Jacobean embroidery

Jacobean embroidery refers to embroidery 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 used for furnishing characterized by fanciful plant and animal shapes worked in a variety of stitches with two-ply wool yarn on linen. Popular motifs in Jacobean embroidery, especially curtains for bed hangings, are the Tree of Life and stylized forests, usually rendered as exotic plants arising from a landscape or terra firma with birds, stags, squirrels, and other familiar animals.

Early Jacobean embroidery often featured scrolling floral patterns worked in colored silks on linen, a fashion that arose in the earlier Elizabethan era. Embroidered jackets were fashionable for both men and women in the period 1600-1620, and several of these jackets have survived.

Jacobean embroidery was carried by British colonists to Colonial America, where it flourished. The Deerfield embroidery movement of the 1890s revived interest in colonial and Jacobean styles of embroidery.

Pattern of a slip with flowers taken from a 17th-century embroidered curtain

Design of a leaf from a bed curtain dated 1659, worked in blue, green, and yellow worsted wool yarn on linen.

Sketch of a leaf worked in indigo, brown, and light green

Portion of a 17th-century hanging "with a conventional representation

Embroidered wool-work curtain of the 17th or 18th century

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