Silk Shading

This technique is most commonly known as needle painting with cotton or silk threads using long and short stitches. Also referred to as Art Needlework, it emphasizes delicate shading in satin stitch with silk thread accompanied by a number of novelty stitches, in sharp contrast with the counted-thread technique of the brightly colored Berlin wool work needlepoint craze of the mid-nineteenth century.  Artist and designer William Morris is credited with the resurrection of these techniques of freehand surface embroidery based on English embroidery styles of the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century. Morris's daughter May, an accomplished needlewoman and designer in her own right, was highly active in the Royal School of Needlework from its inception in 1872