A wonderful embroidered rhino from a needlework magazine of the 1970s
Over the decades I have collected many magazine cuttings of craft projects I’ll never have the time or talent to carry out. I thought I would share this one, so it’s not completely wasted.
I regret I don’t know what magazine I took it from – possibly from something like Golden Hands in the 1970s here in the UK.
It’s an appliqué rhino and it’s the sort of thing I would love to create myself. Here’s what the write-up says:
Collector’s piece
An embroidered pachyderm
This sophisticated animal motif illustrates how versatile embroidery can be.
An ingenious idea is the addition of shells, sequins and silver kid on the rhino giving it a glamour quite unknown in the real animal!
The rhino’s tough, heavy skin has been translated into an intricate pattern without losing the impression of weight. Coarseness of texture has been emphasised by using shells and small padded areas. Plain fabric shapes form a balanced contrast. The stitchery is restrained, so that the fabric and padding dominate the composition.
Many years after collecting this picture, I first saw the famous rhinoceros woodcut by Albrecht Dürer. This would make the basis of an even more wonderful appliqué wall hanging – Dürer even shows you where to put the sequins!
Dürer's woodcut of a rhinoceros from 1515 - he had never seen one
According to Wikipedia this woodcut created by German painter and printmaker Dürer in 1515 was based on a written description and brief sketch by an unknown artist of an Indian rhinoceros that had arrived in Lisbon earlier that year.
Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times. In late 1515, the King of Portugal, Manuel I, sent the animal as a gift for Pope Leo X, but it died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy in early 1516.
To complete the picture, here’s a real Indian rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis)…
An Indian rhino at Buffalo Zoo, photographed by Dave Pape
The embroidery is beautiful, and takes me back to when my mother used to do such things; a legacy of a materially impoverished childhood in Wiltshire and a legion of maiden aunts who taught her to sew and knit, which enriched the lives of everyone around her ever after (I am wearing a 30-year-old jersey she knitted as I type – far too cold for anything else I possess). Somewhere in the loft are carefully preserved pictures she worked, including some, like the rhino, in metal thread, sequins and materials of different texture. She used to work each of her 3 children one each Christmas – and we squabbled over them, naturally. At least it showed we appreciated them.
Other Half is, inter alia, helping with conservation efforts for the one-horned rhino in Nepal. He’s a small player in a massive undertaking, but does get to go there and has seen rhinos in the wild. I’ve seen them at Whipsnade, although the M25/M1 can make an expedition there as challenging as the Himalayas. The Indian rhino’s thick, regular folds of hide really does make it look armour-plated, as Durer shows it – very different from the African rhinos whose hides are more like an elephant’s.
Is there a spectacular bronze – or maybe a carving – of an Indian rhino in the (um, struggling here) Art Museum at Cardiff University? Had a happy few hours in the gallery in the autumn while daughter no. 2 was interviewed – small but varied and therefore terrific collection.
Rebecca, your comments are really blog posts in themselves!
I remember my mother used to take a magazine called Stitchcraft and there was one wall hanging I would have loved to make. It was the Six Wives of Henry VIII, all in felt and chiffon and braid and pearls…
I must look up that bronze rhino you mention!