Embroidered Coverlet c. 1936

This Embroidered Coverlet was made by Jules Lefevere, and it’s a trip. I can see how this image, with its olive-green ground, and the soft, earthy colours of the embroidered flowers, feels both calming and a little… off. I imagine Lefevere sitting with this work, maybe outside, or in a room with the windows open, breathing in the smells of the earth. It's clearly an aesthetic response, but one that is deeply embodied in a practice. Look how the stitched flowers give volume to the surface. The leaves are a soft forest green, but their shapes give a gentle contrast to the bursts of reds and blues within the larger floral arrangements. There’s a constant push-and-pull in the colour and texture here, which suggests Lefevere thought of embroidery as a constant, on-going conversation. The original object was quite large. I wonder about the hands that have held and used this object over the years. I get the feeling that Lefevere was thinking about craft as a kind of dialogue, constantly reshaping the way we see the world, one stitch at a time.