---
title: "Stumpwork: Embroidery That Stands Off the Cloth"
description: "Stumpwork is raised embroidery, padded, wired or applied so parts stand off the cloth; English girls made it in the 1600s, and the name dates from about 1900."
type: Technique
url: https://teazle.art/techniques/stumpwork-embroidery-raised-work
published: 2026-10-16
updated: 2026-10-16
author: "The Teazle editors"
image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/cf84a828375ed811ceb4ded8931b366cc940a876-3000x4000.jpg?w=1600&fit=max&q=78&auto=format
image_license: CC0
---

# Stumpwork: Embroidery That Stands Off the Cloth

*What is stumpwork embroidery and how is it done? A guide to the padded, wired and applied raised work English girls stitched in the 1600s, the later name, who made it, and how to begin.*

![Close-up of an embroidered woman with coiled brown hair and a pearl necklace, seated on a ladder-back chair and playing a lute, in a lace-trimmed bodice and a skirt worked with flowers; raised leaves and flowers curl away from the cream satin at either side.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/cf84a828375ed811ceb4ded8931b366cc940a876-3000x4000.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Detail of Cabinet with personifications of the Five Senses, third quarter 17th century. Satin worked with silk and metal thread, purl, chenille, seed pearls, coral beads and mica. 29.23.1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0*

Stumpwork is raised embroidery: figures, flowers and animals worked in silk, metal thread and beads, then padded or built up so they stand out from the fabric. It was popular in England in the mid-1600s, when girls stitched it into caskets, mirror frames and pictures. The name "stumpwork" is a later one; the makers' own words were raised work and embossed work.

## What is stumpwork?

Stumpwork is a style of embroidery in which parts of the design are lifted off the ground cloth, so that a face, a petal or a castle gate has real depth. The effect comes from padding beneath the stitches, from small pieces worked separately and attached, and from wire and other supports. It is usually dated to England between about 1650 and 1700.

The edges of that range are soft. Wikipedia says raised techniques before about 1650 were mostly confined to church vestments, yet Museum Wales dates a raised-work picture of a lute player to 1620 to 1640, and the Cleveland Museum of Art dates a panel to 1658. The Metropolitan Museum's *Cabinet with personifications of the Five Senses* belongs to the third quarter of the century. It is a small box, about 9 inches long, covered in satin and worked with silk and metal thread, purl, chenille, seed pearls, coral beads and mica, in tent, knot, rococo, satin, couching and detached buttonhole stitches.

![A small rectangular casket covered in cream satin, seen from the side. Embroidered panels show a seated woman holding a flower, a dog, a man in a wide-brimmed hat with a cloak, a castle, a squirrel, a parrot and flowers, framed by silver metal-thread braid, on two round turned feet.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/f1c3a3fef2b8bda32a51e19b23c570850359b03b-4000x3000.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Cabinet with personifications of the Five Senses, third quarter 17th century. Satin worked with silk and metal thread, purl, chenille, seed pearls, coral beads and mica; wood frame. 29.23.1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0*

Stumpwork shares an idea with [trapunto](https://teazle.art/glossary/trapunto.md), which pads parts of a design from the back so they stand in relief. Stumpwork goes further: it adds layers, separate shapes and mixed materials until the picture becomes a small relief in thread. Smocking, another way of making cloth hold a shape, is covered in [Smocking: Gathering Cloth into Structure](/techniques/smocking-gathering-cloth-into-structure).

## Why is it called stumpwork?

The word is much younger than the craft. In the seventeenth century the technique was known as raised work or embossed work, and the Victoria and Albert Museum's record for one casket reads "raised work, also known as stumpwork". "Stumpwork" is recorded only from about 1900. Nobody has settled why it was chosen.

