De Borduurschool: Hester Dennissen

Embroidery can be done with threads of silk, wool, cotton or polyester, but also with threads made of gold. That is the speciality of Hester Dennissen, one of the few gold embroiderers in the Netherlands. By hand, she embroiders emblems on uniforms, wreaths on union banners and winding florals on ceremonial jackets, among other things. She also occasionally creates free work and gives workshops, where students learn how best to work with that beautiful yet fragile gold thread.

This afternoon, Hester sits at the worktable in the living room of her flat. Shiny curls dance around her face, the wall in the hallway is covered in lustrous wallpaper. Next to her on the table is one of her current projects: an image of Mary Magdalene in or nué, a technique that involves stitching coloured silk threads across threads of gold. Mary sparkles in the afternoon sun shining in through the windows. Hester smiles. ‘I love bling-bling. Always have.’

Do you remember when you first saw gold embroidery?

“I don’t remember exactly when I first came across it. Maybe in the Catholic convent I used to visit sometimes with my aunts. I had a Catholic upbringing, and the Catholic Church is known for using gold in decorations and vestments. In the monastery there were very beautiful works in stunning relief, I can’t remember the motifs very well, but they probably included a lot of Christian symbolism. These works fascinated me enormously. I didn’t immediately understand how they were made. When I discovered that the golden reliefs were in fact embroidered, I was deeply impressed.”

How did you learn to embroider?

“I learnt it in primary school, alongside other forms of needlework like crochet and knitting. I still have some of the embroidery pieces from that time. When I look at those, I think: gee, I could actually embroider quite well for a small child.”

“I ended up doing socio-cultural work, but gold embroidery was always somewhere at the back of my mind. I just didn’t know where to start: where to learn it, or where to find gold thread. Haberdashery shops usually sell gold synthetic sewing thread, but that’s not the same.”

“At some point I decided to dive into it and do some research. I started taking courses abroad, including at the Royal School of Needlework, and I did a six-week internship at a workshop in a German convent. The convent produced paraments: textile objects used in the Catholic Church, such as clothing for priests and banners. That was a wonderful time.”

What made it so wonderful?

“First of all, it was a very beautiful convent. It was very remote and completely self-sufficient, with a vegetable garden and everything. It had a gorgeous studio, with windows all around looking out on wide fields. Occasionally you could see a tractor in the distance, but usually there was absolutely no one around.”

“One sister would weave the silk cloths we worked on. That fabric then went to the embroidery workshop, which was run by the abbess. She consulted with customers and made designs, which were eventually embroidered by other sisters, and by people like me, who worked there temporarily. We embroidered every day, all week long. The silence, the atmosphere… It was lovely.”

Embroidering all day, that also sounds quite arduous.  

“Yes, you have to have an affinity for embroidery to do something like that. But it also made me amazingly zen. And the work was always challenging. The bar was set quite high, and the projects rotated, so one day you would be working on a banner, the next day on a robe. And I got on well with the abbess. I had a great time and learned a lot, including all kinds of stitches I didn’t know yet.”

Is gold embroidery more difficult than regular embroidery?

“It is not more difficult, but it is different. In regular embroidery, you stitch through the fabric with a needle and thread. When embroidering with gold, you don’t do that. You lay the gold thread on top of the fabric and secure it with a textile thread, called the working thread. If you stitch through the fabric with gold thread, this often damages the fabric. Besides, some of the gold would end up on the back of the fabric, which would be quite a waste of gold.”

“Not that the threads are made of pure gold, mind you. They used to be, but nowadays gold threads are usually made of metal alloy covered with a thin layer of gilding. Which is just as well, otherwise it would all get very expensive, especially considering today’s gold prices.”

How did you start your own business?

“I was going abroad all the time to learn gold embroidery, but I thought: there has to be someone in the Netherlands who can do this. Then, by chance, I came across the name of André van der Schoot, one of the last independent gold embroiderers in the Netherlands, in a neighbourhood newspaper. I worked as his apprentice for some time. Unfortunately, he unexpectedly passed away. I was asked to take over his company, Becla, which I gladly did. I also own his embroidery patterns. He made the most fantastic banner designs.”

What kind of commissions do you get most often these days?

“I often make emblems on official uniform jackets or ceremonial clothing. I am not allowed to go public with most assignments. Sometimes I don’t even know who I am embroidering a jacket for – I just get the design from the the tailor who makes the jacket.”

You work a lot with formal, set patterns. How do you find that?

“True, emblems are fixed patterns, you can’t deviate much from them. And yet: they are not that uniform either. Once you have an eye for it, you see that there are many differences in the ways a single emblem is executed. Every embroiderer gives it their own twist in a certain way, which I like.”

Is gold embroidery also suitable for everyday use, for example, casual clothing? 

“Not really. It is very fragile. Goldwork cannot withstand friction very well. And if it has gold on it, a garment cannot be washed, it has to be dry-cleaned. In short: you can really only wear it on special occasions.”

“That’s quite a shame, because I would have loved to embroider a coat in gold for myself – but then I’d probably never have put it on. Now I’m planning to embroider a pair of velvet slippers.”

“Gold, however, is very suitable for making brooches. I do that a lot in workshops, as well as embroidering initials. Those are less vulnerable, and not so large. That’s nice, because gold embroidery is very time-consuming.”

What stimulates you to keep doing gold embroidery?

“It is very broad, I am far from knowing all the techniques. I have used most of them before, but there is still a lot to learn. For example, I would like to do an internship in Spain, where embroidery has a very different style – much more baroque. I would also like to do a course in design. I have lots of ideas in my head but I can’t translate them into a drawing or pattern yet.”

“Other than that, I just think gold embroidery looks really, really beautiful. That doesn’t change.”