As I mentioned last time, we’ve been sorting through things at my parents-in-law’s house. And as anyone who has done this will know, you invariably come across surprising things when sorting out a house – a packet of stock cubes for saffron rice with a best before date of November 1997 being one of the more unexpected.

But even more unexpected, and a lot more interesting, were two pieces of fabric carefully wrapped in tissue paper: a dark pink rectangle and a yellow square, backed with silk (some of it rather worn), and on the front…

I can’t quite work out whether this is heavily tarnished goldwork, or whether it started out as silverwork; in real life the metal is a bit yellower than in the pictures. The metalwork on the pink piece is mostly made up of wire chips – wire or bright check, and smooth or rough purl (after all this time it is difficult to tell whether it’s the shiny or the matt version) – and very fine passing applied over what is probably cardboard, as well as some spangles. The wire chips are sometimes attached straight (possibly over padding) and sometimes arched over other chips; the spangles are attached with small chips of wire check.

The yellow piece likewise has a great amount of wire chips (some of it used to create outlines), but also passing couched in bundles in a sort of weaving pattern, and a very fine metal thread (also passing?) used for chain stitch filling. The chain stitch filling forms the background for free-standing wire loops; there are no spangles.

My mother-in-law unfortunately couldn’t remember where they came from – at first she thought they might have come from her grandparents’ house, but then she wasn’t sure. She did remember, however, that they used to be the centre pieces on the dining table at Christmas. They must have looked gorgeous in candlelight when they were in their prime; even when we found them after all those years they showed a good bit of sparkle in the sunlight.

And that wasn’t the only gold: while looking through my mother-in-law’s thread chest (one of the pieces of furniture she’s taken with her, and a veritable treasure trove of threads, beads, ribbons and embellishments) I came across a reel of Jap, a hank of very fine passing, and some more Jap in what very likely started life as a hank, but was now a tangle. Yes, she said, she’d bought those once, probably for a workshop or class, but (sounding slightly deprecating) they weren’t real gold; actually it would have been surprising if they were, as even the “purest” goldwork threads that are readily available contain only 2% gold, most don’t get beyond .5% and Jap often contains no gold at all. But they are lovely and shiny, and these were definitely “proper” goldwork threads. I gratefully accepted them, bundled together in a plastic sandwich bag.

Incidentally, did you notice the difference in colour between the various golds? Although the two Japs turned out to look more similar once I’d wound the tangle onto an empty reel. Which, by the way, was quite a job!

It’s a good thing Jap is one of the more resilient goldwork threads; even so, it got slightly damaged here and there in the untangling process. Fortunately, however, there is plenty left that is perfectly usable. Perhaps I’ll try some of it on a small silk flower I’m stitching at the moment – it’s a bit of an experiment anyway, and few projects aren’t enhanced by a bit of extra bling . A good opportunity to try out the translucent couching thread I got at the Knitting & Stitching Show as well; I’ll let you know how I get on with both.