Merriam-Webster gives 1904 as the first known use of "stump work", Dictionary.com (citing Random House and Collins dictionaries) says first recorded in 1900 to 1905, and Wikipedia says the label has been used only since around the end of the nineteenth century. Homes & Antiques calls the origin "slightly obscure" and suggests it probably refers to small pieces of wood, "stumps", that were sometimes worked into the embroidery for three-dimensional effects, while noting that there are not really any tree stumps in it. Pintangle calls the name a Victorian misnomer. Treat the wood explanation as a guess.

The word has also drifted. Pintangle observes that "stumpwork" is now applied to any raised embroidery, though strictly it means work in which small motifs called slips are embroidered separately and then attached to a foundation fabric. Many collectors now prefer "raised embroidery". Most modern kits and classes use the broad sense, and so does this article when it turns to making.

## How is raised embroidery made?

Raised work combines a few methods: padding under stitches, shapes worked separately and then attached, and wire that lets parts hold a pose. Surviving pieces mix several of them in a single scene. The Holburne Museum's description of one panel, worked about 1665, shows how many a single scene could contain.

| Method | What happens | Where it shows up |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Padding | Felt, wool or horsehair is sewn down first and stitches are worked over it; Bowes Museum describes a panel padded with wood or parchment over wool. | Figures, animal bodies, faces |
| Detached stitches | Stitches such as detached buttonhole are worked in the air above the cloth, anchored only at the edges, like a net. The Met cabinet lists detached buttonhole stitches. | Wings, tents, collars, hands |
| Slips | A shape is embroidered separately and then applied to the picture. The V&A calls it probable that each figure or element of its casket was sewn independently and applied to the satin. | Figures, petals, leaves |
| Wire | Wire, often covered in silk or silver thread, forms a stiff frame or edge. Wikipedia describes wired shapes applied by piercing the ground with the wire ends and securing them. | Branches, leaves, hair |

The Holburne panel is specific. Its oak leaves are silk split stitch, but its trunk and branches are laid and couched silk-covered wire, the raised leaves are detached work on wire frames, and the four main foreground figures are raised and padded about the face, with hair made from coils of silver-covered wire. Their hands are detached work, applied separately. Bowes Museum describes purl, coiled metal wire, used to imitate hair and leaves on one of its panels. Homes & Antiques adds that makers sometimes covered tiny wooden hands and faces in silk, and the Cleveland Museum of Art lists "wooden appendages" among the materials of its panel.

The Cooper Hewitt's docent essay says that padding was often horsehair or wool felt, and Wikipedia describes felt sewn in layers of increasingly smaller sizes, then covered in stitches.

![An unframed cream satin panel crowded with small embroidered figures and objects: padded men and women in seventeenth-century dress, two figures under canopies at the lower corners, two women by a pool and a stone terrace at the center, a stone building at right, a peacock, a deer, a lion and other animals, and raised leaves, trees and flowers.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/1589b1f4bc70e4fc79af799b75434c8e00b4557c-1917x1536.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Stumpwork Panel: Story of David and Bathsheba, England, 1658. Stumpwork embroidery with silk and metallic threads, pearls and wooden appendages. 1973.186. The Cleveland Museum of Art. CC0*

## What was it made of?

Stumpwork is mostly silk and metal on a silk or satin ground, with extras for texture and shine. Silk thread does the stitching, metal thread and purl supply the glitter, and pearls, beads and mica add small points of color. The Met cabinet and the Cleveland panel are on satin or silk. The Holburne panel uses a white satin ground.

The Met cabinet's own material list is the best reference: silk and metal thread, purl, chenille, seed pearls, coral beads and mica, over a wooden frame lined with silk and paper. Mica is a thin, glittering mineral. Museum Wales lists, for its lute-player picture, wood covered with laid silks for the head and hands, metallic thread and purl, wool padding, colored glass beads, seed pearls, sequins and barbs of peacock feathers. Wikipedia's longer list adds chenille, gimp cord, ribbon, semi-precious stones, coral, shells, mother-of-pearl, leather, feathers, vellum, boxwood, ivory and wax. Homes & Antiques mentions human hair and Tennants, an auction house, says elements were sometimes stuffed with hair.

