Jacobean embroidery refers to embroidery

Embroidery

Embroidery is the art or handicraft of decorating fabric or other materials with needle and thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as metal strips, pearls, beads, quills, and sequins....

 styles that flourished in the reign of King James I of England in first quarter of the 17th century.

The term is usually used today to describe a form of crewel embroidery

Crewel embroidery

Crewel Embroidery, or Crewelwork, is a decorative form of surface embroidery using wool and a variety of different embroidery stitches to follow a design outline applied to the fabric. The technique is at least a thousand years old...

 used for furnishing characterized by fanciful plant and animal shapes worked in a variety of stitches with two-ply wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

 yarn

Yarn

Yarn is a long continuous length of interlocked fibres, suitable for use in the production of textiles, sewing, crocheting, knitting, weaving, embroidery and ropemaking. Thread is a type of yarn intended for sewing by hand or machine. Modern manufactured sewing threads may be finished with wax or...

 on linen

Linen

Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....

. Popular motifs in Jacobean embroidery, especially curtain

Curtain

A curtain is a piece of cloth intended to block or obscure light, or drafts, or water in the case of a shower curtain. Curtains hung over a doorway are known as portières...

s for bed hangings, are the Tree of Life

Tree of Life

The tree of life in the Book of Genesis is a tree planted by God in midst of the Garden of Eden , whose fruit gives everlasting life, i.e. immortality. Together with the tree of life, God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . According to some scholars, however, these are in fact...

 and stylized forests, usually rendered as exotic plants arising from a landscape or terra firma with bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s, stag

STAG

STAG: A Test of Love is a reality TV show hosted by Tommy Habeeb. Each episode profiles an engaged couple a week or two before their wedding. The cameras then follow the groom on his bachelor party...

s, squirrel

Squirrel

Squirrels belong to a large family of small or medium-sized rodents called the Sciuridae. The family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels, chipmunks, marmots , flying squirrels, and prairie dogs. Squirrels are indigenous to the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa and have been introduced to Australia...

s, and other familiar animals.

Origins

Early Jacobean embroidery often featured scrolling floral patterns worked in colored silks on linen, a fashion that arose in the earlier Elizabethan era

Elizabethan era

The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign . Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history...

. Embroidered jackets were fashionable for both men and women in the period 1600-1620, and several of these jackets have survived.

Legacy

Jacobean embroidery was carried by British colonists to Colonial America

Colonial America

The colonial history of the United States covers the history from the start of European settlement and especially the history of the thirteen colonies of Britain until they declared independence in 1776. In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain and the Netherlands launched major...

, where it flourished. The Deerfield embroidery movement of the 1890s revived interest in colonial and Jacobean styles of embroidery.

See also

• 1600–1650 in fashion
• Crewel embroidery
  Crewel embroidery
  Crewel Embroidery, or Crewelwork, is a decorative form of surface embroidery using wool and a variety of different embroidery stitches to follow a design outline applied to the fabric. The technique is at least a thousand years old...
  
  
• Margaret Laton's embroidered jacket
  Margaret Laton's embroidered jacket
  Margaret Laton's jacket is a surviving example of English Jacobean embroidery, significant because it appears in a portrait which has also survived. The jacket was originally owned and worn by Margaret Laton , wife of Francis Laton who was one of the Yeomen of the Jewel House during the reigns of...
  
  

External links

• Surviving Jacobean embroidered jacket as the Museum of Costume
• Jacobean Embroidery, by Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands, 1912, from Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...