PARKER, R. - The Subversive Stitch Embroidery

THE SUBVERSIV E STITCH
Embro1dery and the Mak1ng o� the Fem1n1ne

THE SUBVERSIVE STITCH
Embroidery and the Mak 1 ng of the Fem 1 n 1 ne
ROZSIK A PARKER
A C K NOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have enabled me to complete this book:
The London Women' s Art History Collecrive, in particular Denise Cale, Pat Kahn, Tina
Keane, Griselda Pollock and Ale ne Srrausberg, prompred rhe initial research.
Spare Rib published the article which led to rhe book, I would like re thank members of
the 197 4 magazine collective: Rose Ades, AJison Fell, Marion Fudger, ]ill Nicholls, Janie
Prince,Marsha Rowe, Ann Scott and Ann Smith.
For their help and support in diverse ways I am grateful to Linda Binnington, Guy Brett,
Anrhea Callen, Jocelyn Cornwall, Penelope Dalron, Briony Fer, Susan Hiller,Maggie
Millman,Kim Parker, Will Parente, Stef Pixner, Michele Roberts, Ann Scott, Alison
Swan and A.nnmatie Turnbull.
Adrian Forry, Griselda Pollock, Margaret Waiters and Michelene Wandor read the
manuscript and offered invaluable comments.
Finally, I cannor thank Rurhie Petrie enough for the generous editorial advice and
encouragement she provided at each srage of the work.
Firsr published by The Women's Press Ltd. 1984

A member of the Namara Group
34 Great Surron Street, London E C1 V ODX
Reprinted 1986, 1989
Reprinted ar1d revised 1996
Copyright© Rozsika Parker 1984, 1996
The right of Rozsika Parker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Parems Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-PublicationData

Parker, Rozsika
The subversive stitch.
1. Embroidery- Hisrory
I. Tide
746.44 '09 NK 9206
This book is sold subject ro d1e condition that it shall not, by way of trade or orherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired our, or othenvise circulated without the Publisher's prior consem
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a
similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN 0 7043 4478 5
Typeser inMC Typeset, Chatham Kent ,
Printed and bound in Great Britain by BPC Books Ltd

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Contents
Acknowledgments iv
Foreword vt
1 : The Creation of Femininity 1
2: Eternalising the Feminine 17
3: Fertility, Chastity and Power 40
4: The Domestication of Embroidery 60
5: The Inculcation of Femininity 82
6 : From Milkmaids to Mothers 110
7: Femininiryas Feeling 147
8: A Naturally Revolutionary Art? 189
Notes to chapters 216

Biblio?;raphy 233
Glossary 240
Index 242
Foreword
Has the pen or pencil dipped so deep in the blood of the human
race as the needle?' asked the writer Olive Schreiner. The answer
is, quite simply, no. The art of embroidery has been the means of
educating women into the feminine ideal, and of proving that
they have attained it, but it has also provided a weapon of
resistance to the constraints of femininity.
In this book I examine the historical processes by which em
broidery became identified with a particular set of characteristics,
and consigned to women's hands. By mapping the relationship
between the history of embroidery and changing notions of what
constituted feminine behaviour from the Middle Ages to the
twentieth century, we can see how the art became implicated in
the creation of femininity across classes, and that the develop
ment of ideals of feminine behaviour determined the style and
iconography of needlework. To know the history of embroidery
is to know the history of women.
London1982
1: The Creation of Femininity
Needlework is the favourite hobby of two percent of British

males, about equal to the number who go to church regularly.
Nearly one man in three fills in football coupons, in an average
month, or has a bet.1
The Guardian was no doubt confident that its coverage of the

1979 Government survey, Social Trends, was eye-catching, and
that this opening sentence was guaranteed to amuse by its incon
gruity. The unspoken assumption implied by the juxtaposition of
male needleworkers and churchgoers is that these men are pious,
prim and conformist. Real men gamble and fill in football cou
pons; only sissies and women sew and swell congregations.
Sixteen years later nothing much has changed. Social Trends
revealed that the greatest difference between men and women
was in sewing and knitting. Thirty-seven percent of women, but
only two percent of men, had done some in an average week in
the three months before they were interviewed for the survey.
The sexual division that assigns women to sewing is inscribed
in our social institutions. A late-1970s' report on a large suburban
primary school praised the diligent, pioneering teaching practised
by the staff. Two photographs illustrated science teaching
methods: in one, a small group of boys were shown unselfcon
sciously engrossed in a 'wave power machine'; in the other, two
1
The Creation of Femininity
smiling girls displayed copper atoms embroidered in silk.2 By the

1990s teachers were attempting to direct both boys and girls to
carpentry and needlework, but at secondary school level such
moves towards integration usually petered out.
The role of embroidery in advertising and commercial design
also endorses the notion that a man who practises embroidery is
imperilling his sexual identity. Embroidery is invariably
employed to evoke the home. The cover of a brochure produced
by a British home removal firm illustrates an embroidery of
a house, the stock motif of so many samplers, and bears the
embroidered words 'Home Moving Guide'. Embroidery con
notes not only home but a socially advantaged home, securely
placed in the upper reaches of the dass structure. An advertise
ment for embroidery patterns promises that 'the tapestries are a
pleasure to make and once completed will elegantly grace any
home and become much valued family heirlooms'.
It is not only home and family that embroidery signifies but,
specifically, mothers and daughters. Heinz based an advertising
campaign for tomato ketchup on a picture of a sampler stitched
with the words, 'If other ketchups were as rich, then I'd say so
stitch by stitch. Ann and Lucy James (but mostly Lucy)'. The
sampler associates tomato ketchup with the ideal of childhood as
sincere, innocent and pure.
Embroidery also evokes the stereotype of the virgin in oppo
sition to the whore, an infantilising representation of women's
sexuality. Thus Lil-lets the menstrual tampons were packaged in
a box masquerading as fabric, embroidered with pastel flowers to
represent menstruation as natural and entirely non-threatening.
The conflation of embroidery and female sexuality, both innately
virginal and available for consumption, is blatantly expressed in
the title bestowed on a porn magazine, the Rustler Sampler, which
offered 'nearly two hundred, yes, two hundred juicy, picture
packed pages'. The word 'Sampler' evokes an image of innumer
able passive, powerless women just waiting to be selected and
roped in by the 'Rustler'. Embroidery has become indelibly
associated with stereotypes of femininity.
I shall define briefly what I mean by femininity. In The Second
Sex, 1949, Simone de Beauvoir wrote: 'It is evident that woman's
"character"- her convictions, her values, her wisdom, her moral
ity, her tastes, her behaviour - are to be explained by her situ
ation.'3 In other words, femininity, the behaviour expected and
2
encouraged in women, though obviously related to the biological

sex of the individual, is shaped by society. The changes in ideas
about femininity that can be seen reflected in the history of
embroidery are striking confirmation that femininity is a social
and psychosocial product.
Nevertheless, the conviction that femininity is natural to
women (<1nd unn::�.tural in men) is tenacious. It is a cruciai aspect
of patriarchal ideology, sanctioning a rigid and oppressive div
ision of labour. Thus women active in the upsurge of feminism
which began in the 1960s set out to challenge accepted definitions
of the innate differences between the sexes, and to provide a new
understanding of the creation of femininity. In consciousness
raising groups and campaigns we compared our experiences at
work, at school, at home, in relationships, as mothers, as daugh
ters and sisters. The workings of sexism were scrutinised in the
division of labour in and out of the home, in sexuality, the family,
health care, child care, language, the law, education, the arts, the
media and government policy. How race, class and sex intersect
to shape women's lives became clearer.
Institutional discrimination co-exists and interacts with the
mechanisms and effects of psychic subordination, though obvi
ously rigid divisions cannot be drawn between internal and exter
nal oppression. The complex of emotional attitudes of passivity,
submission and masochism which guarantee the subordination
of women cannot simply be shrugged off or discounted. Juliet
Mitchell, in Psychoanalysis and Feminism, 1 974, observed that:
. . . the status of woman is held in the heart and the head as well
as in the home: oppression has not been trivial or historically
transitory- to maintain itself so efficiently it courses through
the mental and emotional bloodstream. To think that this
should not be so does not necessitate pretending it is already
not so. •
Many feminists have looked to political theory and psycho

analysis to provide an account of how masculinity and femininity
are constructed and reproduced historically. The family was
identified as the place where the 'inferiorised psychology'; of
women was reproduced and the social and economic exploitation
of women as wives and mother� legitimised. Writing of the
construction of femininity in the family, anthropologist Gayle
3
Rubin in an essay in Towards an Anthropology of Women, 1975,

commented: 'One can read Freud's essay on femininity as a
description of how a group is prepared to live with oppression',
and she makes clear how painful the process is. 'It is certainly
plausible to argue that the creation of "femininity" in a woman in
the course o f socialisation is an act of psychic brutality. '6
It is, however, important to distinguish between the construc
tion of femininity, lived femininity, the feminine ideal and the
feminine stereotype. The construction of femininity refers to the
psychoanalytic and social account of sexual differentiation.
Femininity is a lived identity for women either embraced or
resisted. The feminine ideal is an historically changing concept of
what women should be, while the feminine stereotype is a collec
tion of attributes which is imputed to women and against which
their every concern is measured. Millicent Fawcett, the
nineteenth-century British feminist, declared, 'We talk about
"women and women's suffrage", we do not talk about Woman
with a capital W. That we leave to our enemies.''
In other words, there is a significant difference between
acknowledging the construction of femininity in the family and
its maintenance in social institutions, and accepting the cultural
representation of women imposed upon us. The feminine stereo
type categorises everything women are and everything we do as
entirely, essentially and eternally feminine, denying differences
between women according to our economic and social position,
o r our geographical and historical place. In fact, what Gayle
Rubin termed 'the act of psychic brutality' meets with resistance
at all levels, in different ways at different historical moments.
What, then, is the purpose of the feminine stereotype? In Old
Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology, 1981, Griselda Pollock and
I looked at the role of the feminine stereotype in the writing of art
history. We asked why painting b y women has been set apart
from painting by men and why women's art, in all its diversity,
has been described as homogeneous. We revealed the feminine
stereotype to be one of the major elements in the construction of
the current view of the history of art.x The particular way women's
work is presented- the constant assertion of the feminine weak
ness of women's art- sustains the dominance of masculinity and
male art.
The situation of embroidery is more elusive. When women
paint, their work is categorised as homogeneously feminine- but
4
it is acknowledged to be art. When women embroider, it is seen

not as art, but entirely as the expression of femininity. And,
crucially, it is categorised as craft. The division of art forms into a
hierarchical classification of arts and crafts is usually ascribed to
factors of class within the economic and social system, separating
artist from artisan. The fine arts - painting and sculpture-are
considered the proper sphere of the privileged classes while craft
or the applied arts-like furniture-making or silver-smithery- are
associated with the working class. However there is an important
connection between the hierarchy of the arts and the sexual
categories male/female. The development of an ideology of femi
ninity coincided historically with the emergence of a clearly
defined separation of art and craft. This division emerged in the
Renaissance at the time when embroidery was increasingly be
coming the province of women amateurs, working for the home
without pay. Still later the split between art and craft was reflected
in the changes in art education from craft-based workshops to
academies at precisely the time- the eighteenth century- when an
ideology of femininity as natural to women was evolving.
The art/craft hierarchy suggests that art made with thread and
art inade with paint are intrinsically unequal: that the former is
artistically less significant. But the real differences between the
two are in terms of where they are made and who makes them.
Embroidery, by the time of the art/craft divide, was made in the
domestic sphere, usually by women, for 'love': Painting was
produced predominantly, though not only, by men, in the public
sphere, for money. The professional branch of embroidery,
unlike that of painting, was, from the end of the seventeenth
century to the end of the nineteenth century, largely in the hands
of working-class women, or disadvantaged middle-class women.
Clearly there are huge differences between painting and
embroidery; different conditions of production and different
conditions of reception. But rather than acknowledging that
needlework and painting are different but equal arts, embroidery
and crafts associated with 'the second sex' or the working class are
accorded lesser artistic value.
The classification of embroidery is a difficult task. To term it
'art' raises special problems. Moving embroidery several rungs up
the ladder of art forms could be interpreted as simply affirming
the hierarchical categorisations, rather than deconstructing them.
Moreover, to describe embroidery as 'art' is to fail to distinguish it
5
from painting, concealing the profound differences that have

developed histOrically between the two media. However, to call it
'craft' is no solution. Embroidery fails to comply with the utili
tarian imperative that defines craft - because much of it is purely
pictOrial. Traditionally, women have called embroidery 'work'.
Although to some extent an appropriate term, it tends to confirm
the stereotypical notion that patience and perseverance go into
embroidery- but little else. Moreover, the term was engendered
by an ideology of femininity as service and selflessness and the
insistence that women work for others, not for themselves . I have
decided to call embroidery art because it is, undoubtedly, a
cultural practice involving iconography, style and a social
function.
That embroiderers do transform materials tO produce sense -
whole ranges of meanings - is invariably entirely overlooked.
Instead embroidery and a stereotype of femininity have become
collapsed intO one another, characterised as mindless, decorative
and delicate; like the icing on the cake, good to look at, adding
taste and status, but devoid of significant content.
The association between women and embroidery, craft and
femininity, has meant that writers concerned with the status of
women have often turned their attention towards this tangled,
puzzling relationship. Feminists who have scorned embroidery
tend to blame it for whatever constraint on women's lives they are
committed tO combat. Thus, for example, eighteenth-century
critical commentators held embroidery responsible for the ill
health which was claimed as evidence of women's natural weak
ness and inferiority. In the nineteenth century, women wanting
to be taken seriously in supposedly 'male' spheres deliberately
declared their rejection of embroidery to distance themselves
from the feminine ideal. In Helen Black's late nineteenth-century
publication, Notable Authors of The Day, 1893, consisting of
interviews with novelists, Adeline Sargeant stated, 'I have done
some elaborate embroidery in my time but now I never use the
needle for amusement, only for necessity.'<� She asserts her
seriousness and her disdain for feminine frivolity . The majority of
interviewees, however, stress their needlework. For although
writing novels was, by then, an acceptable activity for women,
professionalism was frowned upon. Women therefore covered
themselves with their amateur 'work'. Mrs L. B. Walford, for
example, is described as 'wearing a pretty blue tea gown richly
6
I i\1(/{lann de Pompadour. FranCOIS-Huberr Drouais (french, 1727-1775 ) ,
1\:a{lonal Gallery, London Oil on canvas, 2. 17 X 1. 56 m.