Metal thread and spangles tie stumpwork to other glitter on cloth, from [goldwork](https://teazle.art/glossary/goldwork.md) to the story of the [sequin](/stories/history-of-sequins-coin-to-spangle) and its metal-disc ancestors. [Couching](https://teazle.art/glossary/couching.md), laying thread on the surface and tacking it down with small stitches, is among the stitches the Met lists for its cabinet. Beads and pearls link it to [beadwork](https://teazle.art/glossary/beadwork.md).

## Who made it, and what for?

Most surviving stumpwork was made by young amateurs from well-off families. The Royal Collection says embroidered caskets with raised work were produced in England in considerable numbers in 1660 to 1690 by young girls, almost invariably amateurs. The Holburne Museum agrees that most pieces were made by highly skilled amateurs in wealthy households, though a few may be the work of professional embroiderers, who were usually men.

The best-documented maker is Martha Edlin. The V&A records that she embroidered a sampler in colored silks at the age of eight, a piece of [whitework](https://teazle.art/glossary/whitework.md) and [cutwork](https://teazle.art/glossary/cutwork.md) at nine, and by 1671, her eleventh year, the panels of an elaborate casket, with a beadwork jewelry case two years later. The initials ME are applied in pearls at the center of the casket. The museum's article calls the casket likely one of the final challenges in her needlework education. A second V&A casket, dated 1660 to 1685, says in its record that the final challenge in many cases was a casket like it.

A student-written blog from the Ashmolean Museum says the makers were predominantly young, wealthy women, and that one box in its collection was made by a girl named Miss Bluitt while she was at school in Hackney, in the years before the Plague.

Stitching was not the whole job. The V&A says Edlin's panels would have been embroidered by her and then sent to a professional workshop to be mounted into a casket; a V&A gallery label says the panels were probably sent to a cabinet-maker. The designs came from somewhere too. The V&A label suggests she may have adapted motifs from prints or pattern books, or bought pre-drawn silk panels, and its mirror-frame record says satin panels could be bought already drawn out as "kits". The V&A's article notes that the first English pattern book appeared in the 1590s; a lace pattern book printed in Paris in 1588 is the subject of [This Lion Is 59 Meshes Tall](/finds/vinciolo-lion-1588). The Bowes Museum notes a pencil outline of a building on an unfinished panel, which shows how designs were built up from line drawings.

![A square mirror frame whose border of cream satin is embroidered with small scenes: a woman and a man in seventeenth-century dress, each beside a tent, castles, a camel, a lion, a unicorn, a leopard, a winged dragon and vases of flowers, around an empty central mirror opening.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/903714e7ec90e821777ff6009b2f6045d1611fb1-3154x3400.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Mirror Frame, England, 1600s. Stumpwork embroidery on satin ground. 1942.833. The Cleveland Museum of Art. CC0*

The objects were small and domestic: caskets, mirror frames and pictures. The V&A says embroidering mirror frames was a popular activity for amateur needlewomen between about 1660 and 1680, and notes that mirror glass was valuable enough that a small piece could be set off by a broad decorated frame.

## What did stumpwork picture?

The subjects are a mix of the royal, the biblical and the ornamental. The Cooper Hewitt describes royalty, nature and biblical scenes as common. Castles, stags, lions, birds, fruit, flowers and insects fill the margins, and every empty patch was an invitation for a bug, a bird or a bloom. The Cleveland panel, dated 1658, is titled *Story of David and Bathsheba*: two women sit by a pool and a stone terrace at the center, with a deer, a peacock, a lion and padded figures in the dress of the day around them.

Royal subjects have an obvious context. The Bowes Museum says it was fashionable, and patriotic, to depict the recently restored King Charles II and Queen Catherine of Braganza, and that the central oak tree on one of its panels refers to the king's escape after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. The V&A notes that the lion was one of the royal beasts, along with the leopard, stag and unicorn. Tennants says lions and leopards stood for England, and that caterpillars and butterflies were associated with Charles I, oaks and acorns with Charles II. Those readings are interpretations, offered by auctioneers and curators, rather than documented intentions.

