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During one
of my visits to Stitch n’ Craft Beads in Dorset, England,
the lovely Lynn Firth showed me a book from an exhibition at
the Museum of London. The book was about The Cheapside Hoard
and I immediately became inspired by the hoard. The
Cheapside Hoard is a hoard of jewelry from the late 16th and
early 17th centuries, discovered in 1912 by workmen
excavating in a cellar at 30-32 Cheapside in London. They
found a buried wooden box with more than 400 pieces of
Elizabethan and Jacobean jewelry, including chains, with
colored gemstones and enameled gold settings. The location
where the hoard was found may have been the premises of a
Jacobean
goldsmith,
and the hoard is considered to have been his inventory
buried in the cellar during the English Civil War. The
entire hoard was displayed together for the first time in
more than 100 years at the
Museum of London,
from October 2013 to April 2014.
I love
history (big surprise) and researching a project always
brings me to the women of all eras. Queen Elizabeth I is one
of my favorites. I was reading about the women who were her
ladies-in-waiting and I found Blanche Parry to be very
interesting. She
was the Chief Gentlewoman of Queen Elizabeth
I’s Privy Chamber and Keeper of Her Majesty’s Jewels and the
Queen’s companion for 56 years. I like to think that she may
have worn a chain like those found in the Cheapside Hoard.
In the
workshop, participants will learn to make components using a
variation of Huichol Stitch (a type of netting), Cubic Right
Angle Weave, and Peyote. Emphasis will be on creating
shapes and design inspiration. |
