“ALL ROLLS-ROYCE workspaces are impeccably clean and organized. We must be to keep our work focused and ensure the quality. My main tool is a computer but in the end, my work is done by hand, working with leather and other materials. My area is made up of a work bench, a computer, and the embroidery machines. We have small machines and large machines that all have different capabilities for different embroideries.
I’ll go back and forth from the computer to testing on the machines to creating patterns, cutting materials, measuring every piece on the work benches, and going back and forth as part of developing an embroidery. I couldn’t live without a pair of gold-plated scissors—that’s our main tool. Finding a good pair of scissors for embroidery is notoriously difficult—these are gold-plated because it is better for your skin.
For nearly eight years I have worked as the bespoke embroidery specialist. It’s sort of half engineering and half design. I develop customer requests into embroidery, so essentially a customer can send us in any artwork that they like but there is an art form to embroidery—it is not just translating an image to stitches. There’s that creative element where there is no right or wrong answer to creating an embroidery.
We use the term ‘digital craftsmanship,’ specifically for the embroidery department. There are different stitch techniques that produce different textures, so there’s a million different ways to translate an image to embroidery. We manipulate the stitch direction to reflect the light in different ways and it adds a different depth to the embroidery. I love my job, it’s great!”
Joshua Liles is a bespoke embroidery specialist at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in Goodwood, England; research by Blake Keesee.