Sweet Bags

by: Jacqui Carey

Published by: Carey Company

ISBN 0-9523225-7-9

Sweet Bags
An Investigation into
16th & 17th Century Needlework

The author’s interest in sweet bags started in the early 1990s, whilst searching for braids in the Burrell Collection. The bag (shown in Fig. 28) is an exquisite example, and it inspired an interest in textiles from this era. At the time, a detailed study of the sweet bag’s drawstring was made, whilst the interlacing of the ‘braid’ stitch was just sketched with a passing interest. Only later, after an unsuccessful attempt to find its name by searching through stitch books (only a few of which are mentioned in the bibliography), did the author realise that this was not the same as the modern equivalent. The subsidiary gathering of information continued, and it became apparent that many of the needlework techniques described in accession notes and books did not correspond with the visual evidence seen on other objects from this era. In fact, whilst the same stitches kept reappearing, there seemed to be a notable lack of the modern versions described in today’s literature. There has been a long-standing interest in sixteenth and seventeenth century needlework, and some consider it to be one of the pinnacles for English textiles, yet many of the stitches appeared to have been lost, or misinterpreted.

The author’s investigation into British braids intensified after being awarded a QEST scholarship in 2005.

During this time, a large body of information was gathered. This book has been published in an effort to pass on some of the structural details observed during the author’s research, and to re-establish an understanding of the skillful work that forms part of our heritage. This has been done by looking specifically at ‘sweet bags’, as these highly decorative little purses provide the focal point for looking at the context, structure and potential methods of some needlework dating from the Elizabethan, Jacobean and later Stuart periods.