The History of Embroidery

Embroidery is the art of decorating fabrics by stitching designs with a needle and yarn. As civilizations flourished people started incorporating other materials like metal strips, pearl, beads and quills in their designs.

The use of embroidery to decorate clothes is as old as the sewing itself. With wear and tear in his clothes man started mending his torn clothes with patches and used reinforced sewing techniques to make it strong to ensure that the stitch didn’t give in during rough use. It was at this time when man discovered that the thread that he used for fastening clothes together and mending patches could also be used to decorate and design it. During that period he used beads, stones, bones and seeds of various fruits as decoration materials.

Initially embroidery was done by hand. The earliest samples of handmade embroidery are available from ancient Egypt, Persia, China, India, Russia and England. Each country portrayed its own distinctive style in designs based on its culture, history and traditions.

In 1964, a hunter’s fossil dating back to 30,000 B.C was found in Cro-Magnon, Russia. The fur clothing along with his boots and hat were heavily decorated with handmade stitches of ivory bead

Chinese thread embroidery dates back to 3500 B.C which is still prevalent today. Chinese bead embroidery dates back to 6000 B.C that had drilled shells stitched with decorative designs into animal hides. At around 500 A.D, embroidery with silk thread along with precious stones and pearls was practiced in China.

Even though we don’t have samples, history records from ancient sculptures, paintings and vases dating 3000 B.C depict inhabitants from ancient Greece using thread embroidered clothing during that time. Babylonians and Syrians used embroidered clothes during 400 B.C and 700A.D respectively.

Archaeological excavations reveal that during 400 A.D Empress Honorius used high standard thread embroidery using pure gold to design her clothes.

During 1100s, 1200s and 1300s smaller seed pearls and beads gained popularity in stitching. By 1700 bead embroidery went beyond fabrics to layette baskets, court dresses and home furnishings.

In the Victorian era elaborate freehand stitching began to dwindle when the machine age started to flourish. But at the same time bead embroidery gained popularity along with the new needlework stitches.

Invention of fine steel needles along with the evolution of new techniques to manufacture smaller beads and went drilling bead holes made beads a more common tool for embroidery. Even today thread and bead embroidery can be found on ornamental wear and home furnishings across the world.

Embroidered clothing was also considered a symbol of wealth in ancient China and Japan. Many scenes from history are often found embroidered in fabric. The most famous one is the231 feet long Bayeux Tapestry that depicts the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Machine embroidery emerged with the industrial revolution. It also brought in new varieties of yarn like rayon apart from cotton and wool. Computers brought in embroidery software with digitized patterns to finish the texture and designs in the clothing.

Even though technology has made embroidery work easy, but there has not been much change in the materials or techniques in the history of embroidery that can be actually claimed as an advancement from the primitive stage to the present.