In the: eighteenth century, embroidery Signified a le1sured, aristocram life-style.
2 Frontispiece, Needlecraft: Artistic and Practical,
Butterick, New York, 1889. Readers are told
that ehis book describes skills which will assure
the dass standing of their household: 'It covers a
range of subjects extending from the simplest
towel-making to the making of the various
decorative adjuncts which impart an air of
refinement, and without which the most
sumptuously furnished apattmenc is never quite
satisfying.'
3 Nineteenth-century print of a mother and

daughter. Published in Gay Left, 1980.
Embroidery as a tool for transmitting feminine
behaviour from mother eo daughter created both
a bond between women and a focus for mutual
resentment.
4 The Lion in Lwe, Abraham Solomon (British 1824-1862), Christies, London. 71. 1 X 88.9 cm.
5 In LUI>e, Marcus Stone (British, l84{}-L921), Castle Museum, Nottingham,

1888. Oil on canvas, 118.8 X 167.8 cm. Eyes lowered, head bent, the
embroiderer's pose �•gnifies subjugation. submission and modesty, yet her silence
also suggests self-contamment. The silent t!mbroiderer has, however, become
implicated in a stereotype of femininity in which the self-containment of the
woman sewing is represented as seductiveness.
7 Anonymous sampler, English, Victoria and
Albert Museum, London. Second half of the
seventeenth century. Silk on linen, 68.6 X 19.8
cm.
6 Anonymous mourning picture, private

collection, London. Late eighteenth century.
Silk, chenille and water colour.
There were several different forms of embroidered
mourning pictures and samplers: historical,
allegorical, personal, and public. The more
personal pictures offered a way of literally
working through the process of mourning, easing
the guilt and retrieving the loss of self-esteem so
often engendered by feelings of ambivalence
towards the lost loved one.
embroidered in silk by her own hand', 10 and Helen Mather is

offered as a 'great needlewoman, not only are the long satin
curtains by her own hand but the pillows, cushions and dainty
lampshade.' 11
To reject embroidery, as Adeline Sargeant did, was to nm the
risk of appearing to disparage other women, or to endorse the
stereotypical view of the art propounded by a male-dominated
society. For purely tactical reasons therefore, women who might
have been critical of embroidery praised it. Thus the more
enlightened seventeenth-century women educationalists had
included needlework in their curriculum largely to provide an
acceptable face for women's education. Nineteenth-century
writers defended embroidery, claiming it as an unappreciated art
form. Some believed in raising the status of women, not by
dismissing women's traditional creative activity, but by demand
ing that its true worth be recognised. In her novel The Beth Book,
1897, Sarah Grand offers embroidery as evidence of women's
superiority. Beth embroiders, selling her work secretly through
the discreet commercial outlets provided by the Arts and Crafts
Movement to market 'ladies' work'. For Sarah Grand
embroidery represents the beauty of the female imagination, its
spiritual clarity in contrast to male pedestrian rationalism. But
this attempt to validate women's work ultimately reinforces the
rigid sexual categorisation and justifies the separate spheres.
Novels like The Beth Book are a rich source of information on
attitudes towards embroidery, which is, from the eighteenth
century onwards, repeatedly used to signify femininity. Through
the work of four novelists I shall show briefly how each employs
embroidery to comment on the position of women in society.
May Sinclair takes the identification between embroidery and
feminine purity to suggest that women's sexuality is innately pure
and innocent, but corrupted by men. Nevertheless women's
purity as embodied in embroidery has the potential power to
transform patriarchal corruption. Waiter Majendie in The
Helpmate, 1907, is unfaithful to his wife with an embroiderer
called Maggie, and the delicacy of her work signifies that Maggie
is the seduced not the seducer. Finally her embroidery draws
Majendie's family's attention to her existence; she is 'tracked
down by the long trail of her beautiful embroidery'. 1� The work is
ultimately responsible for revealing to the man the errors of his
ways: 'He hated to see his innocent child dressed in the garment
7
which was the token and memorial of his sin.'1 1

May Sinclair and Sarah Grand represent that tendency in
nineteenth-century feminism which, by positing women's essen
tial spiritual superiority, inadvertently confirmed the oppressive
Victorian stereotype of 'The Angel in the House'. Twentieth
century novelists largely write about embroidery and femininity
not as a superior essence of women, but as the product of sexual
difference, of family life, and the mother/daughter relationship in
particular.
Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence, 1920, conjures the
archetypal scene in which a mother and daughter embroider
together for Newland Archer, the son of the family:
After dinner, according to immemorial custom, Mrs Archer

and Janey trailed their long silk draperies up to the drawing
room where, while the gentlemen smoked below stairs, they
sat beside a Carcel lamp with an engraved globe, facing each
other across a rosewood work-table with a green silk bag under
it, and stitched at two ends of a tapestry band of field flowers
destined to adorn an 'occasional' chair in the drawing room of
young Mrs Newland Archer [the son's future wife].14
Economically and ideologically, Janey- the unmarried, upper

middle-class daughter- is destined to remain at home, locked into
'genteel' pursuits with her mother. Young Mrs Newland Archer,
on the other hand, has escaped through marriage, but her own
mother's influence, encapsulated in embroidery, follows her and,
with peer-group pressure, ensures that she reproduces the sexual
hierarchy of her own family:
She was not a clever needle-woman: her large capable hands

were made for riding, rowing and open-air activities; but since
other wives embroidered cushions for their husbands she did
not wish to omit this last link in her devotion . . . she was
simply ripening into a copy of her mother, and, mysteriously,
by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr Welland [her
fatherj.1�
Edith Wharton exemplifies two common uses of embroidery in

women's novels. First, the image of the woman who is clumsy
with the needle is repeatedly employed to counter the feminine
8
stereotype and to combat the way in which embroidering was

used to justify the sexual division of labour. \VIomen are so
nimble-fingered, it's claimed, but women's embroidery has
everything to do with their place in society and nothing to do with
the size of their fingers. At the same time Edith \V/harton, through
embroidery, demonstrates the extraordinary power of social
ideology.
Colette similarly employs embroidery to undermine the
stereotype and to illuminate femininity. She, however, is less
fatalistic than Edith \V/harton. Demonstrating a different
dynamic, she suggests that the construction of femininity is rarely
complete and that it can be ruptured; and that, moreover, femi
ninity contains its own curious power.
When her daughter Bel-Gazou was nine, Colette's friends
expressed their surprise and disapproval that the child was unable
to sew. Anxious not to fail as a mother, and concerned that her
child fulfil the social expectations that confront her, she urges
Bel-Gazou to take up needlework. She remembers, however, the
way her own mother had reacted when she had embroidered as a
child: '\V/hen I was a young girl, if I ever happened to occupy
myself with needlework, Sido always shook her soothsayer's
head and commented "you will never look like anything but a
boy who i s sewing" .'16 It was her mother's attitude that enabled
Colette to practise embroidery and to insist that other areas of
creative work were a s appropriate for women.
She does, however, have mixed feelings when her own daughter
embroiders. Her women friends applaud: 'Just look at her, isn't
she good,' but secretly Colette disagrees:
I shall speak the truth: I don't much like my daughter sewing.

When she reads, she returns all bewildered and with flaming
cheeks from the island where the chestful of precious stones is
hidden, from the dismal castle where a fair-haired orphan child
is persecuted. She is soaking up a tested and time-honoured
poison whose effects have long been familiar. If she draws, or
colours pictures, a semi-articulate song issues from her, un
ceasing as the hum of bees around the privet. It is the same as
the buzzing of flies as they work, the slow waltz of the house
painter, the refrain of the spinner at her wheel. But Bel-Ga.zou
is silent when she sews, silent for hours on end, with her mouth
firmly closed, concealing her large, new-cut incisors that bite
9
into the moist heart of a fruit like little saw-edged blades. She is
silent, and she-why not write down the word that frightens
me- she is thinking. 1-
The child's silence, her thoughts kept to herself, signify her

separateness from her mother. Colette conjures up an ideal past
when embroidery maintained the mother-child bond rather than
underlining separation and the child's approaching adulthood.
She thinks of
young embroiderers of bygone days, sitting on hard little

stools in the shelter of their mother's ample skirts! Maternal
authority kept them there for years and years, never rising
except to change the skein of silk, or to elope with a stranger . ..
What are you thinking about, Bel-Gazou?
Nothing, Mother, I'm counting my stitches. ��
Colette's sense of anxiety when faced with her silent stitching

child conveys the two sides of embroidery. Eyes lowered, head
bent, shoulders hunched- the position signifies repression and
subjugation, yet the embroiderer's silence, her concentration also
suggests a self-containment, a kind of autonomy.
The silent embroiderer has, however, become a part of a stereo
type of femininity in which the self-containment of the woman
sewing is interpreted as seductiveness. The following scene from a
story in Cosmopolitan magazine can also be found in innumerable
romantic novels:
you never saw a woman sit so still. Her stillness seemed part
and cause of that still summer. Day after day she sat in a basket
chair on the stones beneath the pretty white iron spiral stair
case, sewing among her roses . . . Rose's hands seemed usually
to be still, though the needle was always threaded. She drove
men demented. 14
I n fiction the silence and stillness of the sewer can mean many
things from serious concentration to a silent cry for attention, but
in terms of the stereotype it is a sexual ploy. If a woman sits
silently sewing she is silently asking for the silence to be broken.
The stereotype denies that there is anything subversive in her
silence by asserting that it is maintained for men. Yet the way the
10
intimations of autonomy are so resolutely quashed by the stereo

type suggests that there is something disturbing in the image of
the embroiderer deep in her work.
The manner in which embroidery signifies both self-contain
ment and submission is the key to understanding women's
relation to the art. Embroidery has provided a source of pleasure
and power for women, while being indissolubly linked to the1r
powerlessness. The presence and practice of embroidery pro
motes particular states of mind and self experience. Because of
its history and associations embroidery evokes and inculcates
femininity in the embroiderer. But it can also lead women to an
awareness of the extraordinary constraints of femininity, provid
ing at times a means of negotiating them, and at other times
provoking the desire to escape the constraints. Observing the
covert ways embroidery has provided a source of support and
satisfaction for women leads us out of the impasse created by
outright condemnation or uncritical celebration of the art.
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to underestimate the import
ance of the role played by embroidery in the maintenance and
creation of the feminine ideal. During the seventeenth century
the art was used to inculcate femininity from such an early
age that the girl's ensuing behaviour appeared innate. By the
eighteenth century embroidery was beginning to signify a
leisured, aristocratic life style - not working was becoming the
hallmark of femininity. Embroidery with its royal and noble
associations was perfect proof of gentility, providing concrete
evidence that a man was able to support a leisured woman.
Moreover, because embroidery was supposed to signify feminin
ity- docility, obedience, love of home, and a life without work
it showed the embroiderer to be a deserving, worthy wife and
mother. Thus the art played a crucial part in maintaining the class
position of the household, displaying the value of a man's wife
and the condition of his economic circumstances. Finally, in the
nineteenth century, embroidery and femininity were entirely
fused, and the connection was deemed to be natural. Women
embroidered because they were naturally feminine and were
feminine because they naturally embroidered. The embroidery
was blamed for the conflicts provoked in women by the feminin
ity the art fostered. By the end of the century, Freud was to
decide that constant needlework was one of the factors that
'rendered women particularly prone to hysteria' because day-
11
dreaming over embroidery induced 'dispositional hypnoid

states' .20
The subject matter of a woman's embroidery during the eight
eenth and nineteenth centuries was as important as its execution
in affirming her femininity (and thus her worth and worthless
ness in the world's eyes). It was expected to reflect the current
feminine ideal, which was held to be the highest, yet paradoxi
cally most natural, achievement of women. If the content con
formed to the ideal it supposedly won the needlewoman love,
admiration and support. By examining the content of embroidery
throughout this book, we will see how women responded to the
current ideologies of femininity from the Renaissance onwards,
how they used these ideologies and were used by them.
The iconography of women's work is rarely given the serious
consideration it deserves. Embroidery is all too often treated only
in terms of technical developments. One reason why the subject
matter of embroidery is summarily dismissed is that embroid
erers employ patterns. The interpretation, adaptation and vari
ation of pattern is an integral aspect of the activity and it is
therefore assumed that stylistic and technical properties are all
that concern the embroiderer. However, needlewomen chose
particular patterns, selecting those images which had meaning for
them. The enormous popularity of certain images at different
moments indicates that they had specific importance and power
ful resonance for the women who chose to stitch them. Where
embroiderers have actually employed contemporary paintings as
patterns, we can perceive what could or could not be stitched by
women, and how they were able to make meanings of their own,
by observing which they selected and where they departed from
their models. Nevertheless, the meanings of any embroidered
picture have to be carefully considered within their historical,
artistic and class context. What a picture conveys often relates to
the needs of a woman's class as much as to her experience as a
woman at that time, as well as to the dominant concerns of
contemporary paintings and to the history of embroidery.
Sometimes embroiderers reinforced the feminine ideal in their
work, comfortingly concealing the disjunctures between the
'ideal' and the 'real' by the words and images they stitched -
'Home Sweet Home'. At other times they resisted or questioned
the emerging ideology of feminine obedience and subjugation, as
in the following seventeenth-century sampler verse:
12
When I was young I little thought

