Embroidery on Leather: a catalogue of artifacts from before 1625

with Ken Stuart

At least 1,692 embroidered leather items have survived from before 1625 CE. They have been published in some 265 articles, books, and online museum databases in 16 languages. Ken has amalgamated these details of these items into a single web-accessible database so that they can be searched, sorted, grouped, and displayed in a single virtual location for further study. Of this collection, shoes form the vast majority of items, however belts, hats, pouches, sheaths, gloves, doublets, and other types of clothing and equipment also provide evidence of embroidery on leather during this period. This presentation will show many examples of items along with some graphs and maps useful while discussing distributions through time and space. Recent trips to Poland and Norway have allowed Ken to examine some of these items personally and take high-resolution colour close-up photos of both sides of the leather; some of these photos will be highlighted during the presentation as well.

Ken Stuart has an MA in medieval archaeology from Cornell University and has participated in a number of fieldwork projects in Ireland, Iceland, and the UK. After a career as a web developer, mostly at Cornell from which he has recently retired, his attention turned back to the Middle Ages. The leather embroidery project has resulted from pursuing research on this topic and finding it to be scattered widely, but suitable for bringing together into a single resource using familiar technologies. He wishes to thank the Society of Antiquaries of London for supporting the trips to examine and photograph shoes in Poland and Norway – they were most informative for this study.