The Art of Embroidery. 16th - 19th Century Western European Embroidery from the Collection of the Hermitage

On 28 September 2004 an exhibition opened in the Menshikov Palace devoted to embroidery, an art form which has existed since ancient times.

The exhibition presents works made in Italy, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. It includes around 100 examples of applied art, many of which have never before been put on display.

Secular works of embroidery include panels that were used as wall decorations, furniture upholstery, bed covers, table cloths, parts of women’s skirts, and hats. Religious works include sacramental vestments as well as decorative elements for the clothing of clergy.

Embroidery of the 16th and 18th centuries was the most varied and interesting. It is also worth mentioning a separate but related type of work, decorative finishing: white tassels made from linen threads; tassels from colored silk and metallic thread; fringes; and piping.

Superb examples of French embroidery demonstrate a previously unknown flowering of decorative embroidery, which occupied an important place in the interiors of palaces. In the 18th century there was a special emphasis on embroidery intended for decorating clothing. At the exhibition one can see a whole range of examples of decoration for men’s sleeveless outer jackets made from different materials and adorned not only with silk but also sequins, colored glass and foil. Embroidery by 18th century German masters is also on display.

In Russia collecting applied art of this sort began in the last third of the 19th century. One of the first connoisseurs was A.P. Bazilevsky, whose collection entered the Hermitage in 1885. In the second half of the 19th century artistic institutions to train designers appeared. One of the largest was the Central School of Technical Drawing, which Baron A. L. Stieglitz opened in St Petersburg in 1879. Later he oversaw the creation of a museum of decorative and applied art for which major acquisitions were made at auctions in Vienna, Paris and London. After the 1917 Revolution, all the collections of this museum were transferred to the Hermitage.

Today the State Hermitage’s collection of embroidery includes around 1500 works and provides an overview of the development of this art form in a number of different European countries over the course of several centuries.

The curator of the exhibition is T.N. Kosourova, lead researcher in the State Hermitage’s Department of Western European art.

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Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky at the opening of the exhibition

Tatiana Kosourova, the curator of the exhibition

At the opening of the exhibition

At the exhibition