That wit must be so dearly bought
But now experience tells me how
If I would thrive then I must bow
And bend unto another's will
That I might learn both care and skill
To Get My Living with My Hands
That So I Might Be Free From Band
And My Own Dame that I may be
And free from all such slavery.
Avoid vaine pastime fle youthful pleasure
Let moderation allways be thy measure
And so prosed unto the heavenly treasure.
The verse is a curious mixture of piety and rebellion, resentment

and acquiescence. Because samplers were becoming the place
where moral sentiments were impressed upon young girls, they
were sometimes also the place where conflicts underlying the
ideology were expressed.
Such overt recognition of the clash between individual
ambition and the ideology of femininity is rare indeed. More
often the embroiderers' desire was to achieve exactly what was
expected of them, developing satisfying and praiseworthy levels
of skill. From our vantage point, it is all too easy to sneer at the
Victorian embroiderer completing yet another pair of slippers
stitched with a fox head, or at the eighteenth-century embroid
erer reproducing in thread the moralising, sentimental domestic
genre paintings of her time. But rather than ridiculing them, or
turning embarrassed from our history, we should ask why they
selected such subjects, what secondary gains they accrued from
absolute conformity to the feminine ideal, and how they were
able to make meanings of their own while overtly living up to the
oppressive stereotype.
Sometimes the secondary gains, or the ways women made
meanings of their own, are covert indeed. The ubiquitous late
eighteenth-century mourning pictures, for example, overtly con
form to the ideology of wifely obedience and fidelity. Whatever
the complexity and ambivalence of a woman's personal response
to bereavement, embroidering conventional memorial pictures
provided the security of social approval. Women are depicted in
silk tending the family tomb. In Chapter Six I describe how these
13
pictures related both to the expansion o f domestic mourning

ritual and to contemporary attitudes to death represented in neo
classical art. But a comparison between paintings by men of
mourning women and embroidered mourning pictures by
women reveals significant differences. Embroiderers endow their
mourners with particular prominence and power, even as they
manifest their allegiance to the ideology of the 'virtuous widow'.
While recognising the varied ways in which women have con
formed to and resisted the dictates of femininity in their work, it
is important to remember that embroidery has been and is a
source of artistic pleasure to many women. Olive Schreiner, in
her novel From Man to Man, 1927, evoked the satisfaction of
needlework, particularly the narcissistic pleasures it provided:
All her life she had dreamed of having a dress made of thick
black silk, with large blue daisies with white centres embroid
ered in raised silk work all over it at intervals. Her mother had
had such a bit of silk in a patchwork quilt she had brought
from England with her.21
Embroidery summons up both 'advanced' civilisation and very

early childhood when a primal, unproblematic unity with the
mother still existed. However, the work provides narcissistic
pleasure not only because it evokes the love and unity of early
childhood; but also because women were taught to embroider as
an extension of themselves; and quite crudely because embroid
ery is used on clothing where it provokes admiration. Urged to
embroider clothing and furniture, encouraged to see it as the
natural expression of their nature, women were still accused of
vanity when they embroidered for themselves. The stereotype
of embroidery as a vain and frivolous occupation, like the stereo
type of the silent, seductive needlewoman, controls and under
mines the power and pleasure women have found in embroidery,
representing it to us negatively.
Nevertheless, women have found gratification in the activity.
Olive Schreiner conveys the immense creative satisfaction it
provides:
Slowly the scores of little tucks and fine embroidery shaped

themselves. At the end of the week there were two tiny arm-
14
holes. At the end of a fortnight the long white rope with its
delicate invisible stitching was also complete . . Y
She also perceived the bond that embroidery forged between

women; sewing allowed women to sit together without feeling
they were neglecting their families, wasting time or betraying
their husbands by maintaining independent social bonds:
They were unalike physically and mentally but they had tastes
which harmonised. While Veronica sat upright on a high
backed chair knitting heavy squares for a bed quilt, Mrs Drum
mend, on a low settee, with her head a little on one side, chose
carefully the shades of silk for an altarcloth which she was
making.23
The women's choice of work indicates the different personalities;

that they both engaged in domestic art reveals what they share as
women in society.
After placing embroidery at the centre of women's lives, Olive
Schreiner makes a plea that it be recognised as art, as a creative
expressive activity, but nevertheless betrays her kinship to the
attitude towards needlework manifested by the contem'porary
novelists Sarah Grand and May Sinclair:
The poet, when his heart is weighted, writes a sonnet, and the
painter paints a picture, and the thinker throws himself into
the world of action; but the woman who is only a woman,
what has she but her needle? In that torn bit of brown leather
brace worked through and through with yellow silk, in that bit
of white rag with the invisible stitching, lying among fallen
leaves and rubbish that the wind has blown into the gutter or
street corner, lies all the passion of some woman's soul finding
voiceless expression. Has the pen or pencil dipped so deep in
the blood of the human race as the needle?24
While placing embroidery as an art like poetry and painting,

Olive Schreiner reasserts its association with femininity. It is the
bearer of women's soul. The images of the white rag with
the invisible stitching, the yellow silk besmirched and trodden
underfoot silently suggest a comparison with women's fate in the
streets. Olive Schreiner maintains the link between embroidery
15
and feminine purity, thus presenting it as a sexual characteristic,

and failing to establish it as an art form equal to painting and
poetry. In part this reflects Olive Schreiner's own ambivalence
towards the domestic labour she describes: 'The worst of this
book of mine is that it's so womanly. I think it's the most wom
anly book that ever was written, and God knows I've willed it
otherwise.'25 But the effect of the passage is largely determined
by the hierarchical categorisation of art forms in our culture. By
claiming that embroidery should be valued because of its intimate
associations with women's lives and domestic tradition, Olive
Schreiner inevitably though unwittingly discounted it as art.
The extraordinary intractability of embroidery, its resistance to
re-definition, is the result of its role in the creation of femininity
during the past five hundred years.
16
2 : Eternalising the Feminine
Embroidery and Victorian mediaevalism
1840-1905
The Victorians re-discovered mediaeval embroidery, wrote the

first histories of the craft in Britain, and produced embroidery
based on mediaeval models .
Mediaeval embroidery production and the place of the art in
society demonstrated dramatically different conditions from
those that later prevailed. Both men and women embroidered in
guild workshops, or workshops attached to noble households, in
monasteries and nunneries. Embroidery was considered the equal
of painting and sculpture.
Victorian historians of embroidery obscured its past and
instead suggested that embroidery had always been an inherently
female activity, a quintessentially feminine craft. However, the
central importance of mediaeval embroidery to the Victorians and
the mythic history they constructed for it has crucially shaped
twentieth-century attitudes to the art. Amongst the most popular
of contemporary commercial canvas patterns are mediaeval
scenes with castle and stitching damsel, and twentieth-century
historical accounts of the history of embroidery still contain
information accepted unquestioningly from nineteenth-century
sources.
17
Eternalising the Feminine
The tenacity of the Victorian reading of this history is largely

due to the way it meshed with nineteenth-century ideologies of
femininity. Twentieth-century concepts of femininity are still
deeply imbued with Victorianism. Throughout the nineteenth
century there was an elaboration of femininity - a rigid definition
of women and their role. Amongst the cluster of characteristics
which constituted the feminine ideal was included a natural pro
pensity to embroider. The rediscovery of mediaeval embroidery
was coloured by the nineteenth-century notions of women's
essential nature and embroidery as essential to women. By con
trasting Victorian accounts of mediaeval embroidery production
with the evidence gleaned from such sources as royal records,
judicial records and the history of the guilds, I hope to demon
strate how ideologies about women determine both the writing of
history and the stitching of images.
Among all the contradictions that besieged the Victorian middle

class, the place of women was one of the most irreconcilable.
With the growing power of middlle-class men in nineteenth
century society the material circumstances of middle-class
women improved, yet their legal and financial dependence deep
ened. The pressure for young girls to remain at home and gain
accomplishments had taken hold, and that the women of the
family were not wage-earners was an important indication of class
status. Women were, on the one hand, the frail sex, untouched by
intellect, at the mercy of physical weakness and volatile feelings,
and on the other hand they were to provide the spiritual face of
their class, occupying a higher, purer sphere than men - the
possessors of animal drives chained to the corrupt world of
commerce. During the 1 840s, the time that mediaeval embroidery
began to assume some importance i n Victorian culture, women
were increasingly voicing resentment at the contradictions that
bound their lives. Mrs Hugo Reed, for example, in A Plea for
Women, 1843, commented witheringly that, 'Woman is taught to
believe, that for one half of the human race, the highest end of
civilisation is to cling upon the other, like a weed upon a wall.'1
As Cora Kaplan in her introduction to Aurora Leigh pointed
out in 1978:
the 'woman question' should not be seen as marginal to a
18
8 Tbr Tal111na11 (from the novel by S1r Waiter Scott), Mrs B•llyard, Victoria and
Albcrt Museum, London. c 1860. Berlin woolwork.
The Victorians invoked mediaeval chivalry ro secure both the class structure and
relations b�tween rhe sexes. Images ofche middle ages appeared ro confirm the
naturalness and righrness of separate spheres. And the Victorian embroiderer
found a reassuring representation of her own power and powerlessness in che lady
of courtly romance.
') Altar fronc,il, Ladies' Ecclesia�ti�"l S<x.1try, designed by Gt-orge Street, St

.J.tm<·s rhe-Less Church, Westminster, London. 1861. Phoco: Victonaand Alben
Mu�t:um
An <·xamplt: of church embroidery proJu,cd under rhe impetu� of the Gothic
rt·vival
10 Unfinished piece of Berlin woolwork. Mid
nineteenth century. Photo: Norfolk Museums
Service.
This was the type of embroidery that became the
focus of attacks by theorises of the Gothic revival
11 Mariana, Sir Frederick Millais (British,

1829-1896), collection Lord Sherfield, 18)3.
Oil on canvas.
male-dominated ruling class, n

i creasingly threatened from
below by an organising proletariat. Caught between this and
the need to accommodate a limited demand for equity from the
informed women of their own class, they were equally com
mitted to the absolute necessity of maintaining social control
over females, and its corollary, the sexual division of labour.�
The middle ages constituted an era that appeared to provide

historical confirmation for the naturalness and rightness of the
doctrine of separate spheres for the sexes. In her study of the
mediaeval ideal in nineteenth-century iterature,
l A Dream of
Order, 1971, Alice Chandler usefully identifie� two major aspects
of mediaevalism linked by the ideal of chivalry:
One is its naturalism - its identification with nature and the

past and thus with simpler and truer modes of feeling and
expression and nobler more heroic codes of action. The other
its feudalism- its harmonious and stable social structure which
reconciled freedom and order by giving each man an allotted
place in society and an alloted leader to follow. The bridge
between these two aspects of mediaevalism is chivalry, which
made the spontaneous generosity of the natural man the guid
ing principle of man in society which compensated for human
frailty by having the strong protect the weak. 3
Not only did chivalry sanction and secure the hierarchical

Victorian class structure, but it was also a weapon of cultural
resistance-+ in the face of women's growing restlessness and
rebellion - an attempt to still the doubts of both the powerful and
the powerless.
Articles on the 'woman question' occupied considerable space
in British magazines and constantly invoked the spirit of chivalry.
But a profound sense of unease echoes through these protesta
tions of chivalry. Take for example, the following observation
from an article by T. H. Lister in the Edinburgh Review of 1 8 4 1 :
In all modern civilized communities, and especially in the most

refined and cultivated portions of these communities, women
are treated by men with peculiar deference, tenderness, and
courtesy. Do they owe this treatment to their strength or to
their weakness? Undoubtedly to the latter. The deference, the
19
tenderness, the courtesy of man towards the other sex, are

founded principally on the feeling that they need his protec
tion, and can never question his power . . . But let man be made
tO feel that he must stand on the defensive - and the spirit of
chivalry will speedily cease. 5
Mediaevalism permeated every aspect of Victorian culture, but

in particular, mid-century religious revivals. Writings on
mediaeval embroidery, begun in the late 1830s, called for the
revival of embroidery based on a prototype from the middle ages
to furnish the Gothic revival churches. Both the Anglican and
Roman Catholic churches were consciously concerned with
embroidery. The British Catholic architect, Augustus Welby
Pugin, wrote in 1843, 'We must earnestly impress on all those
who work in any way for the decoration of the altar that the only
hope for reviving the perfect style is by strictly adhering to
ancient authorities. '"
Mediaevalism had different primary connotations for the
various architects and craftworkers who turned to it. For some it
suggested spirituality and piety which they believed would create
the coherence and clarity of style felt to be lacking in nineteenth
century art. For others it evoked security and solidity in a time of
disturbing, rapid change. For William Morris it represented a
dream of pre-capitalist production n
i which designer and execu
tor were one, and production and consumption not separated.

Clearly all these Victorian concerns were interrelated.
In the 1840s, however, a quite specific attitude informed
writings on mediaeval embroidery and instructions for church
furnishings. In the hands of male theorists, awareness of 'the
woman question' fused with religious fervour. A curious mixture
of chivalry, piety and misogyny appears in the texts, expressing
women's traditional association with embroidery and their par
ticular place in Christianity . Within Christian doctrine women
both provoked the Fall and produced the Saviour, providing the
major source of sin and the primary symbol of purity. Writers
who called for a revival of mediaeval-style embroidery for the
church, blamed the present state of the art on the depravity of
women. For them mediaeval work represented a kind of pre-Fall
holiness. 'From the accession of William Ill may be traced the
rapid downfall of both church principle and church feeling. The
ladies worked still, but, as at present, for the drawing room and
20
not for the church,'' wrote C.E.M. in Hints on Ornamental

Needlework as applied to Ecclesiastical Purposes in 1843.
A . W. Pugin felt that the Gothic style was needed to cleanse
British embroidery of secular femininity:
Well meaning ladies transfer all the nicknackery of the work

room, the toilette-table, and the bazaar to the altar of God. The
result is pitiable . . . pretty ribbons, china pots, darling little
gimcracks, artificial flowers, all sorts of trumpery are suffered
to be intruded.�
Like all crude stereotypes, Pugin's characterisation of mid

nineteenth-century embroidery contained a grain of accurate
observation, and the demand for embroidered furnishings for
Gothic revival churches did provide women with a chance to
change and vindicate embroidery - and themselves.
Large numbers of women were involved in both the Evan
gelical Movement and the high-church Oxford Movement which
re-instituted lavish church hangings and vestments. Women's
religiosity was a complex phenomenon. Sarah Stickney Ellis in
Women of England expressed the contemporary view that it was
at times motivated 'more by the excitement it produced and the
exemption it afforded from domestic duties than from a true spirit
of Religious goodness'.� Behind Sarah Ellis's criticism lies the fact
that religious observance was part of the middle-class cult of the
family; less a question of belief than a standard of moral behav
iour and a code of conduct.
Embroidering for the church in the drawing room combined
domesticity and piety, making it a highly acceptable activity for
ladies. Providing church furnishings and writing books on the
history and practice of the art also gave a public voice to women
who would otherwise not have been heard outside the home. The
importance of the mid-nineteenth-century written histories of
embroidery and instruction manuals by women cannot be over
emphasised. They illustrate attitudes among women who, though
in no way radical, were aware that all was not well with their sex
and w ere offering their particular solution. Their histories set out
to combat the denigration of embroidery; to claim Gothic revival
embroidery as women's particular province, and to assert the
artistic value of embroidery and thus the worth of women's work
in the home.
21
The Handbook ofNeedlework, 1842, and Church Needlework,

