Type: Modular wall system
Technique: Mixed embroidery
Year: 2021 - ongoing
Edition: Limited (10)
Size: Large
Dimension: 400 x 240 cm | 157.5 x 94.5 in
Number of stitches: over 7 mio
Thread length: over 56 km | over 34.8 mi
Thread colours: 61
Development: over 1400 person hours
Price: on request
About the artwork
The underwater life of the sea anemones can be a source of never-ending shapes and vibrant colours for an artist, and Giacomo Merculiano, who was better versed as a sculptor, brought this talent into illustration. He did this by perfecting the three dimensionality of marine life, and adding a new layer of vivid colours to the image, bringing the underwater fauna to life. It was a true pleasure to translate his breathtaking vision to embroidered masterpiece, playing with colours and hues and bringing them to life from a limited range thread colours.
The art piece takes full advantage of the modular embroidered art wall system that we have developed, allowing the embroidery to span over an entire wall in a size that would not be possible otherwise. Vibrant thread colours add layers upon layers of depth, emphasizing the motif and its story to make the viewer deeply experience underwater life and remind us all of the fragile world that our actions have so much impact on.
About the artist
Giacomo Merculiano, an Italian artist, born in 1859, is best known for his remarkable works as a sculptor. He rose to fame with many astonishing statues in bronze, after finishing his studies at the Institute of Fine Arts in Naples. His favourite motifs were animals, which he depicted in many sculptures, paintings and even on medals. Later, he moved to Paris, where he exhibited his later works, signed as Jacques Merculiano.
Features
Extraordinary number of stitches
In a classic embroidery, the number of stitches is somewhere between 20,000 and 200,000, and is limited by stretching and contracting of materials. By overcoming this limitations, we are able to make embroideries with millions of stitches which enables us to produce photorealistic embroideries and recreate any painting of any artistic style.
Innovation of layering
We layer multiple colours of threads and so create rich embroidery and colour texture that is impossible to create with classic one-layer embroidery technique. By layering, we develop colour transitions and shadowing, by which we create multiple-colour surfaces, similar to pointillism painting.
Smooth transitions and shading
By intertwining threads of endless colours and creating colour transitions, we can shape soft shadows, make one surface transition into another and mix colours into an endless multitude of hues. This way, we can also recreate motives from photographs and sophisticated art paintings which wouldn’t be possible with classic embroidery technique, using vector surfaces.
Sophisticated colour calibration
Usually in embroidery, 10 or 20, maybe 30 colours of threads are used. We use around 1,000 colour hues and if a colour still doesn’t match the desired one, we create it by layering and colour transitions. We have digitally scanned colours of all threads by using a spectrograph, so we can colour match any colour from an original material or from CMYK, RGB or Pantone colour schemes.