Down the Rabbit Hole
Last month amongst other things I began to do some new research, my starting point was Renaissance Scotland, in the book Glory and Honour I became fixated with an embroidered hawking pouch made for James VI c.1610.
I make low relief carvings in lime and had thought I could use this as a starting point for new work. According to the book’s text ‘The elaborate, twining pattern includes blackberry and mistletoe, which were believed to have protective powers’. There was something about the scale of this motif that after consideration I couldn’t envisage working for me in wood and instead a little odyssey began, initially thinking about James VI and his mother through embroidery.
This is a detail from the Marian Hanging, which Mary had a hand in making as well as Elizabeth (Bess) Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury and members of the household, it was completed around 1585. This detail shows ‘A Rhinocerote of the Sea’, which to me looks like a cross between a dragon and a shark. The majority of the embroidered motifs were copied from woodcut illustrations of volumes called ’emblem books’ by well known authors such as Conrad Gesner. I’ve long been interested in these…
This is Gesner’s Hedgehog from Historia Animalium 1551, wheras the postcard at the top of the post and the image below is The Hedge-Hog from Topsell’s History of Four-Footed Beasts 1607 (a postcard from the Library of Innerpeffray) illustrating the need for and use of research material.
Glory and Honour, The Renaissance in Scotland
Andrea Thomas, Birlinn 2013, Edinburgh
Cultures of Natural History
Edited by N.Jardine, J.A.Secord and E.C. Spary
Cambridge University Press, 1996
