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Flowers, Petit Point
Berlin, middle of 19th century
embroidered with wool and satin, ca. 49 x 40 cm
Berlin Work – Berliner Wollstickereien
In the English-speaking world, “Berlin Work” or “Berlin Wool Work”, still means patterns from the 19th century in petit point embroidery on even-weave fabric with woollen yarn. Today, we mainly think of embroidered Biedermeier roses which are often described as Victorian. Embroidered samples and later also woollen embroidery yarns were exported from Berlin in large amounts around the world, mainly to Great Britain and the USA. By 1840, there are said to have been 14,000 different patterns; in an exported sample treasured by Max Heide, there are approximately 100,000 samples per year just for 1850. This branch of industry flourished in Berlin from the start of the 1830s to the end of the 1850s.
The foundations for this development were the coloured patterns, which were published in Berlin for the first time in 1804. This system of representing the various colours has barely changed because they have proved themselves in this form. Today, there is an innumerable flood of patterns for cross-stitch in all styles in magazines, books and on the Internet, mainly in the USA, which are created with special computer programs.
In 1804, the art publisher Phillipson in Berlin published its own pattern collection with 12 different coloured themes on squared paper. Now it was no longer necessary to draw the pattern’s outline or to trace and transfer it to the material. The numbered patterns showed each colour in detail for each stitch and its colouring was based on the available yarns. The patterns could be counted while embroidering, without any preparation by the embroiderer. Thus began the worldwide distribution of cross-stitch, firstly in the form of petit point, and forced back many other embroidery techniques.
If the first patterns were collected in booklets, sample patterns soon appeared similar to the picture patterns, and were sold as embroidery patterns in 100s and more. These samples were a great success, partly because difficult patterns in many colours could now be embroidered easily and partly because these individual samples were also affordable for broad layers of consumers. Berlin Wool Works became the fashion across Europe during the thirties.
Over the course of the next decades, many publishers appeared who only produced embroidery patterns. In total, there were 31 publishers in Berlin in the 19th century. As a result of this development and that of the export of embroidery patterns, the yarn industry also developed. At the start of the century, English yarns were preferred but from the thirties, Berlin yarns were exported in large amounts with the patterns.
In the 1850s, interest gradually decreased and from the 1870s, the criticism of tapestry embroidery as tasteless grew in volume. The reason often given for this was the invention of aniline dyes and the associated ever-brighter colours. In the time of historicism, other patterns of historical images were in demand and current patterns were increasingly offered as supplements in women’s magazines. Tapestry patterns were still produced, mostly for Gobelin embroidery, mainly directly onto even-weave fabric, along with started and completed works, which are still offered today as “Gobelins”.
While new styles and numbered patterns continue to be developed for cross-stitch, the patterns for petit point relate almost exclusively to images from the 18th and 19th century. If we search for “cross-stitch” on the Internet, we find an impossibly large number of English language sites, mostly in the USA and Greta Britain. The path to the embroiderers obviously appears to be via the Internet and the patterns come from the USA to Europe.
Have fun on my site and I hope you have the opportunity to visit again.
Sabine Wachtel
Dipl. Designerin
Hornstrasse 5
D-10963 Berlin
international Links, comments in german
1.11.2002