Canons Ashby textiles

One of the places we visited this week was Canons Ashby. This Elizabethan house is between Daventry and Banbury in the beautiful English countryside. It isn't a large house but it's packed full of lovely, old things.

My favorite room in the house is one of the bedrooms. The walls are covered with tapestries, the bed is covered with  a gorgeous Chinese silk embroidered  coverlet. The bed hangings are wool embroidery and at the foot of the bed is a needle point settee. It's a room full of beautiful hand worked textiles!The settee is worked in wool and in one of my favorite color combinations: rust and blue. The photo below is from the National Trust site, who own and maintain the house.I managed to take some photos of the coverlet and the bed hangings using the camera on my phone. When we visited last year we weren't allowed to take photos, so I didn't bring my camera. This year, the policy has changed in the house so that photos are allowed and one can touch the furniture and even sit on it! The idea is to make visitors feel more connected with the house. It certainly worked for me - I could move in tomorrow!The set of furniture was originally supplied by Thomas Phill of the Strand, who in 1716 submitted a bill for chairs with ‘frames of ye newest hashion stufft up in Lynnen’ and ‘for makeing ye needle worke covers & fixeing ym in the chaires.’

The counterpane on the bed is stunning, covered with flowers and deer. It's stitched with silk on silk and glows in the soft light of the room.

The photo above is of the crewel work valance that hangs from the bed. I love the design, especially the outline stitching on each motif. The stitch inside each motif I didn't recognize.

In one of the bedrooms that's been opened in the last year, there is a lovely crewel work fire screen done all in shades of blue.

One of the things I enjoyed most about seeing these things in the house is how natural they look in their setting. Decorated textiles of all kinds sit side by side and don't seem to clash with one another the way they would in my home. Is it their age which makes them compete less with one another, or perhaps the fact that the rooms are crammed full of things, as our rooms are now? Whatever it is, I find Canons Ashby a relaxing, house on a human scale and love visiting again and again.

How do your embroidered textiles sit in your home? Are they comfortable or do they compete?