1844, were among the first to appear. Their author, Miss
Lambert, begins by thanking her husband for allowing her to use
her maiden name. But however self-effacing the presentation, and
however archaic the language may appear to us, Miss Lambert
was taken seriously by her contemporaries. Her books received
good reviews with only a hint of chivalrous jocularity from such
magazines as the Spectator, the Athenaeum, Atlas, Literary
Gazette and the Polytechnic. She considered that her books, with
their mixture of historical material and practical advice, directly
contributed to the Gothic revival:
With the revival of a more correct taste in Ecclesiastical Archi

tecture the interior decorations of the sacred edifice, other than
those which fall within the province of the architect and
sculptor, naturally claim attention, to the consideration of one
branch of these - belonging by right to women - it is intended
to devote the following pages. 10
She emphasises that embroidery is women's particular sphere and

insists that embroidery be recognised as an art and not relegated
to the status of craft: 'My aim has been to view the subject, both in
its historical and practical bearings, in one light only - that of
art.' 1 1 Ironically her very insistence that embroidery was
naturally and by right women's work discounted it as art. For by
the nineteenth century, what women did was identified with
nature and nurture as opposed to culture. Women's creative work
was conflated with their procreative capacity; their painting,
embroidery and sculpture were considered an extension of their
womanliness.
Elizabeth Stone, however, in her Art of Needlework, 1840,
published under the name of its editor Viscountess Wilton, 1 2
attempts to validate embroidery as art by pleading that the
cultural worth of embroiderers be recognised . A highly romantic
account of the history of needlework from biblical times, the
book was in its third edition by 1844. The author makes no secret
o f her resentment at the treatment of women :
Women are courted, flattered, caressed, extolled; but still the

difference is there, and the 'lords of the creation' take care that
it shall be understood. Their own pursuits - public, are the
22
theme of the historian - private, of the biographer; nay, the

every-day circumstances of life - their dinners - their speeches
- their toasts - and their post coena eloquence, are noted down
for immortality: whilst a woman with as much sense, with
more eloquence, with lofty principles, enthusiastic feelings,
and pure conduct - with sterling virtue to command respecr.
and the self-denying conduct of a martyr - steals noiselessly
through her appointed path in life . . . And this is but as it
should be. �.,
Stone's apparent volte face, her descent from a crescendo of

outrage to meek support for the status quo was a symptom of the
particular relationship writers on embroidery had to the 'woman
question'. They wished to transform courtesy into real regard and
deference into genuine respect. But they wanted a solution which
maintained yet dignified the separate spheres, and looked to the
history of embroidery to confer a sense of importance and purpose
to the activity that absorbed so much of middle-class women's
time. Male writers, on the other hand, looked to the past for
confirmation that the present order of things was immutable and
inevitable. It would be an error to assume that historians deliber
ately distorted the past; rather they read it through the filter of
nineteenth-century ideologies .
The first book published to concentrate entirely on mediaeval
embroidery was English Mediaeval Embroidery, C. H .
Hartshorne, 1848. The image he created of the mediaeval
embroiderer is not significantly different from that of the women
historians, although his reading of the past betrays other needs,
expectations and desires. His book became the source material for
future histories, initiating a chain of illusions that carry through
to the present day. He constructed an imaginary division of
labour for the mediaeval embroidery workshops:
Doubtlessly these labours were . . . pursued by females, both

for their amusement as wdl as their profit, and there exists [an]
entry on the Liberate Rolls in proof of it, authorizing a pay
ment to Adam de Bakering of 6s and 8d for 'a cloth of silk and a
fringe purchased by our command, to embroider a certain
embroidered chasuble which Mabilia of St Edmund's made for
us'. It seems most reasonable therefore to conclude that the
men travailed at the orfevrie [gold embroidery, and gold-
23
smithery J department whilst the women undertook the needle

work. ' �
While acknowledging that women worked professionally,

Hartshorne nevertheless emphasises that females laboured
primarily for amusement and, more importantly, he makes the
strange statement that men were responsible for the beaten gold
embellishments and gold thread that characterised mediaeval
embroidery while women 'undertook the needlework' - the em
broidery in silk. He offers no proof and provides no explanation
as to why such a hypothesis should 'seem reasonable'.
Despite this, his theory was taken up by Frances and Hugh
Marshall in Old English Embroidery, 1894. 'Ladies at this time
were not above pursuing the craft of embroidery for profit as well
as amusement. The men, it appears from an old close roll of the
time of Henry III, usually "travailed" at the orfevrie department
while the women did the more elaborate needlework. ' 1 5 Osten
sibly quoting primary sources, this is taken directly from
Hartshorne. The only difference is that fifty years of Victorian
femininiry had transformed Hartshorne's 'needlework' into
'elaborate' work, suitable for nimble-fingered ladies.
Not only was Hartshorne responsible for perpetuating the
myth of a mediaeval sexual division of labour, he also provided an
image of the mediaeval noblewoman embroiderer which has since
ossified into a stereotype.
Shut up in her lofty chamber. Within the massive walls of a

castle or immured in the restricted walls of a convent, the
needle alone supplied an unceasing source of amusement; with
this she might enliven her tedious hours, and depicting the
heroic deeds of her absent lord, as it were visibly hastening his
return; or on the other hand, softened by the influence of pious
contemplation, she might use this pliant instrument to bring
vividly before her mind the mysteries of that faith to which she
clung. ' 6
In a passage which is an amalgam of fantasy and research,

Hartshorne transforms the mediaeval noblewoman intO a blue
print for the middle-class VictOrian wife: pious, secluded, faithful
and dutiful. Even the sharp needle becomes a pliant instrument.
Evidence does suggest that embroidery was part of a noble
24
girl's education in mediaeval Britain, but there is nothing to

indicate that adult women worked in pious, interesting isolation.
Quite the contrary, noble households maintained embroidery
workshops employing female and male embroiderers in which
the lady of the household could have joined. The Domesday
Book, recording that King Canute's daughter Aelthelswitha set
up an embroidery workshop near the monastry of Ely,
considered it noteworthy that she did actually participate in the
work: 'With her own hands, being extremely skilled in the craft
she made a white chasuble .'17
Hartshorne's image, however, had enormous resonance for the
Victorians. The same elements - incarceration, the slow passage
of time, embroidery as compensation for male absence-appear in
Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem 'Mariana' and inspired John
Everett Millais' painting Mariana. Drawn from Shakespeare's
Measure for Measure, the poem describes 'Mariana in the moated
grange' waiting for her lover :
She only said, 'My life is dreary,

He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'
Millais portrays Mariana standing over her unfinished embroid

ery to signify her confinement in the moated grange, her long wait
and her nobility. But Mariana has abandoned her 'work'; driven
by frustration and desire she has put down her needle and dis
order has entered the house. Dead leaveshave drifted in, a mouse
creeps undisturbed across the floor and an altar lies unattended in
the background. Mariana's pose has been described as just
'awkwardly langorous' and the result of 'Millais' resolve to paint
someone stretching with boredom'.1� But the pose surely sug
gests something other than boredom. The whole angle of the
body, the position of the arms and the gaze indicate a sexual
provocativeness, an element of rebelliousness, that could only be
held in check by embroidery frames, stained glass windows, the
restricted limits of a convent and the massive walls of a castle
conjured up by Hartshorne.
The image of the embroidering lady was not offered simply to
negate or contain fears that women might put down their needles
and 'break out': it acted as both an acknowledgement and a denial
25
of that 'curse of middle-class existence, the death in life, ennui' as

the English Woman's journal put it in 1858. And ennui was not
simply boredom but a manifestation of more profound distress
echoed in the psychosomatic weariness constantly represented in
women's poetry. Christina Rossetti wrote:
It's a weary life, it is, she said:

Doubly blank in a woman's lot:
I wish and I wish I were a man:
Or, better than any being, werenot:1�
When women writers presented their picture of the noble

embroiderer, they were, in their own way, redressing their sex's
dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Elizabeth Stone, for example,
describing the Bayeux Tapestry, completed by c. 1086, wrote:
This Herculean labour has a halo of deep interest thrown

around it from the circumstances of its being the proud tribute
of a fond and affectionate wife, glorifying in her husband's
glory, and proud of emblazoning his deeds . . . Little did the
affectionate wife think whilst employed over this task, that her
domestic tribute of regard should become an historical
memento of her country, and blazon forth his illustrious deeds
and her own unwearying affection.20
The affectionate wife was William the Conqueror's Queen

Mathilda, supposed author of the Tapestry. Stone offered
Mathilda as a source of inspiration and fantasy for all those weary
women whose embroidery was belittled rather than respected.
She presented Mathilda as a pattern of perfect Victorian femi
ninity, who worked for love, in private, her glory a reflection of
her husband's, her reward coming after death. 'The astonishing
labours of Mathilda, consort of William the Conqueror' are also
mentioned in Miss Lambert's chapter titled 'Needlework of the
English Queens and Princesses'. In conferring aristocratic asso
ciations on the art practised by thousands of middle-class women,
she revealed another reason why the image of the noble
embroiderer was so popular in the nineteenth century. 'In past
ages the higher or picturesque gradations of it were confined to
the delicate fingers of Queens and court ladies', confidently stated
Mrs Warren and Mrs Pullan in Treasures of Needlework, 1855. � �
26
12 Queen Mathilda with her Wonun atzdSaxon Maidens with the Bayeux Tapestry,
George E lgar Hicks (British 1824-1914), Christies, 1899. Oil on canvas, 88.9 X
180.2 cm.
Although the Bayeux Tapestry was a professtonal workshop production,
throughout the nineteenrh cenrury it was attributed to Queen Mathilda, wife of
William the Conqueror. The queen was presented as an exemplary embroiderer,
working with other women, in private, and for her husband's glory, not her own.
13 The Bayeux Tapestry, Ville de Bayeux, Normandy, France. c 1080.

Embroidered wool on linen, 50 cm X 70.4 m. The 'tapestry' records events from
the accession of Edward the Confessor to the defeat of Harold at Hastings.
17 Banner o/St Margaret, Ladies' Ecclesiastical Society, designed by G F Bodley,
Wicken Bonhunt Church, Essex. c 1860. Phor.o: Laurie Sparham.
Compared with the mediaeval St Margaret, the nineteenth-century Se Margaret, a
produce of the Gothic revival, reveals the transformation effected by Vicronan
ideologtes about women upon mediaeval tconography.
14 (top left) Altar froncal detail, DominaJohanna Bcverley, Vtctoria and Alberr
Museum, London. c 1300.
The a! car frontal bears the signature of che nun who embroidered ir.
15 (cencre left) Altar frontal design, Miss Lambert, Church N�dlework, London.
1844.
'The aim of the. needlewoman is nor to imitate either painting, sculpture, carving
or goldsmiths' work; but to produce an effective piece of needlework, that shall be
scricdy in accordance wtth the laws ofgood taste and the harmony of colours.·
Theorists ofthe Gothic revival wanted embroidery recognised as an art in its own
right. But i n their aru(lety ro prove embrotdery worthy ofa place among the arts,
they denied needlewomcn any artisttc tndependence.
16 (bottom left) The Butler-Buwden Cope, detail, Victoria and Alberr Museum,
London. 1330-1350. Velvet embroidered with coloured stlks, silver-gilt and
silver thread, pe-.1rb, green beads and small gold rings. Full dimensions 167.6 X
345 5 cm. A detatl from rhe cope shows Sr Margaret, patron saint of childbirrh.
With St Catherine, St Margaret was the most frequently embroidered female satnt
dunng the middle ages.
18 The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British, 1828-1882},
Tare Gallery, London. 1848-9. Oil on canvas.
The nineteenth-century feminine ideal, represemed by Mary embroidering a lily,
shows the extent to which embroidery has become associated with the concept of
femininity as purity and submissiveness. By contrast a mediaeval prototype
illustrates Anna, the Virgin's mother, instructing her daughter from a book.
19 Chasuble orphrey, a detail from The Nativity of
the Virgin, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
l39G-1420. Linen embroidered with silks,
silver-gilt and silver thread.
20 Banner ofthe Virgin ofthe Annunciation,

School ofMediaeval embroidery, from an
engraving reproduced in the Magazine ofArt,
1880. Photo: Anthea Callen.
2 I Alms pouch, Cathedral treasury, Sc:ns, France. Mid-fourteenth century.
T3kcn from the poem of rhe Chiircla1ne de Yergy, the embroidery depicts <l lady
receiVIng a ring from her lover. These small, richly embroidered bags for mone} ,
glO\c:s and prayer books were hung from tht' belr.
Had Mathilda stitched all 270 feet by 20 inches of embroidered

linen known misleadingly as the Bayeux Tapestry, the generic
name for woven textile, it would have been truly a Herculean
task. The embroidery records events from the accession of
Edward the Confessor to the defeat of Harold at Ha�lings.
Although it is the only surviving example of Romanesque politi
cal embroidery, descriptions of similar work exist. In 1070 the
Abbot of Bourguoil described an embroidery on the same subject
worked in gold, silver and jewels, hanging in an alcove around the
bed of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror.
In 1900 Mathilda was still named as creator of the tapestry.
However, the embroidery has been the subject of intensive
research prompted partly by nationalism. The problem that
absorbed historians was not so much who made it, as where it was
made. Even Victorian historians were torn between patriotism
and the desire to celebrate Mathilda as an example of wifely
excellence. Miss Lambert added the footnote: 'Though Queen
Mathilda directed the working of the Bayeux Tapestry, yet the
greater part of it was most probably executed by English ladies,
who were at this period, as we have stated before, celebrated for
their needlework. '11
Later historians in part agree with her. 1·' Today it is considered
to have been commissioned by the French from an English work
shop. Bishop Odo, half-brother of William the Conqueror, is
believed to have ordered it to be hung in the Cathedral at Bayeux.
Judging from the style and technique, it is English, and there was
a school of embroidery known for the type of work at
Canterbury.
Nevertheless, the French continued to call it 'Queen
Mathilda's Tapestry' and images of the stitching queen still cling
to it, so powerful was the nineteenth-century presentation of its
history. They wrote of it as an individual effort rather than a
workshop production, as an aristocratic activity rather than a
professional art work, as an all-female undertaking rather than
the creation of men and women . They neither could nor would
disentangle the work's history from the way the art was practised
by nineteenth-century upper and middle-class women.
The tapestry's association with aristocratic femininity has
shaped its treatment by twentieth-century writers, who tend to
refer to its 'perennial charm' and fail to consider the embroidery
in the light of developments in mediaeval art, or of what it teaches
27
us about mediaeval craft practice. There are of course exceptions.

