Type: Photo embroidery
Technique: Ercigoj stitch
Year: 2013
Edition: Limited
Size: Medium
Dimension: 100 x 67 cm | 39.4 x 26.4 in
Number of stitches: over 1.5 mio
Thread length: over 18 km | over 11.2 mi
Thread colours: 25
Development: over 400 person hours
Price: not for sale
About the artwork
We have taken the entire spectrum of white, grey and black embroidery threads available, and recreated Klavdij Sluban’s photograph that captures a moment of his travels. The motif for this work was chosen from his project of photography workshops in prisons throughout Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union.
About the artist
Klavdij Sluban is a French photographer of Slovenian origins, renowned for his black and white photographs. He received many awards and wrote several publications. He is the author of the project of photography workshops in prisons across Europe and former Soviet Union.
Features
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.