Purple Prose

I love the way the X stitch project has encouraged me to look at stitching both globally and historically. I went back to my oldest book – I think it was 50p from a Charity shop. “Encyclopedia of Needlework” inscribed “E O Cole, Xmas 1911”. 

The book was originally written by an Austrian woman Thérèse de Dillmont in 1884. The French company of Dollfuss-Mieg et Cie had approached her to produce this – the stitchers’ equivalent of Mrs Beeton. The book has sold millions of copies worldwide. Still in existence, now just called DMC, the company has a horsehead logo. Back then, it was a woman encircled by a banner bearing their Latin motto “tenui filo magnum texitur opus” – from a single thread comes great work.  What a great description for our project. I chose one of the designs from the book [a handkerchief corner]

Having drawn out the chart, I considered colours. The book suggests one or two colours.  As the book came out in the second half of the 19th century, it is likely that the original embroiderers would have been caught up in the passion for purple which was literally sweeping the globe. The world’s first synthetic aniline dyes had just been created. Their discovery by a young student chemist, was quite serendipitous. British soldiers abroad kept contracting malaria, and the only known remedy was the quinine plant from the Andes. William Henry Perkins was engaged in the desperate research to find a synthetic form of quinine which was cheaper and easier to obtain. He tried oxidising aniline – but this failed. As he cleaned up the lab, he realised he had created a purple dye. He called it mauveine [a contraction of mauve, the French word for mallow, and aniline] He patented his dye in 1856, and everyone went crazy for it [of course, Queen Victoria helped by appearing at the Royal Exhibition in 1862 in a gown dyed in Paris Mauve] The secret of Tyrian Purple dye, beloved of the Roman Emperors, had been lost for centuries – but now everyone could have this regal colour about their home and person.

So I stitched a rectangle of light mauve random dye cross stitch [2 strands], putting the letters on top in darker purple back stitch [4 strands for definition]. I used herringbone and other stitches for the corner, and different shades of lilac, mauve and purple [and a deep blue for contrast]