blackwork

English

From black +‎ work.

blackwork (uncountable)

(sewing) A form of counted-thread embroidery that is usually stitched on even-weave fabric with a twisted thread.
- 2020, Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light, Fourth Estate, page 334:
  All those garments are long gone since, that Katherine embroidered with Spanish blackwork.
(obsolete) Work connected with funerals, as an undertaker's assistant or a maker of mourning clothes, etc.
- 2016, Haewon Hwang, London's Underground Spaces:
  In Mary Barton (1848), the seamstress sewing black mourning clothes is referred to as being engaged in 'blackwork', while the manufacturing company, the Courtaulds, held a monopoly on crapes from the onset of funeral practices […]