Arnold Hauser in The Social History of Art, 1938, analyses it in
the context of art history, calling it 'The most important monu
ment of secular art of the middle ages' and pointing out that it
anticipates the cyclical narratives of Gothic art. His dismissal of
Mathilda's authorship is nevertheless somewhat ambiguous:
'Contrary to the legend this is obviously in no sense the work of a
dilettante.' 1�
Victorian historians were confident of their image of the lone

noble embroiderer because of the use they made of the literature
of courtly love as a source of information on mediaeval secular
embroidery. Courtly love, with its idealisation ·of women and
view of love as an ennobling passion, developed at the end of the
eleventh century and flourished until the thirteenth century.
Emerging in the courts of the nobility in Southern France, it
spread throughout Europe. Although it affected the lives of a very
narrow stratum of women, it left a highly n
i fluential body of
literature.
In Art of Needlework Elizabeth Stone defended her use of
courtly love as a source of information, claiming that mediaeval
chronicles and histories provided nothing on needlework:
'The costly and delicate needlework' is here, as elsewhere,

passed over with merely a mention. It is, naturally, too insig
nificant a subject to task the attention of those whose energies
are devoted to describing warfare and welfare of kingdoms and
thrones . . . but as the 'novel' now describes those minutiae
of everyday life which we would think it ridiculous to look for
in the writings of politicians and historians, so the romances of
the days of chivalry present us with descriptions which, if they
be somewhat redundant in ornament, are still correct in
groundwork . . . 15
What courtly literature actually provided was groundwork for

the fantasies of Victorian needlewomen. Describing the accoutre
ments of mediaeval knights, Stone writes that they were, 'varied
in form but mostly made of rich silk, lined or trimmed with
choice or expensive furs, and usually, also, having the armorial
bearings of the family richly embroidered. Thus were women
28
even the heralds of those times. '2� (my italics)

Leonore Davidoff's 1973 study of the Victorian Season27
suggests that women of the privileged classes were the heraldic
reflection of their own time. She describes the key role they
played in organising the social rituals of society in which the
problems of social definition were becoming more and more
acute. The Victorian lady found a reassuring representation of her
own curious power and powerlessness in the mediaeval lady of
courtly love.
Embroidery did n
i deed play an important part in the stories of
adulterous love that dominate the literature of courtly love. In the
Lay of The Nightingale by Marie de France, the lady and her lover
would meet nightly at her window until her husband became
suspicious. The lady, to allay his fears, says she is unable to sleep
because a nightingale singing outside her window enchants her.
The husband has the bird killed. The lady then 'took a piece of
white samite bordered with gold, and wrought thereon the whole
story of this adventure. In this silken cloth she wrapped the little
body of the bird, and calling to her trusted servant of her house,
charged him with the message and bade him bear it to her friend.'
The most popular nineteenth-century m
i age from courtly
romances was that of the knight wearing the lady's embroidery
and defending it with his life. 'It is recorded n
i "Perceforest",'
writes Elizabeth Stone, 'that at the end of one tournament ladies
were so stripped of their head attire, that the greatest part of them
were quite bareheaded . . . their robes also were without sleeves;
for all had been given to adorn the knights; hoods, cloaks, ker
chiefs and mantuas . . . '2� The self-forgetfulness, abandon and
excitement so forbidden to Victorian ladies is represented in the
context of embroidery, but safely distanced by hundreds of years,
and dignified by the morality and nobility associated with the
middle ages in Victorian minds.
Elizabeth Stone quotes poetry which referred to embroidered
bags hung at the waist for money, papers, prayer books or gloves:
She seyde, Syr Knight, gentyl and hende,

I wot thy stat, ord and ende,
Be naught aschamed of me;
If thou wylt truly to me take,
And alle women for me forsake,
Ryche i wyll make the.
29
I wyll the geve an alner,

Imad of Sylk and of gold der
With fayr ymages thre;
As oft thou puttest the hond therinne,
A mark of gold thou schalt wynne,
In wat place that thou be.
Plate 2 1 shows such a mediaeval bag from France embroidered in

the fourteenth century with figures from the Roman de la Rose.
Etienne Boileau's book of crafts names a maker of such pouches
as 'Margaret the Emblazoner' for they were usually stitched with
the owner's coat of arms. Elizabeth Stone, referring to the poem,
comments, 'The labours of those days were not confined to
merely good appearing garments ; the skill of the needlewoman,
for doubtless it was attributable to that- could imbue them with
value far beyond that of mere outward garnish.'29 With laboured
humour she pursues her goal - the validation of women and their
work.
It is easy to see why the Victorians considered that the literature
of courtly love proved that embroidery and embroiderers were
once highly valued (and thus should be again in the nineteenth
century). What they failed to grasp was that the standing of
embroidery in courtly society did not indicate that women were
valued as embroiderers, but rather i t signified social place and
allegiance. Wills, funeral effigies, illuminated manuscripts and
paintings all testified to the power of embroidery as a distinguish
ing mark of rank.
The centrality of embroidery in courtly literature indicated the
jostling for place among men rather than the power of women.
There is anyway considerable disagreement over the effect of
courtly love on women's lives, the cause and content of courtly
love verse and fables. Was the love celebrated sexual or platonic?
Did the honour and worship accorded women reflect the power
of women as landowners, or was it simply compensation for their
total subordination to the men of their class? Did it ameliorate the
position of women or, as Eileen Power comments in Mediaeval
Women, 1975, 'How often in real life must the lady of chivalry
have been not romantically unhappy but simply bored?'30 Did
courtly love undermine marriage or shore up a system of econ
omic alliances? Meg Bogin in The Women Troubadors, 1976, has
argued convincingly that the rituals of courtly love served to
30
buttress the identity of the feudal male, that the landless courted
the ladies tO reach their men. The lady was mediator in a symbolic
transference of status between men of different classes. 11
Whatever the social reality behind the literature of courtly love,
the early Victorians saw the middle ages as a time when embroid
ery and embroiderers were accorded the value which Victori?n
women themselves desired. And in contrast to their own lives
mediaeval embroiderers appeared to have enjoyed an unthinkable
freedom: 'So highly valued was a facility in the use of the needle
prized in these "ould ancient times",' wrote Elizabeth Stone,
'that a wandering damsel is not merely tolerated but
cherished in a family in which she is a perfect stranger solely for
her skill in this much loved art.'·'�
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, writers on
embroidery became less interested in chivalry and courtly love.
Lady Marion Alford's Needlework as Art, 1886, had little of
Elizabeth StOne's delight in tournaments. Lady Marion retires
her mediaeval embroiderer from the lists tO the hearth. Sir Waiter
Scott's romantic novels, with their jousts and hawking parties,
were cast out in favour of the utopian view of the fourteenth
century of the art theorists John Ruskin and William Morris.
Ruskin's lady buckles on her knight's armour rather than tossing
him her embroidered clothing:
You cannot think that the buckling on of the knight's armour

was a mere caprice of fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth
that the soul's armour is never well set to the heart unless a
woman's hand has braced (it] . . . But how, you will ask, is the
idea of this guiding function of the woman reconcilable with a
true wifely subjection? Simply in that it is a guiding not a
determining function. 1 1· ·
Alford transforms the earlier image of the romantic mediaeval

embroiderer into the domestic and maternal preceptor : 'In medi
aeval homes lessons of morality and religion, and the love and
fame of noble deeds, were taught by the painting of the needle to
the minds of young men who would have scorned more direct
teaching.'-'"'
By reproducing Ruskinian ideology, Lady Marion Alford
accommodated the contradictions in nineteenth-century middle
class women's lives. She attempted to dignify the very work that
31
signified their lack of public importance. Like earlier historians of

embroidery she wanted to suggest that women and their
embroidery did exercise an influence over their society. But to
Alford the power of women lay not in being the 'heralds' of
society, the people who ordered social hierarchies, but in
exemplary morality and purity. Influenced by William Morris
and the Arts and Crafts Movement she believed that art had an
inherently beneficial, elevating effect on all who came into
contact with it. 'The history of domestic embroidery', she wrote,
'ought to be looked upon as an important factor in the
humanising effect of aesthetic culture. '·15
Mediaeval ecclesiastical embroidery was evoked by Victorian

historians to justify their claims that embroidery was innately
pious, pure and spiritualising. Lady Marion Alford offered her
ideal of monastic embroidery:
In the dark and mediaeval ages, time was of no account. Skilled

labour, such as was needed for carving, illuminations, and
embroideries, was freely given as the duty of a life, for one
particular object, the good of a man's soul. The cloistered men
and women worked for no wages ; neither to benefit themselves
nor their descendants; hardly for fame - that was given to the
convent which had the credit of patronising and producing art,
while the very name of the artist was forgotten. It was from
pure love of the art as a craft, and the belief that it was a good
work in which they were engaged, and from their abundant
leisure, that they were enabled to evolve the lovely creations
which delight and astonish us . . . Like the silkworm they
spent themselves ; and by their industrious lives were
surrounded in their living graves by the elaborated essence of
their own natures, a joy and consolation to themselves, and a
legacy to all time. To them, also, art appeared as the consoler . .lo
This is of course less a description of a mediaeval nun than a

prescription (and consolation) for ideal Victorian womanhood;
dutiful, pious, wageless and modest. The image is belied by
surviving embroidery signed by one of Alford's 'anonymous
nuns'. An altar frontlet of the early fourteenth century is signed
'Donna Ionna Beverlai Monaca Fecit' .
32
Contrary to the impression provided by Alford and others,

mediaeval women were often drawn to the cloistered life for
social and political reasons, not simply out of piety. The surviving
words of mediaeval women themselves indicate the danger of
generalising about them. The following twelfth-century poem
relates to the decision to enter holy orders, and provides a cor
rective to the Victorian stereotype.
Lady Carenza of the lovely, gracious body,

give some advice to us two sisters,
and since you know best how to tell what's best,
counsel me according to your experience:
Shall I marry someone we both know?
or shall I stay unwed? that would please me,
for making babies doesn't seem good,
and it's too anguishing to be a wife.
Lady Carenza, I'd like to have a husband,

but making babies is a huge penitence:
your breasts hang way down
and it's too anguishing to be a wife.
Lady Alais and Lady Iselda,

you have learning, merit, beauty, youth, fresh
colour, courtly manners and distinction
more than all the other women I know;
I therefore advise you, if you want to plant good seed,
to take as a husband Coronat de Scienza,
saved is the chastity of her who marries him. 37
The poem belongs to the development of the courtly lyric in

Provence during the twelfth century. Nothing is known about
the three women. Meg Begin, who translated their verses, has
pointed out that the poem is a strange mixture of colloquial and
religious language; Coronat de Scienza is a Cathar or Gnostic
name for God.
Written histories of mediaeval embroidery were only one aspect

of Victorian mediaevalism. As important was the revival of
embroidery in the mediaeval style. And just as the written
histories were determined by Victorian attitudes to women, so
33
contemporary ideologies about women affected the theory, style

and iconography of the mediaeval embroidery revival which
began in the 1840s.
The style was instigated by men and produced by women. As
mentioned above, writers who called for a return to mediaeval
models blamed what they considered the decadence of contem
porary church needlework on 'the ladies', and aimed as much at
reforming the ladies as their work. A curious mixture of anxiety,
bombast and ridicule informs their texts. A.W. Pugin's treatise
on ecclesiastical embroidery reads like a sermon on chaste con
duct. He demanded that church embroidery 'strictly adhere' to
mediaeval models, with 'proper observation' of the 'heraldic laws
of colour'. C.E.M. confessed how 'inexpressibly painful' he
found it to observe some pattern on an altarcloth one day which
had been seen in the 'drawing room the day before'. Gilbert
French considered contemporary haloes to be 'unhappily sugges
tive of the metal plates of the Sun Fire Insurance Company'. Jx
Another tactic employed was to ridicule implicitly the
embroiderer's femininity. The Reverend T. James insinuated that
contemporary embroidery reflected a femininity that had become
blowzy and overblown. In Church Work for Ladies he
characterised Victorian canvas work as ' . . . g1gantic flowers,
pansies big as peonies; cabbage roses which deserve the name,
suggesting pickle rather than perfume; gracefully falling fuchsias
big as handbells .'-'9 Mortified, women replaced the cabbage rose
with the Tudor rose.
The male theorists may have mocked embroidery but they
nevertheless offered new possibilities for women embroiderers
by allowing embroidery an important place in the Gothic revival.
In 1848 the Ecclesiological Society published twelve plates of
working patterns of flowers drawn from mediaeval embroideries
by Agnes Blencowe. Seven years later she eo-founded the Ladies
Ecclesiastical Society. The members embroidered church
furnishings free of charge, asking only that the churches supply
the cost of the materials. Promising to honour and obey the
theorists of the Gothic revival, they declared that their aim was 'to
supply altarcloths of strictly ecclesiastical design either by repro
ducing ancient examples or by working under the supervision of a
competent architect. ' "•
There was no shortage of competent church architects willing
to supply patterns. George Frederick Bodley, ].D. Sedding and
34
Edmund Street all designed embroideries . Street assured the

embroiderers of the benefits they would gain from working his
designs, of 'the happiness which must result from employing
their fingers and their eyes on something fair and beautiful to
behold instead of upon horrid and hideous patterns in cross
stitch, for foot-stools, slippers, chair covers, and the like too
common objects'.41
The prototype embroideries can be roughly divided into two
phases: those produced before 1860 and those stitched under the
influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The first phase was
dominated by religious revival and the insistence that church
work (and church workers) should display piety, purity, taste
and restraint. Miss Lambert's Church Needlework belongs to this
phase. She reminds her readers repeatedly of th e need for spiritu
ality and taste. The chapter providing instructions for altarcloths
ends with the warn ing that 'he (sic) must have fixt aims and strong
han d who hits decency and misseth sluttery . ·� The patterns she
'
offers tend to be restrained to the point of dullness with repeated

representations of the cross and holy monogram, and border
patterns drawn from church cornices rather than from the lively
and elaborate embroidery of the middle ages.
'Care and neatness are the only requisites for success,' Miss
Lambert assured her readers . But as the embrqidery revival
continued embroiderers became more ambitious. Schools and
teaching organisations spread, instructing embroiderers in large
figurative work. In 1863 the Ladies Ecclesiastical Embroidery
Society merged with the Wantage Needlework Association. The
Church Extension Society formed in 1871, and the School of
Mediaeval Embroidery was organised by the Sisters of St
Catherine in Queens Square, Bloomsbury, to provide church
embroideries and tO teach mediaeval work.
St Margaret was among the most frequently embroidered of all
saints and martyrs during the late middle ages and thus a candi
date for nineteenth-century figurative work. Two depictions of St
Margaret, one from the middle ages and the other from the
nineteenth century, reveal the transformations effected by
Victorian ideolog ies about women upon mediaeval iconography.
Plate 16 is taken from the Butler Bowden Cope and shows the
saint spearing the dragon . Plate 1 7 is a banner of St Margaret
designed by the arch itect G.F. Bodley for the Ladies
Eccl esiast ical Society.
35
The myth of St Margaret recounts how a Christian living in

