yeah, I think I just prefer interpreting it as “if you like it, you can do it”

Hazel

Yeah. That is kind of the point of this book, and the instructions do seem quite...like, the diagrams are pretty good, they’re pretty well laid out, and the instructions are...I mean, there’s a little bit of that “in the usual manner” kind of stuff, where I think they’re assuming at least some sewing competence

Liz

Of course, because your mother would teach you

Hazel

So it’s...pretty much every woman at the time knew how to sew, more or less, so she’s kind of assuming, like, a familiarity with a lot of the stitches, but then she does include a lot, like, she starts at the beginning, so it kind of is aimed at the beginner, as well

Liz

It’s nice having that sort of span, and I guess what is part of why it was popular for so long is just like, this is for everyone

Hazel

Yeah, and it’s quite...the tone of it is very teacherly, which is unsurprising considering she was a teacher but...so it’s very teacherly, but not condescending. It’s kind of “you can do the thing, just listen carefully” kind of a tone

Liz

I like that

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

That’s the tone I want from an instructional text

Hazel

I mean, it’s clear that this was written by someone who actually was really interested in every kind of needlework and, like, knew what she was talking about, which you would expect from someone whose profession was teaching needlework, but given that this was published by the company DMC it does push a lot of their products

Liz

I’m shocked

Hazel

Like a lot of the recommended products are

Liz

And surprised

Hazel

DMC threads, yeah. So that might be a bit tricky if you’re trying to follow these instructions, because obviously a lot of these materials they don’t make any more, so you’ve got to try and figure out what the modern equivalent is

Liz

I mean it’s probably just a different DMC product

Hazel

Yeah, you can probably find something that’s a similar thickness, or whatever you need, but it might differ in material, like, what it’s made of. So yeah, she also includes embroidery patterns and things, designs, and a lot of ideas for things that you can do. It’s just, it’s a really good book, and just looking through it I’ve found things that I want to make or techniques that I was just like “huh I didn’t know about that”, so, like, it’s still...I think it’s really stood the test of time, because if you were somebody who just wanted to learn how to sew for, like, mending stuff, or modern clothes, this would tell you how to do it. Like, it shows you how to do darning and mending, how to sew on buttons, which is the same thing that you do today. Yeah, it’s handy. And it’s not too, like, 19th century, you know? It’s not indecipherable. So, that was a little journey into Thérèse de Dillmont’s Encyclopedia of Needlework, which you can find on Project Gutenberg, and I’ll put a link on the twitter and in the Discord if anyone’s interested in that, and please, if you get into this as much as we have, and you try something out from it, let us know, send us a picture

Liz

Absolutely. So, thank you for listening. As I said we have a patreon if you want to help us host the show or help us get these sorts of books, it’s patreon.com/breadandthread

Hazel

You can also email us at breadandthreadpodcast@gmail.com if you have any ideas for things that we should talk about, or you just want to send us a picture of your amazing crochet lace

Liz

Or if you don’t want to email you can tweet us, also just breadandthread, and we will talk to you next time