“Color is the place where our brains and the universe come together.” Paul Cézanne
Red. My favorite color. As a tot I wanted the red balloon, the red lollipop. My dress in kindergarten was red with white polka dots. Red adds the zing to many of the photographs I snap nowadays.
Red. The color of love, passion, power, blood…and guts. As languages evolve, colors are not all given names at the same time. In what scientists call the hierarchy of colors, red is the first color given a name across many cultures. First, people created terms for lightness and darkness. Next came a name for red, a color on the light wave spectrum to which the human eye is particularly sensitive. Recognizing red and communicating it to others can have life-altering results — for instance, in following the blood trail of an injured game animal. Other color names followed red.
Last of the main colors to be named was blue, a lovely color but not of much real importance to know. Even Homer’s Iliad dates from a time when, according to some linguists, blue went anonymously among the Greeks. The Mediterranean Sea was described as “wine dark,” not blue. But red — well if a culture has three names for colors, they are light (white), dark (black), and red. The rest come later.
Given red’s preeminence among colors it should come as no surprise that among monochromatic embroidering, red is popular across diverse cultures. Blue, black. and white-on-white embroidery exist but for punch, it’s red embroidered on white.
For example, Hungarian needlework includes red heavily worked in fancy curves and geometric designs using a buttonhole, open chain, satin, and other stitches on white. The result is a folksy, vivid decoration for clothing and décor.
Red embroidery is a favorite of Slavic cultures. As in other groups, it embellishes clothing and home décor. Towels have long dominated the cultural landscape.
In northern Russian, during times of disasters such as drought or epidemics, a village’s women would gather at dawn to spin, weave, and embroider a one-day towel. Called an obydennoe, the towel was a countermeasure to the evil facing the village. To have power, the towel had to be completed in a day.
Today, guests in Slavic homes are greeted with a loaf of bread and a saltcellar set on an embroidered towel. Holding a dominant cultural position are red-embroidered ritual towels. Known as rushnyk in Ukraine and Russia, the ritual towels are also found in Belarus and Karelia. Made by women taught needlework as girls, the designs include elements which pre-date Christianity and literacy. Along with geometric designs, plants, animals, and Christian crosses are ancient goddesses of fertility, the sun, spring, wealth, and nymphs.
The towels are used in important occasions such as religious ceremonies and social events. A person may have the same ritual towel wrapped around them at birth, wrapped around their hands or shoulders or under their feet at their wedding, and draped in the window when they die, or over the cross at their grave. Between these events, the towels are draped over icons in their home. The towels are believed to gather increasing amounts of holiness over time.
Other regions employ red embroidery. Palestinian red embroidery is typical. Southern Bedouin women could only wear red embroidered dresses after their marriage. In central Palestine, widows re-embroidered over their red clothing trim with blue or dyed the red to a blue color.
Palestinian women, like others in the past, depended on natural dyes. For red, they turned to bugs and plants. Cochineal is a parasitic insect native to the Americas that feeds on prickly pear cactus. Thanks to the uproar over Red Dye Number 5, the carmine red dye extracted from its crushed bodies is still in use today as a natural colorant in food and lipstick. Kermes is a similar scale insect which feeds on oak and can be crushed to make a red dye.
The Palestinians, like others in the eastern Mediterranean, used the root of the madder plant to make a red dye. In 1740s, madder root began to be used in the British Isles and Europe in a dying process called Turkey red. Turkey red-dyed fabric and fiber did not fade with sunlight or laundering and did not bleed. The process, originating in China, was complicated and incorporated ingredients such as sheep dung, sheep blood, olive oil, and lye. Not surprisingly, Scotland — home to countless sheep — became a center for Turkey red production.
The Turkey red process allowed for the manufacturing of an inexpensive red cotton embroidery floss which for decades was the only colorfast floss available. From this arose redwork embroidery in Britain, North America, and Europe. The Royal School of Art Needlework in Kensington, England taught it using a simple outline or stem stitch. The stitch became known as the Kensington stitch.
From 1855 to 1925, American embroiderers embraced redwork. In the 1870’s it surged with the new availability of iron-on transfers for patterns as well as it’s promotion by the major needlework exhibition at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
Redwork in its heyday decorated mostly household items. Pillowcases, pillow shams, dresser scarves, sofa pillows, and table napkins were all fair game.
Designs were mostly done in an outline or stem stitch, easily done by novices. Animals, flowers, toys, insects, children, and ladies with ornate hairdos covered white cotton. Often, the pattern coordinated with the piece’s function — a sleeping Victorian child with “Good Night” emblazoned on a banner for a pillowcase or toiling women on a dish towel.
“Splashers” were a staple of Victorian life. Wooden washstands furnished bedrooms with a place to put an ewer and wash bowl for washing up. The rectangular “splasher” cloths protected the walls. They were draped over wooden dowels at the back of the stand or tacked to the walls. Found today, they can often be identified by the holes in their corners, or the watery vignettes of ponds, cattails, and ducks stitched on them.
Penny squares began to appear at the turn of the twentieth century. Pre-printed quilt blocks, they were six to ten inches across and sold for one cent, hence the name. Embroiders would, after amassing and embroidering enough, sew them into bed coverings. Featherstitch, cross stitch, or red cotton sashing often joined the penny squares. Beatrix Potter characters and animals began to appear.
Around 1910, colorfast blue floss became available. Monochromatic blue embroidering appeared, but never reached the ubiquity of redwork. Other colorfast flosses eventually supplanted redwork as needleworkers opted for multicolor options.
Redwork patterns are readily available in shops and online and often taken up to make holiday and vintage-inspired projects. Antique and vintage redwork, from completed works to sets of penny squares can be found. Often the only way to distinguish the country of origin is by the language embroidered on them or distinctive clothing. A banner in German or a Breton hat on a lady wearing wooden sabot clogs might be the tip off.
If you’re looking for a simple, inexpensive embroidery project, for you or a child, you can’t go wrong with the well-loved tradition of redwork.