MADEIRA EMBROIDERY

CHARACTERISTICS

• DESIGNS - usually simple or conventional floral motifs and scrolls
• LADDERWORK - a very narrow ladder made using a stiletto for the holes.
• SCALLOPING - padded before stitched with finest buttonhole stitch.
• FABRICS - white or bleached Portuguese cotton fabric. Or the finest of fabrics with a firm fine texture – cambric, muslin, cotton, lawn, fine linen, good crepe de chine.
• STITCHES - running, overcasting stitch, buttonhole, padded satin stitch.
• APPLIQUE - sometimes small pieces of cotton fabric hemmed to main ground and embroidere, pin stitch (Point de Paris) hemming, point de turc or buttonhole.
• THREADS - cotton or linen mercerized thread on linen or cotton. Fine twisted silk on crepe de chine. Often worked in pale blue cotton thread as white easily soiled in the climate.
• USES - dresses, lingerie, baby clothes, fine household linen, handkerchiefs.

HISTORY

Unlike the embroideries of Spain which had links with North Africa and South America, those of Portugal have more affinity with work of the Indian sub-continent with curving scrolls.
Portuguese explorers opened the sea route round Africa to India during the 15th C and by 1505 the first Portuguese vice-regency in India was established.

The archipelago of Madeira, off the Atlantic coast of Portugal, was and is a prolific centre for the output of embroidery. Thousands of women embroidered towels, tablemats and other domestic items for sale not only in Madeira and mainland Portugal but also overseas, particularly in America.

In 1850 by philanthropic Englishwoman, Mrs. Phelps, whose family had a house in Madeira, returned to Britain with trunks full of embroidery produced by calloused peasant hands. “The English upper middle classes followed and had their trousseaux stitched and embroidered in Madeira, where skills were handed down from mother to daughter.”

The finest of buttonhole stitches around the edges of items, is the main identifying characteristic. Maderia work was copied by other countries, mainly China, but few were able to reach the standard of the Madeira women.

REFERENCE:
THE EMBROIDERY OF MADEIRA by Carolyn Walker & Kathy Holman, 1987
THE BOOK OF FINE LINEN by Françoise de Banneville, translated from French by Deke Dusinberre, 1994 Fammarion.
Article in Piecework magazine, MADEIRA