Ten of us from our group took the train up to London to visit Hand and Lock who have been producing fine embroidery for royalty and celebrities since 1767. We were taken into the ‘BeadRoom’ where two of the embroiderers told us about their work and how they came to be embroiderers for Hand and Lock.
Some interesting facts from our tour:
*Military uniforms for royalty are made with real gold braid (2% gold) film set uniforms use fake gold.
* When making a uniform like the one modelled by Susie, individual pieces are embroidered, it is then made up by a tailor then the embroidery is finished.
*Hand and Lock did much of the embroidery for the coronation but sadly they were not mentioned on the programme about the coronation tailors. They worked on Penny Mordant’s fabulous sea green coat, Queen Camilla’s shoes and 52 goldwork flags for Burberry’s flagship stores and the Household Cavalry uniforms.
* They work with skilled embroiderers in India who are mostly men. * They also do lots of machine embroidery for many other clients.
* They run loads of different embroidery courses on line. Check out their website.
The following photos give you a taster of the embroidery we saw.
What an enjoyable day, thanks Chris. The embroideries were fabulous and the company was great. I enjoyed spending time with some SCS members who I didn’t know very well before the trip. And the Liberty fabric department and Liberty tea-shop just had to be done afterwards!
Glad you enjoyed it and yes it was good getting to know our members better.
Amazing work!