Antioch during the third century caught the eye of the Governor,
who was not a Christian. He wanted to marry her and demanded
that she renounce her religion. Margaret refused, insisting that
she was dedicated to Christ. The Governor repeatedly tortured
the young woman to make her change her mind, but her resist
ance never wavered. When she was locked in a dungeon, the devil
appeared to her disguised as a dragon. Margaret fell to her knees
and made the sign of the cross but the dragon was undeterred and
swallowed the saint. Within the beast's body the cross that
Margaret had made took shape, expanded and finally split the
dragon open, allowing Margaret to escape unharmed. Her
courage and miraculous escape provoked mass conversion to
Christianity so the Governor decided to execute her. On her way
to her death the saint prayed that the memory of her escape from
the dragon might support women in childbirth. She thus became
the intercessor for women in labour. During the middle ages
liturgical invocations and hymns celebrated her· protective
powers. In art, she is shown spearing the dragon or bursting from
his body as in the Steeple As ton Cope, Plate 32. Bodley's saint, on
the other hand, raises her eyes to heaven in passive, mute suppli
cation while the dragon catches her robe in his teeth.
By the nineteenth century St Margaret had been transformed
from dragon slayer to victim. The Victorians even ;ewrote her
legend as part of changing ideologies of childbirth. In Mrs
Jameson's popular study, Sacred and Legendary Art, 1848, the
saint simply holds up the crucifix and the dragon flees in abject
terror, and her role as patron saint of childbirth is attributed as
much to her acute suffering as to her escape from the devil. 'Her
story is singularly wild,' writes Mrs Jameson, but reminds her
readers reassuringly that the saint's name has been bestowed on
'that little lowly flower we call the daisy'.
St Margaret's passivity and helplessness related to women's loss
of control of childbirth through the intervening centuries.
Henceforward childbirth was to be managed by men. The whole
of women's reproductive capacity - menstruation and parturition
- was seen as evidence of women's inherent weakness- sickness
even. 'Labour I is 1 a series of convulsions [which are 1 indistin
guishable from epilepsy ,' confidently stated Dr Robert Barnes in
the Lancet of 1873.41
In her essay 'Wisewomen and Medicine Men: Changes in the
36
Management of Childbirth', 1976, Anne Oakley sets out two

models of childbirth, one of which demonstrates management by
women and the other by men:
[When] the control of reproduction- contraception, abortion,

pregnancy, and parturition - lies with the female community,
men are not polluted because they are not involved. Alter
natively, the control of reproductive care is in men's hands,
and through the creation of rules and rituals which define
women as passive objects vis a vis their reproductive fate, men
are able to confine and limit and curb the creativity and
potentially polluting power of female procreation- and also,
incidentally, the threat of female sexuality. "'4
The rules and rituals which characterised the nineteenth

century management of childbirth by men had their counterpart
in embroidery production as yet another manifestation of the
controls society placed upon women's creativity. 'Ancient auth
orities' had to be 'strictly adhered to', rules of colour properly
observed, the patterns of architects obediently followed. And
women, fearful that their femininity would be impugned if they
deviated from prescribed models, conformed.
Another pattern of passivity provided for embroiderers to
work in thread (and to emulate in life) was the Virgin of the
Annunciation embroidered by the School of Mediaeval
Embroidery. Like the St Margaret banner, it demonstrates how
the iconography of ecclesiastical embroidery changed before and
after childbirth was taken out of the hands of women. The
nineteenth-century virgin, her eyes cast humbly downwards,
crosses her hands meekly over her breast. In the narrative cycles
of mediaeval embroidery, the Annunciation was immediately
followed by the Visitation, in which Mary and her cousin
Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, are shown embracing. The
two scenes are among many mediaeval images recounting and
celebrating the miracle of Mary's fertility connoted by the lily of
the Annunciation; Christ was 'The flower willed to be born of the
flower, at the time of flowers'. �5 By the nineteenth century the lily
no longer connoted spring flowering and fertility, but only purity
and asceticism.
The extent to which embroidery had become associated with
feminity as purity and submissiveness can be gauged from a
37
painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He depicts the Virgin Mary

with her mother. The work relates to a scene from the apocryphal
Life of Mary - a popular narrative sequence in mediaeval art. In
this same art the Virgin's mother, Anna, is shown teaching her
daughter from a book. But in Rossetti's painting, books merely
provide a pedestal for a lily, which the Virgin reproduces in
thread. In fact the painting delineates an absolute sexual division
of labour. The two women are ensconced with embroidery in the
domestic sphere; outside Joachim, Ann?,'s husband, labours in
the vineyard.
Exceptionally pale, delicate and ethereal, Mary presents the
middle-class ideal of femininity, and the physical justification for
the confinement of her sex within the home-middle-class women
were considered by the Victorians to be 'pure but sick; working
class women outside the home able-bodied but contaminated and
sickening'.��·
The sex and class connotations of embroidery- its associations
with goodness and domesticity- were not invented by the theor
ists of the embroidery revival. They did however emphasise the
spiritual associations of the art, and laid down the conditions
under which women could embroider for the public sphere -
obedience to the church and a reflection of a pious passivity in the
depiction of religious subject matter.
A large exhibition of mediaeval embroidery opened in London in

1905. Despite the presence of many impressive examples of the
finest period of mediaeval embroidery, a reviewer, May Morris,
noted a certain ambiguity in the attitude of visitors to the exhi
bition. Writing in the Burlington Magazine she commented:
I gather it has come as a surprise to many people that work so

distinguished, so highly developed and so varied, should have
been produced at this early date. The surprise surprises me, for
they accept without exclamation the font of Wells Cathedral,
illuminated books from Winchester, and so forth, and this is
but part of the same story . .n
May Morris was well qualified to review the exhibition. Her

father, William Morris, key figure in the nineteenth-century Arts
and Crafts Movement, had encouraged May to begin embroider-
38
ing by the time she was seven years old. Since 1885 she had been in
charge of the Morris, Marshall and Faulkner embroidery work
shop. She had written on embroidery history and practice, and
directed the embroidery class at the Central School of Art and
Design in London. In this review, with somewhat elusive irony,
she rebuked visitors for carrying their prejudices with them . But
her analysis of the situation is primarily socialist, not feminist.
She suggested that people were amazed at the achievements of
embroiderers only because they had unquestioningly accepted
the division of art forms into Fine or High art, practised by the
privileged classes, and Craft or Applied Art, practised by anyone
else. They could accept the excellence of mediaeval painting and
sculpture but could not believe that embroidery, a so-called craft,
could attain such heights.
The situation of embroidery is however, significantly different
from that of other crafts. The crucial factor determining the
reception of the exhibition was not simply embroidery's associ
ation with craft as opposed to art. Rather it was the total identifi
cation that had been effected between embroidery and the
Victorian feminine ideal. By the time the 1905 exhibition was
mounted publications on mediaeval embroidery had been
devoted to propagating a particular reading of history, and pro
ducing a specific image of the mediaeval embroiderer for more
than fifty years. The historians had provided women's work with
a heritage they believed would win it the respect and recognition
it truly deserved -and women needed. In doing so they concealed
the professional production of embroidery by women and men
behind an image of the solitary stitching queen. They reduced the
heterogenous character of ecclesiastical work to the modest
undertakings of self-denying nuns. And the character of medi
aeval embroidery itself was pruned and tamed in Victorian proto
types to affirm contemporary notions of femininity. Far from
fulfilling their intentions to validate embroidery, the Victorian
historians devalued it in the eyes of a society which equated great
art with masculinity, the public sphere and professional practice.
39
3 : Fertility, Chastity
and Power
The Victorian imposition of their feminine ideal on to mediaeval

embroidery conceals a complex set of relationships between the
art's patrons - the church and the nobility - and the content of
ecclesiastical embroidery; between the church's denigration of
women and women's central place in society and within medi
aeval craft production.
Opus Anglicanum is the generic name for ecclesiastical
embroidery produced in England from approximately 900 to
1500. The embroidery is on linen or velvet with silk and metal
threads, pearls, jewels and beaten gold. Split stitch was employed
for the figures and the background was worked with underside
couching. Technically superb and extraordinarily expressive,
embroidery was not considered a lesser art form than painting and
sculpture. The dividing of media into crafts and fine art only
commenced at the Renaissance .
Opus Anglic anum was exported all over the continent; the
name is derived from entries in European inventories of the time.
The inventory of the Holy See, 1295, mentions Opus Anglicanum
40
Fertility, Chastity and Power
more frequently than any other embroidery. Pope Innocent IV

had letters written to the abbots of the English Cistercian orders
during 1246 demanding quantities of embroidery. He com
mented 'England is our garden of delight; truly it is a well
inexhaustible, and from where there is great abundance, from
thence much more may be extracted.' Recording the Pope's .
words, Matthew Paris , the thirteenth-century chronicler, wrote,
'This command of my Lord Pope did not displease the London
Merchants who sold them at their own price.'•
With property obtained through huge benefactions and
endowments, the church was becoming increasingly wealthy.
Ecclesiastical power was consolidating and centering upon a
revived papacy. The new authoritarian, militant spirit of the
church needed art to reflect, assert and impress its power on the
people. The magnificent vestments of Opus Anglicanum, the
richness of the materials used in their creation - gold, silver gilt,
silk, velvet and seed pearls - associated the trappings of earthly
power with heavenly power.
Embroidery was, of course, also applied to secular objects and
purposes. The wills and inventories of the wealthy disclose a
formidable use of embroidery. The inventory of Thomas
Woodstock, Earl of Gloucester, made in 1397 lists his
embroidered beds. He owned a large bed of blue baudekyn, [silk
woven with threads of gold for royalty, nobility and the church1
embroidered with silver owls and fleurs de lys; a bed of black
baudekyn powdered with white roses; a great bed of gold with
coverlet, tester and valance in fine blue satin worked with gold
garters and curtains to· match; a large bed of white satin
embroidered with his arms and helm in cyprus gold; an old bed of
blue worsted embroidered with a stag; a red bed of worsted
embroidered with a crowned lion, two griffins and chaplets and
roses; a bed of blue worsted embroidered with white eagles; a
coverlet and tester of red worsted embroidered with a white lion
crouched under a tree.�
In dress too, from the eleventh century onwards, embroidery
became increasingly prominent. Women wore a shirt embroid
ered at the neck, described by Chaucer in The Miller's Tale.
Whyt was her smock and brouded all before

And eek behind, on her caller aboute
Of col-blak silk, with-inne and eek with-oute.
41
Over the shirt a long, wide, upper garment was gathered at the
belt where a richly embroidered bag hung. Some indication of the
magnificence of embroidered clothes among the nobility in the
later middle ages can be gleaned from royal household accountS.
Edward Ill for example, on one occasion ordered a white doublet
with green borders covered in clouds and vines in gold with the
King's motto 'It is as it is' and a green robe embroidered with
pheasant's feathers . 3
Heraldry also increased the demand for embroidery as a means
o f identification on the battlefield. A reconstruction of the Black
Prince's jupon hangs in his tomb at Canterbury. The royal arms
of England stitched in gold �re appliqueed to a quilted back
ground. By the fourteenth century a man not only displayed his
political allegiance through embroidered garments, but his wife
could also have her garments embroidered with her own coat of
arms impaled with her husband's.
Embroidery was thus politically and artistically a leading
English art, sharing with painting and sculpture the task of
affirming the power of the church, the crown and the nobility.
But who were the embroiderers at this time of extraordinary
expansion?
Embroidery was produced in both secular workshops and in
religious houses. Convents were centres of embroidery produc
tion. The majority of cloistered nuns were drawn from the
nobility. Six hours of a nun's day were devoted to labour, and
nunneries employed people to perform the mundane tasks of the
establishment, leaving embroidery as one of the few acceptable
forms of work for the nuns. But the church had reservations
about convent embroidery. In the sixth century an edict had been
issued forbidding nuns to work with precious stones and depict
flowers. In 747 the time nuns spent embroidering was limited,
and in 1314 an injunction was sent to the English convents of
Nunkeeling, Yedingham and Wykeham that no nun should
absent herself from divine service 'on account of being occupied
with silk work'.4 The edicts were prompted both by the church's
view of women and by the conditions within convents.'
Embroidery was deeply associated with self adornment as a mark
of social power; in relation to women this spelled vanity. The
concepts of chastity as a virtue, and vanity as a vice, were both
employed as mechanisms of control over women who were
dubbed by the church as more dangerous to men than 'the poison
42
of asps and dragons.·� There is, though, no doubt that convent

embroidery was not always dedicated tO the church . When the
writer and politician Christine de Pisan visited her daughter at the
Dominican Abbey of Poissey in the fifteenth century, the nuns
presented their visitors with decidedly secular embroiderie;). belts
and purses worked in silk and gold thread. 7 The Ancren Riwle
(rult:!) fur anchoresses) frowned on this practice, ordering women
to 'make no purses to gain friends therewith . . . but shape and
sew and mend church vestments and poor people's clothes.·�
Eileen Power in her study of English nuns surmises that nuns
eked out their income by doing fine needlework for ladies of the
world.
However, a group of religious women, known tO be embroid
erers, cut across the image of the worldly embroidering nun.
Women shared the prevailing religious enthusiasm of the late
middle ages. They were not only involved in the religious poverty
movements - the new mendicant orders founded by St Dominic
and St Francis in the thirteenth century - but also founded their
own movements. Among them were the Beguines, a non
establishment reform movement that originated in Liege at the
end of the twelfth century. Theirs was an organisation with no
hierarchy, with no system of permanent vows and no rigid struc
ture. They sometimes lived in groups in a house inherited by one
of their number, and slowly set up convents.
Members were required to give up all their possessions and,
instead of begging, to live by the labour of their hands. Drawn
initially from the nobility, the work they knew was embroidery.
The movement spread quickly through France and Germany.
Matthew Paris commented in 1243 that 'they have so multiplied
within a short time that two thousand of them have been reported
in Cologne and neighbouring cities.'� However, the embroider
ing Beguines were to be a short-Lived movement: 'I would have
them married or thrust into an approved order', wrote the Bishop
of Olmutz to the Pope in 1273 . 1 " The women were condemned by
the Church Council of 1312 at Vienne with a document which
revealingly began, 'Since these women promise no obedience to
anyone . . . ' Finally the Archbishop of Cologne ordered the
association to be dissolved. 1 1
Although nuns and holy women were known for their
embroidery, the art was not restricted to one sex alone. Monks
too embroidered. For example, Thomas Selmiston, a monk who
43
died in 1419, was remembered as an outstanding embroiderer:

'For h e was in the art of embroidery a most cunning artificier
having none like him. ' 11
Similarly, in secular workshops both sexes embroidered. These
gained importance over ecclesiastical workshops from the
thirteenth century onwards when increased demand for
embroidery necessitated greater capitalisation.
Twentieth-century historians believe that women disappeared
from professional production at the time when workshops
became more highly organised and capitalised . W R Lethaby, in
. .
the proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians in 1907 observes

that 'down to the mid-thirteenth century we hear of women in
connection with the production of such works, after that I only
know of men who are named as embroiderers.' 13 Seventy years
later Mary Gostelow was of much the same opinion, 'Opus
Anglicanum was produced particularly from the middle of the
thirteenth century to the end of the fourteenth century. Famous
throughout Europe, it was executed generally in workshops in
London, by professional embroiderers, mostly men.'14 Grace
· Christie, in her thorough study Medieval Embroidery, 1938,
wrote: 'From the middle of the thirteenth century the demand for
embroideries had become so great that the craft, at first perhaps
mainly in the hands of individual workers scattered in different
places, became an organised commercial activity located in
definite centres . . . Before this time the names of the executants
noted were mostly those of women . . . but afterwards, with few
exceptions, they are those of men living in or near London.'15
It seems highly unlikely that women disappeared from pro
duction just when the craft expanded. They clearly were active as
professionals immediately before the major period of the produc
tion of Opus Anglicanum . At the time of the Norman conquest,
William of Poitiers, chaplain and chronicler to King William, had
praised the gold embroidery the French found in England,
attributing it to 'the women of England [who] are very skilful
with the needle'. 16 In the Domesday Book reference is made to
Leviet who worked for the King and Queen and to Alwid the
Maiden who held two hides of land in Buckinghamshire in return
for teaching Count Goderic's daughter to embroider. The
chasuble which Queen Mathilda bequeathed to the Church of the
Holy Trinity at Caen is described as the work of Alderet's wife in
Winchester. 17
44
Once again it was the Victorian historians who were largely

responsible for providing the impression that Opus Anglicanum
was mostly the work of men. They imposed their ideal sexual
division of labour on to mediaeval embroidery production.
Chapter Two traced the process by which the mediaeval woman
embroiderer was represented as incarcerated nun or solitary
noble lady. The image was maintained by attributing profession41
work to men. Historians fastened eagerly on to the names of men
listed in royal records in connection with embroidery com
missions and claimed they were the professional producers of
Opus Aglicanum. G.H. Hartshorne lists Adam de Basinges,
Adam de Bakering, John de Colonia, Thomas Cheiner, John
Blaton, William Courtnay, Stephen Vyne, Thomas Carleton,
William Sanston, Roben de Asshecombe and William of
Gloucester as embroiderers. •� Later historians unquestioningly
accept the list. Even a recent, carefully researched article by
M. Pitch on the numbers and geographical location n
i London of
the embroiderers of Opus Anglicanum describes embroiderers as

'craftsmen sitting cross-legged at work'. 19 Some men named by
Hartshorne were, n
i deed, embroiderers. Stephen Vyne was
embroiderer to Richard II and Henry IV, William Courtnay was
named as embroiderer of London when he was paid by Edward
Ill for a velvet vest worked with tabernacles and images of gold.
But amongst the men named as embroiderers were merchants,
goldsmiths or clerks to the king who simply received the com
missions. Adam de Basing, for example, is always cited as an
embroiderer although he was, in fact, a merchant who worked for
Henry IIU0 Three agents were involved in the King's
commission: the merchant supplier, the producing anist and the
royal clerk or administrator. Henry Ill's major project was
Westminster Abbey: rebuilding it, furnishing it and constructing
a shrine for Edward The Confessor. Embroidery was com
missioned for the abbey and for the King to offer as donations to
other churches and monasteries, or to dispense as marks of favour
to individuals and visiting foreign dignitaries.
De Basing, like others who acted as merchant suppliers to the
king, was a wealthy Londoner. By 1240 he appears to have had a
workshop of embroiderers who carried out substantial com
missions. On the marriage of the King's daughter, Margaret, to
Alexander Ill of Scotland, de Basing was paid more than £87 for
three chasubles, six copes, three sets of tunics and dalmatics with
45
stoles, amices, cuffs, and collars, an altar border of orphreys,

albs, surplices and other church fittings. In December 1243 he
was paid for an alb, gloves and embroidered sandals to be given to
the bishop of Reiz and for three mitres, one for the archbishop of
Embrun, one for the bishop of Reiz and one for 'an abbot who
came with the Countess of Provence'. In the same year he sup
plied copes and embroidered chasubles, orphreys, tunics and
dalmatics, all to be offered at Westminster by the King.��
William of Gloucester, another man listed by craft historians as
an embroiderer, was, in fact, a goldsmith. He acted as artist,
supplier and royal clerk to the King. In 1257 he was responsible
for the commission of an embroidered altarcloth to adorn the
shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster. Four embroid
erers worked on the project for four years.
Twentieth-century historians have largely accepted the
Victorian assumption that professional embroiderers were
'mostly men' because mostly male names do appear in connection
with embroidery commissions. This was due to woman's place in
the structure of mediaeval craft production. Within the towns t;. �
growing number of embroiderers, like other craftworkers, formed

a guild as a form of self-government in the face of an ncreasingly
i
competitive economy.�� Unfortunately early records relating to
the Embroiderers' Guild were burnt in the Great Fire of London.
But the situation of women within the guild was no doubt much
the same as in other craft guilds: women entered them from a
position of legal and financial subordination. The household was
the unit of production and the husband was its legal representa
tive. His name would therefore figure in transactions.
Mediaeval crafts were certainly open to women, who were, for
example, chandlers, painters, ironmongers, netmakers, shoe
makers, smiths or goldsmiths.�-' No frontier existed between
professional and private life, between the domestic and public
sphere. The household was the centre of both domestic and
mercantile activity; the workshop was in the dwelling place and
members of the household worked together at their trade.
Workers could include father, mother, unmarried sister or
brother, possibly grandparents, children, servants and appren
tices. !4 Women embroiderers were however paid less than men.
By the fifteenth century, male embroiderers received 7% to 10%
pennies a day while women were paid 41f4 to 6% pennies a day.
There were eight divisions in scale of payments, with each
46
embroiderer paid according to qualifications. �5 Then, as now,

women assumed responsibility for babies and young children.
But the span of childhood was short. Children were expected to
play their part in household labour from an early age, and both
men and women supervised the older children. Both boys and
girls would be apprenticed. A court case of 1369 records that
embroidery apprentice Alice Catour's father brought a b�a
against her master for ill-treating her.1� That women also took in
apprentices is evident from another court case of 1385. A woman
was accused of 'taking in a certain serving woman and others as
apprentices in the craft of embroidery, whereas her real intent was
to set up a house of infamy'. 17
Not only did women work in guild workshops as masters'
wives or daughters, they also laboured independently, judging
from the number of laws directed at 'femmes soles'. Moreover,
after a husband's death, women were able to carry on the family
business and guilds made special provisions for widows . The
Tailors of Exeter permitted a widow to have as many workers as
she wanted provided that she paid them, and had taken part in the
work for at least seven years before she became her husband's
successor. Women were even named by their occupation. During
the fourteenth century a prayer was offered at Old St Paul's for
Alice Aurifraigeria, or Alice Gold Embroiderer. 1 " Her name
proves that, contrary to Hartshorne's theory, women did
embroider gold and metal threads.
Clearly, then, it is misleading to assert that women dropped
out of professional production at the time of Opus Anglicanurn.
Moreover, although they rarely held sufficient economic or civic
power to act as suppliers to the King, royal records do name
women in relation to embroidery commissions. In May 1317 the
Exchequer Issue Roll records that Rose, wife of John of Burford
and merchant of London, received payment for a cope orna
mented with coral, purchased from her by Queen Isabella to
present to the Pope. This is believed to have been the Pienza
Cope. �··
The presence of women's names in royal household accounts is
explained by both nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians
of embroidery entirely in the light of prevailing ideologies of
femininity. The concept of a woman merchant trading
independently is so far from twentiety-century assumptions
about mediaeval women that it is thought that Rose de Burford
47
was an embroiderer. For example A.F. Kendrick in English

Needlework, 1967, and Mary Eirwen Jones in A History of
Western Embroidery, 1969, and Harriet Bridgeman and
Elizabeth Drury in Needlework, 1978, name her as one of the few
women amongst the 'mostly male' professionals. She was in fact a
wool merchant from a powerful London family. After her
husband's death she carried on his business as a wool merchant,
but even before that she was trading on her own account."'
Another widow named in relation to an embroidery com
mission in Henry HI's Liberate Roll was 'Joan late the wife of
John de Wuburn' who was paid for a cope of 'samite embroidered
with the ]esse Tree which the King offered in St Peter's church at
Westminster at St Hillary's'.
There was, however, one embroiderer of the thirteenth century
whom few historians have overlooked. The name of Mabel of
Bury St Edmunds appears twenty-four times between 1239 and
1245 in the Liberate Rolls of Henry III. For a mediaeval artist
Mabel is well documented. She was an independent ww:ker rather
than an employee of the King's merchant suppliers. In 1239 the
King ordered that she be paid £10 for embroidering a chasuble
and an offertory veil. The order was an important one, so the
King must already have known and respected her work. Two
years later pearls were purchased for Mabel to use on the
chasuble, and she was given 40 shillings to buy gold. 1 1 The King
then commanded that the value of the chasuble be appraised by
'the sight of discreet men and women with a knowledge of
embroidery' to establish Mabel's fee. The appraisal does not
appear to have been carried out. Another order was soon issued.
This time the appraisal was requested from the 'better workers of
the city of London . . . such as will speak and know how to speak
of such work', and the King emphasised that he needed
embroiderers to advise him on the value of the finished work, the
cost of materials and Mabel's fee because 'he did not want to
offend in this matter nor incur to some extent condemnation of
himself' . '1 That Henry invited embroiderers to establish the
worth of work hecommissioned indicates theesteem in which the
art and its workers were held.
After Mabel had completed the chasuble she was paid for an
offertory cloth, apparels, a stole, a fanon, an amice, collar and
cuffs. Her last commission for the King was an embroidered
banner or standard to be hung near the altar in Westminster
48
Abbey . Henry supplied the subject - The Virgin and St John- but
left the composition and design up to Mabel as she 'would best
know how to see to them'. That Henry allowed Mabel control
over the design of the banner casts doubt on the widely accepted
view that mediaeval embroiderers were the humble executants of
ideas supplied by painters, monarchs and churchmen. In 1244
Mabel was given money to finish the banner 'that it may not
remain unmade for want of money ', and a year later a payment
was made for silk used in the banner 'which Mabel de Sancto
Edmundo made for the King'. n
Mabel then disappears from royal records until 1256, when the
King made a pilgrimage to Bury St Edmunds. There he issued the
following order: 'Because Mabel of St Edmunds served the King
and Queen for a long time in the making of ecclesiastical orna
ments . . . that the same Mabel be given six measures of cloth
agreeable to her and the fur of a rabbit for a robe. '34 The gift of a
fur robe was a traditional mark of considerable respect.
Mabel of Bury St Edmunds was the last woman tO achieve such
prominence as an embroiderer in royal service during the m_iddle
ages. Susan Mosher Stuard, introducing Women in MedT:aeval
Society, 1 9 76, a collection of feminist essays on the position of
women at the time, writes, 'The tendency as the middle ages
progressed was toward a lessening of the public activity of
women, a lower place in ecclesiastical opinion, fewer roles in
guild organisations.'-'5 R.W. Southern's Western Society and the
Church in the Middle Ages, 1970, declares that this constituted
progress: 'These ladies of the dark ages have some remarkable
religious and literary achievements tO their credit, but their
period of splendid independence did not last long. As society
became better organised and ecclesiastically more right-minded,
the necessity for male dominance began to assert itself.'"'
In the mode of production as well as in the form and content of
Opus Anglicanum, we can detect a growing contradiction
between the increasingly misogynist stance of the mediaeval
church and women's importance in mediaeval society. The
Decretum, the systematisation of church law laid down in the
twelfth century, declared that 'Woman's authority is nil; let her in
all things be subject to the rule of men . . . And neither can she
teach, nor be witness, nor give guarantee, nor sit in judgement. •.n
Yet women as well as men were employed in workshops making
art for the church and, as we have seen, Henry III left the design
49
of an ecclesiastical banner up to Mabel of Bury St Edmunds.

Not only was there a disjuncture between women's place in
mediaeval an production and the church's repudiation of women
codified in the Decretum, but also in the actual content of Opus
Anglicanum. Although the form and content were controlled by
the church, and intended to glorify and ratify ecclesiastical
power, the preoccupations of the women and men workers were
nevertheless powerfully present. Close examination of the copes
reveals a conflict between the interests of the ecclesiastic patrons
and the craft workers. However, this divergence was controlled
by the very form and content of the embroidery.
To understand this, it is first necessary to look at the form and
technique of the embroidery on the copes. The way the narrative
content is distributed over the surface displays the hierarchical
and church-dominated character of the society in which they
were stitched. Scenes are arranged in descending order of
importance. The key image - frequently the Coronation of the
Virgin rather than the Crucifixion - was placed high on the cope,
lying on the upper pan of the priest's back when he officiated in
church. Below this key image would be scenes from the Bible and
apocryphal Gospels3ij and saints from The Golden Legend, 39 with
the figures arranged in such a way that they would appear upright
when the copes were worn. In the last decades of the thirteenth
century, narrative scenes and images of saints were usually dis
played in shaped panels -circles or quatrefoils - as for example in
the Copes of Ascoli P i ceno , the Vatican , Madrid, Syon and
Steeple Aston. This design framework was identical to that used
in contemporary painting and stained glass.
The later copes of Pienza, Bologna and Toledo employ designs
o f concentric arcades. The East Anglian school of manuscript
illumination which flourished when the copes were stitched
worked with the same motif. The most elaborate arrangement of
arcades is found on the Pienza cope with its three rows of decor
ative arches supported on twisted columns.
Another popular pattern was the Jesse Tree. A vine springs
from the Old Testament figure of] esse at the hem of the cope, and
snakes upwards, forming circles containing Christ's ancestors,
and terminating at the centre of the cope with a triumphant Virgin
and Child. The importance of the Jesse Tree design was that it
identified the nobility and royalty with Christ, by providing him
with a royal ancestry: 'The Patriarch Jesse belonged to the royal
50
family, that is why the root of ] esse signifies the heritage of