The Met owns a picture titled simply *Charles II* and dated to the third quarter of the seventeenth century. Its centerpiece is a crowned figure under a draped blue canopy, with a lion and a unicorn in oval medallions below. The Holburne Museum owns a panel from about 1665 that shows the young Charles II hiding in the Boscobel Oak after Worcester, and the mature king wearing his crown after the restoration of 1660, flanked by Queen Catherine.

![A framed embroidered picture on white silk. A crowned figure with long hair stands under a blue draped canopy at the center, with oval portrait medallions of a woman and a man at the upper corners, and a lion and a unicorn in oval medallions below, among flowers and fruit.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/acfa2ef27d3578b19f772981c3734fb05ee861de-2016x1608.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Charles II, third quarter 17th century. Silk, metal, beads. 64.101.1322. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0*

## What happened to stumpwork, and where is it now?

Stumpwork's decline is poorly documented, and sources differ on when it peaked. Homes & Antiques says 1650 to 1690, Wikipedia says 1650 to 1700, and the auction house Cheffins describes it as usually dating from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, while also saying the art form peaked in the late eighteenth. None of the sources consulted explains why production faded, so the end date is unsettled. Wikipedia adds that raised embroidery went on in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when it was used to embellish women's clothing.

The wider revival of needlework is easier to trace. The Royal School of Needlework opened in 1872 as the School of Art Needlework, founded by Lady Victoria Welby, with Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein as first president. Its founding aims were to revive a beautiful art that had fallen into disuse and to give work to educated women. That was a revival of art needlework in general, not of stumpwork in particular. Embroidery is in fashion again: [Stylist's summary](https://www.stylist.co.uk/home/etsy-spring-summer-2026-trends/1067354) of Etsy's Spring/Summer 2026 trends has a "soft stitch era" in which, according to Etsy, crochet, embroidery and stitched textures are stepping into the spotlight.

## How can you learn stumpwork today?

Start small, with one raised element rather than a whole scene. The stages below are general, drawn from a beginner guide and from what museum records say about period practice. The details vary with the project, and a single wired leaf or a padded berry teaches most of the logic.

| Stage | What to do | Note |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. Choose | Pick a simple design with a few large shapes | Beginner guides stress keeping shapes simple |
| 2. Prepare | Transfer the design to the fabric and, if you use one, mount it in a hoop | Natural fabrics such as linen or cotton suit the ground |
| 3. Pad | Add felt or stitched padding where you want height | Wool felt is common; layer it in smaller pieces for a dome |
| 4. Work slips | Embroider petals, leaves or wings separately; wired edges are worked in buttonhole stitch over the wire | Slips are cut out once the shape is secured |
| 5. Attach | Attach the cut shapes to the picture | Wire ends can be passed through the ground and secured on the back |
| 6. Finish | Add detached stitches, beads and small details; frame | Keep separate scissors for wire |

The Crewel Ghoul beginner guide recommends 28 or 30 gauge crafting wire, thin enough to be discreet and bendable yet strong enough to hold a shape, and a separate pair of wire cutters so that your embroidery scissors stay sharp. For work by seventeenth-century hands, look at the Met's online records, the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access panel, the V&A's article on Martha Edlin's casket and the Holburne Museum's panel.


