Shakespeare’s Flowers in Stumpwork

Shakespeare’s Flowers in Stumpwork takes Jane Nicholas?s readers further along the path she explored in Stumpwork Medieval Flora (2009).

Wild flowers, herbs and gardens are a recurring feature in Shakespeare’s work: from Oberon’s bank where the wild thyme blows and where oxlips, violets, woodbine, musk-roses and eglantine grow, to the Spring Song, when daisies pied, and violets blue, with lady-smocks and yellow cuckoo-buds do paint the meadows with delight. His plays are rich in the plant and herb lore of Tudor England, using plants to symbolise, among other virtues and vices, yearning, unrequited love, malice and mischief, triumph and glory. The projects in this book, worked in stumpwork and surface embroidery, feature many of the flowers found in the gardens, fields and hedgerows of the time.

Lavishly illustrated in colour, with detailed step-by-step instructions accompanied by explanatory diagrams, Shakespeare’s Flowers in Stumpwork will make a delightful addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in textured and dimensional embroidery.

Jane Nicholas has been researching and working in the field of embroidery for over 20 years. Specialising in stumpwork and goldwork embroidery, she was written eight books and has contributed widely to journals and magazines on the subject. In 1999 Jane was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to further her studies in stumpwork in the United Kingdom and in 2005 was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for her “services to hand embroidery as an artist, teacher and author”. She teaches widely in Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America and continues to research and develop new techniques – particularly in stumpwork. A separate, but often related, area of her work is as a maker of artists’ books and boxes.