From Louvre to LinenGarb: Reconstructing a Coptic Masterpiece

Every year we choose one archaeological textile that deserves another life.  It's usually a garment that made me go, "Ooohhhh!" as soon as I saw it! This year's project began with a single, less-than-perfect reference photograph of an original Coptic tunic preserved in the Louvre Museum. Like many surviving textiles, the embroidery is worn, faded, and difficult to interpret. Before a single stitch could be sewn, every surviving motif had to be studied, sketched by hand, and compared until the original pattern began to emerge. Only then could those drawings be converted into vector artwork suitable for modern embroidery, while preserving the proportions and character of the ancient original.

Communicating with the Louvre was only one challenge... the work of scaling and positioning every embroidered panel. A surprising amount of time disappears into details most people never notice: measuring the width of a shoulder band, adjusting the spacing around a neckline, or comparing photographs again and again to ensure the overall balance matches the original garment rather than simply creating something that "looks ancient." Finding enough fine 100% linen that looked and behaved like the surviving textile took more work than I'd care to recount, and everything has to be hand-dyed! 

The photographs below tell that story. They begin with the museum artifact that inspired this project, and end with the finished embroidery on our production garment. My goal has never been to make another "Coptic-style" tunic. It has always been to recreate, as faithfully as modern materials and embroidery technology allow, a remarkable piece of history that has survived for more than a thousand years. I hope that when you wear it, you see more than linen and thread. I hope you see the original artisan whose work inspired this reconstruction.

With Love to all our Linengarb family, 

Gwenhwyfar Mwynn