Thanks to the Needleprint blog, we can visit the Victoria and Albert Museum's online display of the Oxburgh hangings, small needlepoint slips stitched in the 16th Century by Mary, Queen of Scots and Bess of Hardwick. You can get a quick peek at the Needleprint blog, or...
http://needleprint.blogspot.com/2013/04/see-mary-queen-of-scots-oxburgh-panels.html
... you can head straight to the museum's online display.
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?listing_type=imagetext&offset=0&limit=15&narrow=1&extrasearch=&q=oxburgh&commit=Search&quality=1&objectnamesearch=&placesearch=&after=&after-adbc=AD&before=&before-adbc=AD&namesearch=&materialsearch=&mnsearch=&locationsearch=
Tiny URL
http://tinyurl.com/bl6gjrb
The Summary and Further Information sections of each page are quite helpful in explaining what you are seeing. Many of these images are complex puns with many meanings, another example of the word games the Elizabethans were so fond of. (Shakespeare uses many examples in his plays and poems.)
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
@ Copyright 2013 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.
