Written by Jen Funk Segrest
(NOTE: An edited version of this article appeared in Beadwork Magazine, August 2004)

In late December 2001, I sat in an unheated textile storage room at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The walls were lined with wide drawers holding irreplaceable bits of woven historic treasure, some of which I had traveled 4,000 miles to see. In front of me on a bare table sat two pieces of 4-inch-square parchment bearing images of the heads of apostles embroidered entirely in coral, pearl, and blue glass seed beads. These pieces had inspired my twelve-year odyssey into researching medieval beadwork.

During my research I discovered that glass seed beads existed even earlier than some bead researchers had thought and in areas that were, at the time, out of the way and far from the known bead capitals of Europe. The beadwork I found wasn’t created in London, Venice, Paris, or even Berlin. It was made in small cities and modest towns such as Halberstadt, a tiny hamlet in northern Germany, and Eger (now called Cheb), an old town that lies a few miles outside Germany's border, in western Bohemia, a part of the Czech Republic.

In the Middle Ages, Germany was tucked away from the rest of Europe behind rugged mountain ranges and dense forests. Because of these travel barriers, the country developed its own distinct fashions and art with minimal influence from the rest of Europe. The Germans mastered seed bead embroidery centuries before the rest of Europe, and the country was well known for the excellence of its stained and blown glass as well. On a map of Bavaria from the late sixteenth century, the cartographer noted, ``Here there are many Glassworks, [producing] blown glass, exceptional mirror glass, and glass beads.'' In fact, you can travel to this area today and tour the rediscovered ruins of ancient workshops, some dating back to AD 900.

At that time, glass was considered a luxury item, even for the well-off, but the demand for it grew. As glassmaking became an increasingly important industry, every town wanted a local workshop. The tiny German town of Bischofsgrun, Bavaria, a few miles from the Czech border, got an early start in the industry. The city first appears in historical records in 1242. By 1340, Bischofsgrun was a recognized glass center, and by 1536, Bavaria, an area about the size of Vermont, was home to thirty-nine glass workshops.

Like most medieval art, early German beadwork is often religious in nature. Almost every surviving German piece that I’ve studied that dates from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries was made for the church. Reliquaries (whether large or small), vessels for the Host, decorative altar hangings, even the abbot’s mitre, robes, and shoes are often covered in tiny glass beads and pearls. Cloistered nuns created much of the finery draped around priests or over altars in medieval churches and these were no exception.

Medieval German beadwork is characterized by beads couched with linen thread to animal hide parchment. No other culture doing beadwork seems to have executed it this exact way, yet for the Germans it was standard operating procedure. The Beaded parchment pieces are then appliquéd to a ground cloth of red silk. The beadwork often contains natural red coral, pearls, gold, and at least one shade of blue glass seed beads. Bezants, thin gold-foil plaques stamped with myriad delicate designs, were sewn into the unadorned areas of the ground cloth or incorporated into the beadwork itself.

Bezants became extremely popular throughout Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with the nobility and common folk alike sewing them by the dozen on any outer garment they wore. Like giant sequins, bezants add sparkle and splendor to a candlelit church. On these large church hangings bezants added sparkly splendor to a candlelit church acting much like giant sequins, with the added advantage of being far less costly than the real sparkle of jewels. Pearls were also in vogue at the time, especially in France and England. Pearls were sought after and so rare that they became more precious than gold. The pearl fad probably hit Germany, too, which would could explain why some pieces that were scavenged are missing pearls but not missing gold beads and bezants. Germany’s glass production might have grown in part to satisfy the demand for an alternative to the ever-so-precious pearls.

One extraordinary piece that typifies medieval German beadwork is an altar hanging from Halberstadt,. Although the silk has faded to a rosy pink, the piece doesn’t lack color. Besides the creamy white of the pearls and the gold of the (REMOVE) bezants (which were scavenged), the altar hanging includes bright yellow, green, turquoise, light blue, medium blue, dark cobalt, and violet beads so vibrant that I wish I could find that color today.

Another remarkable example of early German beadwork is an altar hanging in Cheb. Although it’s typical of altar hangings of the time and doesn’t have as wide a range of colors as the Halberstadt piece, its size is amazing. The hanging is about 33 inches tall and more than 90 inches wide--the largest beaded piece I’ve ever seen. Although many such extraordinary pieces were looted or sold, this hanging has remained in excellent condition in the town in which it was created for more than 700 years. Sources say nuns in the town’s Franciscan convent made the piece for the chapel of the castle just a few blocks away. The hanging now resides in the city museum.

The two squares that drew me to the Victoria & Albert Museum gave me the chance to see up close how these centuries-old pieces were made. Designs were drawn on the parchment in ink, beads were added on top of the inked designs beads were added by running a single thread through the beads then couching over that string with a second ones as the embroiderer filled in her design. In the areas stripped bare of pearls, you see only the couching loops were snipped to release seed pearls by merely pulling the thread out of them. There are areas stripped bare, their pearls freed by cutting and pulling out the single thread running through them and the beads released one by one as the string was removed out of each couching overstitch. The elongated needle holes suggest the use of a flat steel needle. The glass beads used are of a kind now called ``greasy glass.'' Neither completely transparent nor opaque, these beads are still being made today in France, but they are difficult to find outside Native American interest beading shops.

As you can imagine, I’ve touched on only a few of my favorite marvels of medieval German beadwork. If you would like to see more beaded pieces from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, visit my website at www.medievalbeads.com.

Copyright 2004, Jen Segrest, All Rights Reserved.