## Sources

1. [Cabinet with personifications of the Five Senses, 29.23.1 (and detail image DP158574)](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/222231). The Metropolitan Museum of Art
2. [Charles II, 64.101.1322](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/229023). The Metropolitan Museum of Art
3. [Stumpwork Panel: Story of David and Bathsheba, 1973.186](https://clevelandart.org/art/1973.186). The Cleveland Museum of Art
4. [Mirror Frame, 1942.833](https://clevelandart.org/art/1942.833). The Cleveland Museum of Art
5. [Casket embroidered by Martha Edlin, T.432-1990 (record O11096)](https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O11096). Victoria and Albert Museum
6. [Martha Edlin's casket](https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/martha-edlins-casket). Victoria and Albert Museum
7. [Embroidered Casket, T.23-1928](https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O136433/embroidered-casket). Victoria and Albert Museum
8. [Mirror frame, 1660-1680](https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O77559/mirror-frame-unknown). Victoria and Albert Museum
9. [Startled Embroidered Lions of the 1600s](https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/caring-for-our-collections/startled-embroidered-lions-of-the-1600s). Victoria and Albert Museum
10. [Restoration of Charles II (stumpwork panel)](https://holburne.org/stumpwork/). Holburne Museum
11. [Stumpwork casket, RCIN 39240](https://www.rct.uk/collection/39240). Royal Collection Trust
12. [Stumpwork picture (item 14.297)](https://museum.wales/collections/online/object/05250669-901a-3f91-b53f-e72db2a573f3). Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales
13. [Stories in Stitch interpretation](https://thebowesmuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Stories-in-Stitch-Interpretation.pdf). The Bowes Museum
14. [Stumpwork and Storytelling](https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2014/08/27/stumpwork-and-storytelling/). Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
15. [Mid-17th century stumpwork](https://tennants.co.uk/discover/news-insights/mid-17th-century-stumpwork). Tennants (auctioneers)
16. [What is stumpwork?](https://www.homesandantiques.com/antiques/what-is-stumpwork). Homes & Antiques
17. [Raised embroidery and Stumpwork](https://pintangle.com/raised-embroidery-and-stumpwork/). Pintangle
18. [stump work](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stump%20work). Merriam-Webster
19. [Stumpwork](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stumpwork). Wikipedia
20. [Our history](https://royal-needlework.org.uk/our-history/). Royal School of Needlework
21. [Stumpwork Embroidery For Beginners](https://crewelghoul.com/blog/stumpwork-embroidery-for-beginners/). Crewel Ghoul
22. [stumpwork](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stumpwork). Dictionary.com
23. [Etsy Spring/Summer 2026 trends](https://www.stylist.co.uk/home/etsy-spring-summer-2026-trends/1067354). Stylist
24. [Stumpwork, subversion and the 17th Century](https://blogs.ashmolean.org/talkingobjects/stumpwork-subversion-and-the-17th-century/). Ashmolean Museum (student creative board blog)
25. [Trendspotter: Stumped by stumpwork](https://www.cheffins.co.uk/about/news/view,trendspotter-stumped-by-stumpwork_1059.htm). Cheffins (auctioneers)

## Glossary

- [Stumpwork](https://teazle.art/glossary/stumpwork.md): Stumpwork is raised embroidery, padded, wired or applied so parts stand off the cloth; the name is a c. 1900 label for English work of the 1600s.
- [Trapunto](https://teazle.art/glossary/trapunto.md): Trapunto is a stuffed quilting technique in which parts of a design are padded from the back so they stand out in relief.
- [Goldwork](https://teazle.art/glossary/goldwork.md): Goldwork is embroidery made with metal threads, gold or silver, usually laid on the surface and couched down.
- [Couching](https://teazle.art/glossary/couching.md): Couching is an embroidery technique in which a thread, often metal, is laid on the surface of the fabric and fastened down with small stitches of another thread.
- [Beadwork](https://teazle.art/glossary/beadwork.md): Beadwork is the craft of joining beads together or attaching them to cloth to make decoration or whole objects.
- [Whitework](https://teazle.art/glossary/whitework.md): Whitework is any embroidery worked in white thread on white fabric, including openwork, cutwork and drawn-thread techniques.
- [Cutwork](https://teazle.art/glossary/cutwork.md): Cutwork is embroidery in which parts of a linen ground are cut away and the openings are edged or filled with stitches.

Canonical: https://teazle.art/techniques/stumpwork-embroidery-raised-work