Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Ipsden Church, Oxon: patchwork altar frontal, detail of harebell (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

The latest flower embroidered for the altar frontal is the harebell. To be seasonally appropriate, I should have made it a bluebell as bluebells are now carpeting woodlands with a wonderful hazey blue, while you’d have to wait until July to see a harebell. But I now discover that for all the superficial similarity between these two plants, they are not closely related. The harebell is a campanula or bell flower (Campanula rotundifolia), while the bluebell is a hyacinth (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) as its smell bears out. Bluebells like rich, damp soil with lots of leaf litter and so flourish beneath sun dappled woodland canopies but the harebell lurks in longer grass, just a bell or two of tissue paper fragility supported on a stem of fine wire, quivering and shimmering to catch the attention of passing insects. And then, of course, is the matter of scent. The scent of the bluebell, without hyperbole, could be said to the most quintessential smell of England as half of all English or wild bluebells in the world grow in English soil. Incidentally, as bluebells cannot be legally harvested the scent can only be produced commercially synthetically. (I shall save discussion of the difference between the invasive Spanish bluebell and the wild english variety until I have embroidered and English bluebell).   The lowly harebell has very little scent.

Ipsden Church, Oxon: patchwork altar frontal, detail of harebell (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

To add further to the confusion, in Scotland the harebell is known as the Scottish bluebell, probably because the English bluebell is largely absent in the Highlands, although in the southernmost parts of Scotland, the English bluebell can be as extensive as here in the Chilterns.

The harebell I have sewn in long and short stitch, back stitch for the stem and satin stitch for the leaves.

Ipsden Church, Oxon: patchwork altar frontal, detail of passionflower (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Over the last week I’ve managed to fit in embroidering another flower found in local gardens. Passionflowers always seem rather too beautiful to be true and I find embroidering them equally rewarding. Their name, an abbreviation of the Latin, Flos Passionalis, literally flower of suffering, is an appropriate flower to show as we approach the drama of Holy Week. Its association with Christ’s suffering goes back to the early Jesuits who came across the flower in the New World as colonistation of the Americas advanced. They were much taken with the structure of the flower and used it as a sort of aide memoire of  the Passion as they attempted  to convert the native peoples to Christianity.  The 3 stigmas represent the 3 nails used to nail Christ to the cross, 5 stamens and anthers represent the 5 wounds, while the  filaments of the corona stand for the crown of thorns. The 10 petals and sepals framing the more intricate features of the flower represent the 10 disciples who were there at the Crucifixion (Judas and Peter being absent). (I had a sudden panic when I realised I only had 10 petals having forgotten the clever shoehorning of the story to the realities of the plant – how fortunate I copied the original one I embroidered from nature.)  Symbolism continues with the green parts of the plants: 3 flower bracts represent the Trinity, the 5-lobed leaves are the hands of Christ’s persecutors (in fact not all passionflowers have 5) , while the tendrils stand as a reminder of the cords that bound him.

Ipsden Church, Oxon: patchwork altar frontal, detail of hellebore (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

P. incarnata, a passionflower with a longer and more frilly corona was probably the New World species originally encountered but this proved difficult to establish in European conditions, where the wetter winters were especially problematic. In Europe, P. caerulea flourishes and this is the variety I have based my embroidery on (the purple-red should be more of a mahogany-brown but it looked better with a bit more colour against the black background).  P. caerulea carries the additional symbolism of its blue and white colouring standing for Heaven and purity respectively. I made a hanging for my son-in-law to celebrate ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ from the American Declaration of Independence and used  passionflowers as decoration. I now have it in mind to do a more botanical hanging of the flowers themselves, possibly on black silk, but much as I’d love to get on with that now, it’ll have to take its place in the queue.

Passiflora caerulea summer 2013