embroidery or not

As per the facebook announcement Marion McNealy has produced another book this time of embroidery books. This is of special importance, for me, for several reasons.

The first being that that I have already found the motto associated with Anne of Cleves is probably a common modelbuch pattern but also because at least three embroidery books use images of women from the North Rhine in their plates!

According to historians the first is Il Burato, Venezia, 1527 printed in Italy. 

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And next another embroidery book printed in France La fleur des patrons de lingerie […] ; Livre nouveau dict patrons de lingerie  Publication date : 1515-1533

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And then apparently later Ein new kunstlich Modelbůch Woensam, Anton; Köln, 1536

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Neither the Italian nor the French works include a publishing date. This book printed in Cologne does have a date.

To further suggest this is the origin the dress depicted in this plate also matches well with dress of Cologne. Note the first figure even has the looped braids of an unmarried woman, and all three have pinned on sleeves.

Il burato repeats this plate at the start of each book along with a plate illustration how to copy the patterns.

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These do appear to be Italian in terms of dress.

I do now have copies of all three books and there is a lot of repeated patterns, but I’ll leave it to Marion’s book to really explore this. I’m mostly trying to find the origin of these particular plates!