The center of the book cover! While I was working my way through all the goldwork on the main piece, I was also traveling around with this centerpiece. I did not take nearly as many progress shots of this, but it was pretty straightforward.
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Once the silk portion was done I couched silver passing thread around all the shapes. I didn't want it to be the only non sparkling part of the book cover! This was easy enough to do for the straight lines, but the wolf and fleur-de-lis were rather more difficult. I used tweezers to make particularly sharp bends in the thread where it was needed. I also used a slightly less thick passing thread for those areas.
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You can also see the many spangles that were added to the piece now. I followed the basic positions of the original piece, but primarily used them in particularly open places in the design. I attached the spangles by used a piece of check purl as a bead to hold them on, which is how they were done on the original piece. Some of the areas around the shield ended up somewhat open, but not in a shape that would easily accept a spangle. In those places I used just a piece of the check purl to fill out the design.
A critique that I've heard of my previous goldwork pieces is that they aren't quite encrusted enough with metal to be properly period. This is a very valid comment - the goldwork that I'm trying to recreate goes far above and beyond what might be considered "tasteful" in our time. Generally I didn't go far enough in the past due to time constraints. This time I was bound and determined not to have any large open spaces! The last two bits of work I had to do before covering the book were also to fulfill that goal.
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The other item I added was a border. The original piece almost completely filled the cover of the book, and had a border that was actually around the edge of the book cover. In this case the book was slightly larger than the design area, so I decided to put the border closer to the rest of the design and leave the very edge of the cover undecorated.
And now we're essentially done, but it still needs to be put on the actual book!
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