Riksantikvarieämbetet

Inger Estham, who passed away in 2016, worked for many years as Director and Head of Department at the Textile Department of the Swedish National Heritage Board and the Swedish History Museum. She left unfinished research material covering a group of medieval embroideries, previously attributed to Albrict the embroiderer. This was bequeathed to Mari-Louise Franzén, previously Senior Curator at the textile collection at the Swedish History Museum, for further research and completion. An excerpt focusing on a specific silk quality has been selected, processed and published separately in this article. In her research Inger Estham observed seven embroideries made on a background of a silk, only fragmentarily preserved today. By means of comparative studies of international textiles, she has identified this quality of silk as sendal, a lightweight and thin silk tabby. Some minor clarifications have been made to Inger Estham’s text in order for it to stand separately. The text is concluded with an appendix, written by Mari- Louise Franzén, in which a few more examples of preserved medieval textiles with sendal are presented.