Lost in the limbo land between buying and selling a home. It seems as if all we’ve done this spring and summer is work on one or the other house or garden and move objects between them. Cats are confused. I am exhausted. The blog has been neglected. I’ve been painting walls and longing to paint again from a palette rather than a can. I am excited to move into my new home though and I love it madly even though it’s stolen all of my time. The most challenging and emotional part of all this has been moving the gardens, deciding which plants to keep and which to leave and where they go and all that jazz. These photos were taken last week at the beach house garden. Everything has changed dramatically again. Faded irises have given way to an explosion of daisies, coreopsis, and foxglove. So much inspiration. So little time.
Author Archives: Aria Nadii
Embroidered Book Covers
While researching book bindings for a project, I’ve been coming across these gorgeous embroidered book covers and bindings from the 16th and 17th century. Thought I’d make a blog post out of these exquisite works of art.. The original scans for the books are scattered throughout The British Library Database of Bookbindings. I’ve just selected, cropped, and optimized them. The larger size originals are in a flickr set so that all the amazing details can be seen and are worth clicking through and taking a good look at.
Embroidered satin book with floral motif. The Whole Booke of Psalmes (London, 1639)
Embroidered velvet book with scroll and floral pattern. Orationis Dominic: explicatio (Geneva, 1583)
17th century embroidered satin book with pictorial angel and trees. The Whole Booke of Davids Psalmes (London, 1634)
Embroidered Canvas book, pictorial angel and floral motif with two red ribbons. The Booke of Common Prayer (London, 1611)
Hidden Treasure
Now this was a lot of fun to discover. I purchased an old leather sewing kit. It was in excellent shape and apparently had nothing inside it except a rusty threaded needle and brown paper padding at the bottom. However, there was something quite interesting and well hidden wrapped in that plain brown paper.