NEW: 18th century embroidery is NO JOKE. (Trust me, we tried it.)

“Four months and 19 incredible artisans later: I am so pleased to finally be able to bring you this little project we’ve been working on—which just might be one of the biggest videos we’ve produced to date!

The concept of an embroidered late-18th century waistcoat started off as a casual side-quest to an entirely different project. But upon looking into some history of the craft—and getting a daunting sense of just how much labor this would require—I decided that it needed a whole video to itself. And I’m so glad we went in this direction: it led to the most wonderful collaboration with Hand & Lock, a local London embroidery house who have been doing traditional embroidery since the 18th century. I absolutely loved getting a peek at what they do and the many ways that they’re keeping these historical techniques alive and well in the 21st century.

This project wasn’t without its challenges though. Begun in service of a hard deadline, we were initially working to a very tight schedule—meaning that experimenting with some time-saving machine methods rather than going full original practice was an absolute must. Original plans fell through though, and suddenly finding ourselves without the excuse of time pressure to warrant the machine work, the script had to undergo several complete overhauls in order to tell a story which I felt would still be satisfying to you, despite the channel’s precedent of sticking to original practice whenever possible. However the blending of historical with present, of exploring the relationship between tradition with innovation, is always something that fascinates me and underpins my work. This is particularly essential to the work of those who reproduce complex (and historically expensive!) garments for stage and screen—which is ultimately the angle that this video leant towards. I ended up coming away from this project amazed at the level of human involvement in even a partly-mechanized process: how human creativity and handiwork are still essential to producing the work at all.

For those craftyfolk amongst you—whether you’re experienced with embroidery or not (yet!)—you’re in luck! Hand & Lock had the marvellous idea to put together some kits of the design used on this project, allowing you to give the myriad handwork techniques a try for yourself. If you’d like to play along at home and give it a go for yourself, you can find those to purchase here. (Please note that this is not an affiliate or sponsored link.)

I hope you’ll find the final project just as enjoyable to watch as we all enjoyed the process of bringing it to life!”

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