My Heraldic Purse
While browsing the Victoria and Albert Museum website last year, I came across this little beauty… The Calthorpe Purse.
It inspired me to try to make something similar, but featuring my family heraldry on one side, and the other 3 sides featuring the heraldry of those within the SCA who have inspired me.
The purse is described as:
This formal, heraldic purse associated with marriage has more significance than a purse used simply for money, or a ‘swete-bag’ used for carrying perfumed herbs to sweeten the atmosphere. Both men and women carried or wore pouches or purses. The long strings of this example suggest that it was intended to hang from the waist, but it is uncertain whether it was ever actually used as a container. English purses of this date are extremely rare and the survival of this one may be due to its formal role, which meant that it was rarely used and thought worth looking after.
Calthorpe Purse Embroidery detail:
“Four panels in a shield shape, each embroidered in silk in tent stitch on linen. It is decorated on all four sides with marshalled arms recording family alliances.”
The purse is made of linen, embroidered with silk in tent stitch, worked with 1,250 silk stitches per square inch. (194 sts per square cm).
Dimensions: Width 10.2cm, height (including tassel) 15cm, depth 15cm.
MY HERALDIC PURSE
Linen: I chose a 36 count even-weave linen in a natural colour. This works out to 1296 stitches per square inch, so it’s actually finer than the original!
Silk: I used Au ver a Soie, Soie d’Alger, using 2 stands of silk over 1 thread of linen. I usually use Madeira silk for embroidery as it is much cheaper, but I find it tends to become a bit “fuzzy” so I thought it worth the extra expense to use Au ver a Soie for this project.
Lighting and Magnification: Excellent lighting and magnification are essential for this project. I use a Daylight Company floor lap which provide great light with no heat. I also use Mag-Eyes hands free magnifiers to see what I am actually working on.
Charting the Designs: I originally tried putting the images into photo editing software and reducing the number of colours to create the charts. That was a total fail! So after messing about with other options, I ended up charting them (digitally) by hand, pixel by pixel, using an ancient version of Paint Shop Pro 5. Given that I have only allowed myself 40 stitches per device, it was quite a challenge charting the designs so that they were fairly readable and as true to the original as I could make them. (Plus, fitting a shield shaped device into aa long oblong is actually harder than you’d think).
PANEL 1 COMPLETED: Charting the designs and working the panel: 203 hours!
| Motto: | Familia Ante Omnia | Family Before All | |
| LANGE My mother | RICHARDSON My father | RAMSDEN Husband’s father | GALE Husband’s mother |
| GOTTSCH Maternal grandmother | McKENZIE Paternal grandmother | McBRIDE Maternal grandmother | MARTIN Paternal grandmother |
| SETH Daughter-in-law | ROSAMOND de MONTFORT My SCA name | BACK Son-in-law | RIDLEY Step father |
- Posted in: Heraldic ♦ Needlepoint ♦ Pouches
- Tagged: Heraldic Purse, Needlepoint
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