Handmade History17 Nov 2025

Episode 24: Blackwork Embroidery

We're doing a giveaway!

To celebrate our collaboration kit & pattern with Melissa Galbraith of MCreativeJ, we are giving away one of Melissa's books, DIY Embroidered Shoes.

If you would like to enter the giveaway, visit Handmade History Podcast on Instagram. You'll see the giveaway post pinned right at the top and you can comment and enter there.

If you're not on Instagram, no worries! Just send us an email with your name and let us know that you'd like to enter the giveaway. You can email us at handmadehistoryhosts@gmail.com. This giveaway closes on December 1, 2025.

This week, we are talking about blackwork, a type of counted embroidery that typically uses a special stitch called the Holbein stitch. Tradition holds that Queen Katherine of Aragon brought blackwork to England from Spain when she married Henry VIII, and that the Holbein stitch was named after Tudor court painter Hans Holbein the younger.

But blackwork was around for hundreds of years before the Tudors reigned.

Mamluk embroidery is a type of embroidery that looks just like blackwork--and it originated in Egypt in the 1200s. We explore the fascinating history of how this group of enslaved Turks and Central Asians rose to power, and how they made Egypt the center of the Arab world.

We go back even further in time to explore an Indian tradition, kasuti embroidery, which has all of the characteristics of modern blackwork. And it's still going strong today!

Join us on a journey around the world and across time as we explore the origins of blackwork!

Show notes and sources here: https://tinyurl.com/w3mmva9k

Have a question, comment, or idea for a future episode? Email us at handmadehistoryhosts@gmail.com.

Visit our website at handmadehistorypodcast.com for more information.

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