Coming to grips with the idea

In the end I opted to go for a design that merged with my personal tastes and historic accuracy. The visual on the left is the final drawing of the peacock which I decided to use for my embroidery motif. Originally I had planned to repeat the peacock as a "couple" facing each other which would create interesting shapes around them. While this is true, it doesn't seem to be entirely correct for the period. Extent examples tend to have borders and rows of motifs in the field repeats facing in a one direction. Exception are sometimes found with multiples forming a total design unit (with a central uniting point) these appear within the field area of the garment rather than an edging prior to the 17thC.

The second visual where the peacock has more decorative details such as the eyes on his tail feathers I decided was too fussy for small embroideries in a linear mode but might work well for stamping on fabric and painting the gilt details by hand. I further thought it would be a nice motif for a two colour embroidered, woven or stamped where a stylised positive image was set against another colour circular shape. My initial desire when I incorporated the gilt areas was to do this in traditional varakkakam, a method whereby the sheets of gilt are burnished down on the fabric after the emblem has been stamped onto the fabric with a glue which binds the gold or silverleaf to the surface.

As an experiment I ran some gold marker over the Tussah and Duppion to see what happened. In the first instance it wasn't very bright. In the second it was rough texturally and lastly the marker left an oily rim to the outline of the ink. I also found the nibs of the marker too blunt to achieve any real precise control.