A Medallion using Wire Embroidery

So, this year's super-secret project #1 has finally been given and I can now post about it!  (super-secret project #2 will get its own blog post once it has been given out)

My friend Þórfinnr was inducted into the Order of the Maunche this past Saturday.  For those not in the SCA, or the East Kingdom, the Order of the Maunche is one of our Orders of High Merit - it's an award for skill in the arts and sciences of the Middle Ages.  It usually recognizes not just skill, but also research into the way things were done/made in our period of interest.  Þórfinnr is an awesome guy whose research and crafting spans many topics (check out his blog on medieval Chinese brewing, where he is actually translating recipes from a period text, and this blog with other varied topics).  But, for the purposes of this discussion we're going to talk about Viking era wire ornament on clothing.

So, Þórfinnr has done a bit of nalbinding, and he knows that I've done quite a bit.  And we ended up geeking out over some wire embroidery from the finds at Birka in Sweden at one point.  In fact, he gave me a copy of the book referenced below.

Since he's very interested in all aspects of Viking-era Scandinavia and creating an authentic Viking persona, Þórfinnr was looking at a type of embellishment called posaments.  These are generally wire decorations done on the surface of clothing and there are many variations.  There is a particular version found at the Birka site in Sweden which is done in the same manner as the Coptic nalbinding that I've previously discussed on this blog (here and here).  Agnes Geijer, in her book Birka III - Die Textilfunde, describes them in the chapter on embroidery, rather than as posements, but is very clear that the work is done with fine silver wire.

This type of embellishment is worked with crossed loops of the wire, either in columns or rows.  The wire usually passes behind the base fabric at the ends of the rows, or on either side of a column:

This is the illustration from Geijer's book.  The work I did is mostly similar to type C seen here. 

All of this is basically preamble to the main thrust of this post.  Upon induction into the Order, each person is given a medallion with the order's symbol (seen at the top of this post).  It's a stylized, heraldic version of a particular type of sleeve that generally ends up looking like the letter 'M' (or a diagram of a colon - but maybe that's just me).  Since I think Þórfinnr is a cool guy and he introduced me to this interesting variation on a technique that I've been using, I decided that I'd like to use this type of wire embellishment to make a medallion for him.

So, I got myself some brass wire (with gold-finish and with an anodized purple finish) in 24 gauge, which was the thinnest wire in the store I went to.  Everyone I spoke with about working with looped wire had told me that one had to use pliers to manipulate the wire.  This did not work out so well.  Since the fabric base I was using was silk, the pliers and the cut end of the wire kept snagging the threads, which you can see in this photo.  Also, even though I tried to file the cut end of the wire, it was still difficult to push through the fabric.

Here are some early attempts (real failures on the right)

 So, I decided that maybe I needed even thinner wire.  After all, Geijer had described this as embroidery, and the technique is the same as nalbinding, which I was used to doing with a needle.  So, I got some 30 gauge wire.  This was thin enough that I could thread it onto an embroidery needle.  This worked out much better.  The portion on the left of the photo above was my first successful attempt with the thinner wire.

The thinner wire behaved much more like thread or yarn and did not require pliers to form it into loops.  Plus, the embroidery needle went through the fabric much more easily.  It was much more like working nalbinding - which I'm familiar with.  Once I got the hang of not catching the needle's point on the fabric when I didn't want to, it went pretty smoothly.   Ultimately, I think that the 30 gauge wire is probably very close to the gauge used in the originals.  My finished work has about 7 stitches/cm - which is exactly the gauge, as best as I can determine from Geijer's information, of the pieces from Birka.

The base fabric is silk taffeta.  I think it is probably less substantial than the silks that Viking-era people would have used for this purpose.  So, when I stitched together one piece of gold and one piece of purple silk, I doubled them back so I was working with a double thickness.  The shape of the Maunche was outlined with basting thread and then the work began!

Here is the left half done with purple wire on the gold silk.  Ruler for scale.

And here is the completed design.

The surviving examples of this technique from Birka were most likely apliqueed onto a garment of some sort.  But, not knowing whether Þórfinnr would want to do that, I figured I should finish it up as a medallion (as is typical SCA practice).  So, I cut out a circle around the embroidery and chose a bit of wool that I knew would not fray as a backing and then used some silk embroidery thread to make a blanket stitch around the edges (holding down a narrow folded hem in the silk).

I finished the edges of the piece with more wire work. There is a surviving cuff from Birka described here which had this.  It's the same Coptic stitch-style looping, worked into a tube (like "trichinopoly"/wire weaving chains) with the wire piercing through the fabric at the end of each row.  As I started working it, I realized that my backing wool was still a bit floppy.  So, I used a piece of medium weight leather in addition to back the piece.  The edge coil goes through all layers.

Wire coil in purple on the left.  On the right, you can see the blanket stitch in silk.  I probably should have done the silk blanket stitch in the same color as the cloth, rather than the color of the wire that would go over it.  I think it makes the coil pattern less distinct.  

The completed edge finish

Last, I used some coiled wire to add a loop for a cord to the top.  This is not structurally connected to the edge finish, so if Þórfinnr decides that he does want to apply this onto a sash, bag, or garment he can just take it off.

The finished medallion, with ruler in inches for scale

I think this was a very successful attempt at adapting a craft practice from period examples for something that is particular to the SCA.  A real piece of creative anachronism!