Folding screen
Category
Furniture
Date
circa 1900 (the screen; the needlework circa 1575)
Materials
Oak, Glass, Brass, Canvas, Silk, Wool
Measurements
246 x 160.5 cm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire
NT 1130605
Summary
A three-fold screen, one of a pair of oak-framed and glazed three-fold screens, English, circa 1900, once a single six-fold screen, now separated into two. Each fold framing five needlework octagons, circa 1575, or fifteen in total. The octagons matching panels mounted on a set of hangings, now at Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk, which were worked by Bess of Hardwick, Mary, Queen of Scots and their gentlewomen in the 1570s. All but two of the thirty-one octagons remaining at Hardwick Hall bear Bess of Hardwick's initials, and show naturalistic flowers sourced from the 1568 and 1572 editions of a book by the Botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli. Each flower surrounded by a Latin tag of the sort learnt by schoolboys, not the names of the plants. These inscriptions, many of which must have been worn, were over-painted by the 6th Duke of Devonshire. The octagons of linen canvas worked with silk and wool in cross and tent stitch. The screen with moulded frame and brass hinges.
Provenance
Transferred to the National Trust from the Treasury in 1984.
References
Bath 2008: Michael Bath, Emblems for a Queen: The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots, London 2008 Levey, 1998: Santina M. Levey, An Elizabethan inheritance: the Hardwick Hall textiles. London: National Trust, 1998., pp. 58 - 60