The first and third black and white plates in Digby had some nice examples of pearls being used to construct flowers.

I had a flick through a couple of books yesterday without finding any more but if I kept looking, I would undoubtedly find many more examples, especially if I went to the Medieval Beads site.

I thought that I’d share the ones I found with you.

Plate 1

The first thing that struck me about this swetebag was the acorns – the base being of padded passing thread (I think – I’m still practising my gold thread identification skills), and the ‘fruit’ being constructed of pearls.

The roses have their foldovers constructed of pearls. Either they are rather large roses, or the pearls are very small. Note the use of pearls in the centre of the rose as well.

There is that strange bulgey thing (perhaps someone knows what it is?) that appears as part of the vine in several places  - I marked one with the leftmost arrow. The top arrow on the right is pointing to a bulgey thing constructed of goldwork.

And, in a similiar vein to the pearl ‘flower’ I recently did,

there is a small pearl flower at the bottom centre of the bag, only with the pearls arranged a little differently (a bead centre?) and without the pearl purl.

There is also a leaf constructed entirely of pearls (bottom right most arrow)

Obviously, there is a wacking great carnation in the middle that also incorporates pearls. That would be really pretty done in the right colors.

Plate 2

This isn’t a great picture, and it also seems to feature lizards with wings (I assume they are birds).

I’ve numbered the features in  an attempt to make things clearer. It’s a pity that Blogger doesn’t allow a double-clicked enlarged picture plus the blog text showing at the same time (unless you open two windows showing the blog).

It seems that this embroider put pearls on every possible flower on this coif.

1 : Again, a flower similar to the 4 pearl one I constructed, but with little petals extruding from it’s stem (and no purl)

2 : A borage with a couple of pearls running up along it’s spike

3 : A dog rose, with pearls around the centre

4 : Another rose with pearls around the centre

I’ve just spotted a flower with 5 pearls around the outside and one in the middle, slightly left of centre about 7/8ths of the way down

And various other pearl constellations that I can’t identify. Perhaps some grapes?