Ksenia Semirova

A hummingbird takes Ksenia four days. She used to sell them on the big marketplaces, next to fifty pound copies of work she prices at four hundred, and they collected saves and no sales. So she left. Craft does not sell to people who are browsing, she says. It sells to people who have been told the story first.

The birds are silk and chiffon, cut and stiffened by hand, then loaded with beads across the shoulder so they catch light the way the real ones do. She works from real species rather than a general idea of a bird. In the framed version it sits on deep purple velvet and lifts out of the frame to pin to your coat.

Pearls on a cord

Before textiles she trained as an industrial designer, and left. A year-long couture embroidery diploma came next, then an MA at Brighton, where she went after a Russian technique called pearl setting: each pearl seated on a fine cotton cord, the cord stitched down so it disappears. Most of the knowledge went in the twentieth century, and almost no historic footwear survives to copy. So she built a pair of shoes from the base up and covered them.

A veil four metres long

Commissions come with a rule. She will not copy someone else's picture, so she proposes the materials, draws an original design, and tests it before it goes near the finished thing. On a wedding veil in 2025 that caution earned its keep. The Madeira threads she had planned sat too heavy on the client's tulle, so she swapped to a softer cotton floss and worked over a second, stiffer layer underneath, then cut that layer away with manicure scissors. Four metres by two point three, embroidered directly onto the veil itself. Any mistake would have been permanent.

Why nobody learns it alone

Lunéville, also called tambour beading, is worked with a hook from underneath the fabric, so you cannot see what your hands are doing. British terminology does not help: half the trade calls it one thing and half the other. Ksenia teaches it online, one to one, and at a tailor's shop in Pimlico. She makes up kits of pre-strung beads and sequins too, so a beginner can spend the evening stitching instead of hunting for supplies.

She has shown at Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft and at the Woodlawn Needlework Show in Virginia, and won the evening wear award at the Stitch Festival in 2023.