Kings', wrote the monk Herreus in the twelfth century. 4"
The technique of Opus Anglicanum similarly reflected
ecclesiastical power, because embroiderers had developed a way
of working gold threads that allowed maximum movement and
play of light over the surface of the cope, enhancing the splendour
of the church spectacle. Underside couching, as it is known,
involved laying metal thread on the surface and fastening it with a
linen thread at the back of the material at regular intervals. The
spots where the metal threads were pulled down formed a pattern
on the surface. A hinged effect was created, offsetting the stiffness
of the metal threads and permitting the garment to flow and gliner
when worn in procession.
Solid gold grounds were inspired by Near-Eastern fabrics. The
crusaders plundered rich textiles and brought them to Europe,
where embroiderers adopted not only the use of gold but also
certain motifs. Paired symmetrical animals and the Tree of Life
entered the embroiderer's repertoire. The Tree of Life is a stylised
tree descended from the sacred trees of goddess-worshipping
cultures, represented in murals of Crete and Egypt, and referred
to in the Old Testament as asherah or asherim that stood along
side the altar at shrines of the Goddess ... , Both the Tree and paired
creatures remained a feature of embroidery, becoming popular
sampler motifs in the eighteenth century.
The designs, with their shaped panels distributing the ho!y
scenes in order of importance, the technique with its underside
couching and appliqueed jewels, all emphatically celebrated the
hierarchy and announced the power of the male-dominated
church over the people. It is at the level of the content of
embroidery that a tension appears.
Early mediaeval art had been the exclusive possession of a
clerical elite, and was intended to convey the solemnity and
transcendental character of the Christian religion. The art of the
Gothic period, which encompasses Opus Anglicanum, displayed
a concern with nature and the everyday life of the craftworkers. 4�
For example, a dog barks at the angel who appears to the shep
herds during the Nativity, and the Cope of the Passion at St
Bertrand de Comminges includes thirty-two different varieties of
birds and sixty animals.
Although the development of relatively independent house
hold craft workshops in towns, and the prevailing religious
51
ideology, created conditions of production which allowed for the

introduction of details of earthly life to sacred scenes, the church
nonetheless attempted to ensure that the representation of
women in no way contradicted church dogma.
As we have seen, the majority of the copes were dominated by
the Coronation of the Virgin - an image which at once acknow
ledged and contained the power of women. Mary as Queen can be
read in a number of ways. As Queen she ratifies feudal hierarchy,
as Virgin she denies the sexuality of earthly women, she is en
throned as Queen of Heaven yet she bows her head to her son
who confers power upon her.�' Marina Warner in Alone of All
Her Sex, 1978, points out that 'by projecting the hierarchy of the
world on to heaven, that hierarchy - be it ecclesiastical or lay -
appears to be ratified by divinely reflected approval . . . the cult
of Mary as Queen served for centuries to uphold the status quo to
the advantage of the highest echelons of power.'4� She describes
how at times of upheaval and change, like that of the period of the
great copes of Opus Anglicanum, the Virgin as Queen is utilised
to consolidate worldly hierarchy.
She also relates the image of Mary seated beside Christ to an
ancient tradition of nuptial imagery, rooted in goddess

worshipping cultures of the Middle East, for example, the annual
marriage of the Canaanite god Baal to his sister Anat, the Syrian
goddess Ishtar to her lover Tamuz, and Cybele and Attis, Isis and
Osiris in Egypt. The nuptials of these divinities mirrored the
greater nuptials of the sky and the earth, from which comes forth
plenty: the rites of regeneration each year imitated the original
union of sky and earth at the beginning of the world. So while the
Virgin Mary symbolised asceticism and virginity, because she
blossomed spontaneously she also functioned as a powerful
fertility symbol: 'The quickening and obstetric functions of the
classical goddesses like Hera and Demeter have been taken over
by the Virgin. ' l�
It is precisely in the way that images of fertility, pregnancy and
childbirth repeat across the ecclesiastical garments that the
contradiction between the place of women in mediaeval society
and the misogynist stance of the church becomes visible. An
emphasis on reproduction was a feature of the apocryphal
Gospels, and representations from these Gospels, particularly
from the Life of Mary, 4" play a large part in the imagery of Opus
Anglicanum. A preoccupation with childbirth was shared by
52
22,23 The Syo11 Cope, VictOria and Alberc Museum, London. 1300-U20.
292.2 X l34.6 cm.
During che reign of El izabeth I, nuns from Bridgetine Convene ofSyon fled to
Lisbon, taking the cope with them. About l8LO, nuns from the order recurned to
England and brought back che cope. The arrangement oflinked quatrefoils was
developed slightly later t han che Jesse Tree pattern. Detail below.
24 The Butler-Bowdm Cope, Victoria and Albert Museum ;London. The cope was
included in the exhibition of mediaeval Opus Anglicanum i n London , 1908.
Images of the Coronation of the Virgin, the Homage of the Magi and the
Annunciation are surrounded by saints.
25 The Pienza Cope, Museo Civico, Pienza. Second quarter of the fourteenth
century. Gold, silver, silk and pearls on linen, 350.6 X L63.9 cm.
Photo: Lombardi-Siena.
26 The Copt ofSt Bertrand dt CommmgtJ,
France. c 1300. 144.8 X 22.9 cm; diameter of
roundels 25.4 cm Photo: Archives de la Haute
Garrone.
The pattern worked in gold upon the ground
resembles the gilt gesso ground ofThe
Coronation Ch<1ir at Westminster Abbe)' by
Walter of Durham -a reminder of how nearly
related were different media during the middle
ages, before the establishment of a hierarchy of
art forms.
27 The Burler-Bowdm Cope, Victoria and Alberr

Museum, London.
The derail is the Coronation of the Virgin, which
dominated so many ofthe Opus Anglicanum
copes. Mary seared beside Christ has been related
to an ancient tradition of nuptial imagery, rooted
in goddess-worshipping cultures of the Middle
East. The image both acknowledg�s and contains
the power ofwomen in mediaeval society. As
Virgin, Mary denies the sexuality ofearthly
women. And although she is enthroned as a
goddess, she bows her head in worship of her son,
who confers power upon her.
U I IV V U U I IV'-1� '"'
..___
_...
28 EmhmJ(krcrJ, lr al i an 13rinsh L1br..ry, London. Foum:cmh centurr .
,
Borh women and men worked as professiomd tmbroidcn:rs rhrou,Rhour rhc middle
ages.
29 Tbr f.llflre/1 J>urlrer, depicring S1r Geofin:y and Lady Lurrrell, B mish Museum,
London. c I � ill.
Lad) l.unrcll·s clorhing is cmbro1dcrcd wirh her coar of arms impaled w irh chat of
her husband. <Sr:t B. Snook Ent.fnh Embm1dery, Mills and Boon, London 1974) .
. '10Tbr \'('dr'''' Dipl)<·h, detail, Nanonal Gallery, London. c 1400

The d�:tdii dbmc :.hu"':. R1chard 11 prcsemed ro rhe Virgm and Child by his parron
saints. The king's per so nal badge of rhc whicc hare is embroidered on his clothing,
provi ding some indicarion ofrhe exrem and magnificence of embroidered clorhing
among royalry and nob1l1ry of rhe penod.
33 The Steeple Aston Cope, Chu rch of Steeple Ascon, Oxfordshire. Photo: Oxford
Un iversity PrC!SS.
A detail from th(! cope shows Se Margar�t erupting from the devil disguised as a
dragon. Se Margaret was patron saint of childbirth, and her frequent presence in
embroidery and wall painting was part of the general concern with fertility and
reproducnon evtdent in Opus Anglicanum.
3 1 (rop left) The Cope o[St Maximin, church ofSt Maximtn, Provence. Late thtrteenth
century. Diameter of roundel 35.9 cm. Photo: Oxford Umversity Press. Said to
have been bequeathed ro the Preachi ng Friars ofSt Maximin by St Louis, son of
Charles II, rhe embroidery could be et the r French or English The detail shows
.
Mary working cloth in the remplc wtth other virgms- a scene from the apocryphal
Liftof/llary
32 (bottom left) The Pienza Copt, detail . Photo: Lombardt-Stc:na.

The derail shows one of the apocryphal midwives assisting at the Nauvity .
Although the church had condemned the images of the midwives, they continued
to appear in embroidery throughout the period ofOpus Anglican urn. The
inclusion of details consistent with the everyday life of the people was a feature of
Opus Anglicanum and other arcs of the Gothic period.
.�1, )5 Apptml.r ofA/b.r, Victoria and Alberr Museum, London. 1.�2G-U40.
Velvet embroidered with coloured silks, silver-gilt and silver thread,165.2 X
26.8 cm.
Thi! LifrofAiary allowed for repeated r<:presenrations ofconception and childbirth.
The celebrations of fi:rriliry wert- nevertheless distanced from women's sexuality
and procreative pow<:r by rhe insistence on immaculate conception and virgin
birch. Here we see the Annunciation eo Anna, Mary's mother; the Meeting of
Joachim and Anna; the Birth of the Virgin; the Annunciation eo Mary; and the
Visitation, when Mary went ro see her cousin Elizabeth , pregnant with John che
Baptise.
both the embroiderers and their ecclesiastical patrons. But their

interests diverged significantly. The circumstances of mediaeval
life - a labour-intensive economy with the household as major
productive unit - gave a central importance to fertility and child
birth. Because of the high rate of infant and maternal mortality,
childbirth was regarded with considerable fear and apprehension
by all' craftworkers. To the church, however, childbirth was a
sign of women's sinfulness and the manifestation of the curse of
Eve: 'As long as woman is for birth and children, she is different
from men as body is from soul. But when she wishes to serve
Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman and
be called a man. ·�7
Despite the church's condemnation, childbirth was celebrated
in ecclesiastical embroidery through apocryphal imagery. The
stories are an amalgam of Old Testament material and aspects of
goddess-worshipping cultures in the areas where the legends
originated. The Cope of the Church of St Maximin in Provence,
for example, depicts Mary weaving in the temple with a group of
young women. After Mary's engagement to Joseph, she con
tinued to spin for the temple and the High Priest allowed her
companions in her work. The story manifests elements of
Judaism and the religious cults of Syria where the Book of James
was written: Mary as weaver relates to Moses who wove purple
and scarlet for the Tabernacle. However, because women were
not allowed beyond the outer court of the temple at Jerusalem,
Marina Warner suggests that the weaving virgins are drawn from
the virgin priestesses of Syrian culture.�" The story appears only
once in the embroidery of Opus Anglicanum which survives
today. More common are the images of birth and conception
from the apocryphal Life of Mary. Anna, the Virgin's mother,
conceives miraculously after she and her husband are resigned to
childlessness. In embroidery - and in painting - the two are
shown embracing, signifying the miraculous conception. Anna is
then shown in bed attended by a midwife after delivering the
child.
The Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel to Mary heralds Jesus'
immaculate conception. The Visitation - Mary's visit to her
Cousin Elizabeth - is invariably stitched adjacent to the Annun
ciation, although it wa� soon to sink to relative insignificance in
Christian iconography. In St Luke's Gospel the Angel Gabriel
told Mary that her cousin 'hath also conceived a son in her old
53
age'. Therefore Mary visited her cousin whose baby, John the
Baptist, leapt in her womb at the sound of Mary's greeting.
Elizabeth then spoke the words, 'Blessed art thou amongst
women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this
to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me.' The
apocryphal gospels add a human dimension to the story: Mary
and Elizabeth embrace so that the words coming from Christ's
mouth in Mary's womb might enter Elizabeth's ear and descend
to John, annointing him prophet. In Opus Anglicanum the two
women are shown in each other's arms- the greeting of two
women relatives, one of whom had come to help the other in
childbirth. And indeed some versions of the story show Mary
officiating as a midwife at the birth of John the Baptist. In
mediaeval mystery plays too Mary appeared as a midwife. During
the middle ages female relatives and friends automatically
attended a birth to provide support at what was possibly a
dangerous ordeal.
The final birth scene in the narrative sequence on the copes is
the Nativity of Christ. Unlike later representations of the
Nativity the emphasis is placed on the mother, not the child.
Mary is depicted resting in bed with Joseph seated nearby and a
midwife in attendance. The homage of the three kings to the child
occupies a separate frame.
The presence of two midwives is described in the apocryphal
Gospel According to the Pseudo Matthew: J oseph leaves Mary in a
cave while he goes to find a midwife. He returns with two,
Zelemie and Salomie, only to discover that Mary has already
given birth. When Zelemie examines Mary and finds she is still a
virgin, she exclaims 'No defilement was at birth and travail bring
ing forth, virgin she conceived, virgin she gave birth and virgin
she remained.' The other midwife asks in disbelief if she too can
examine Mary. As soon as she touches the Virgin her hand
painfully withers and she cries out, 'Lord, thou knowest that I
have ever held thee in awe . . . and behold by reason of my
incredulity I am become wretched because I dared to doubt thy
Virgin.' A beautiful young man then appears and informs the
midwife that the child can heal her. As she touches the child's
swaddling clothes her hand is made whole.
The Fathers of the Church had repudiated the apocryphal
midwives. St Jerome singled them out for attack, insisting that
Mary gave birth alone, delivering the child herself, independent
54
of other women.�" However, Zelemie and Salomie survived the

attack and at the period of Opus Anglicanum constituted part of
the imagery of the Nativity , for they were still useful to the
church. Salomie's withered hand is healed not by Mary the Virgin
but by the Lord. Mary's virginity, which was considered a source
of considerable power in the societies where the apocryphal
Gospels originated, is shown to be secondary to the might of tl,'"
male protagonists.
And, of course, the midwives testified to Mary's virginity. The
continual emphasis on Mary's virginity successfully undermined
the iconography of fertility seen in the Coronation of the Virgin,
with its echoes of goddess worship, and in the repeated scenes of
childbirth and conception.
The Church did, however, become increasingly antagonistic
tOwards the midwives because their presence allied the Virgin too
closely with earthly women. A woman was eligible for worship
only once she was set apart from her sex; and reproduction could
be celebrated only once it was divorced from female sexuality.
Moreover the presence of the midwives at the Nativity evoked the
particular circumstances of childbirth during the middles ages
which the male-dominated church regarded with deep suspicion.
Women conceived repeatedly and birth was accompanied by
elaborate ritual, sometimes involving sympathetic magic. No
man was allowed in the birth chamber. Midwives attending the
birth rubbed oils on the woman's belly and tossed her in a blanket
to speed delivery. Herbal aids like ergot to dilate the cervix were
employed by midwives . All pins would be removed from the
room, all doors, cupboards and drawers in the house opened and
all knots untied. so
The midwives thus represented an autonomous female event.
Adrienne Rich has argued that taboos surrounding childbirth
spring partly from male fear of reproductive power, but equally
from the fact that all-female groupings are threatening in
themselves: 'The deliberate withdrawal of women from men has
almost always been seen as a potentially dangerous or hostile act,
a conspiracy, a subversion, a needless and grotesque thing . . .'51
The intimate link between the content of embroidery and
changes in society is illustrated by the way that, as part of a
sustained attack on midwives, the church evicted the apocryphal
midwives from ecclesiastical art. Banished from embroidery by
the fifteenth century, midwives did not of course disappear from
55
society, but they ceased to receive vital ideological ratification

from sacred art. Ecclesiastical authorities did all they could to
discredit midwives and control their practice. The rationale was
that they alleviated women's suffering which had been ordained
by God, and that they practised magic. Sprenger and Institoris in
the Malleus Maleficarum, c . 1486, claimed that no one did more
harm to the Catholic faith than midwives who 'surpass all other
witches in their crimes'. The infamous treatise on witches urged
that midwives should take an oath to eliminate witchcraft. In
England, under an Act of 1512, a system of licences for midwives
was instituted with the threat of severe punishment for any
woman who practised without a licence. Midwives had to take a
lengthy oath at the Bishop's Court. The actions besides witch
craft that they were forced to forswear indicate the fears that lay
behind their persecution. They swore not to make false attri
butions of paternity, not to substitute children or destroy
foetuses.
The male-dominated church faced a formidable task in its
determination to control reproduction, its management in society
and its representation in art. In Opus Anglicanum, the over
whelming importance of fertility and reproduction is apparent
not only in m
i ages of the Virgin but also in the fact that St
Margaret, patron saint of childbirth, was such a popular figure .
Patron saints were an important aspect of mediaeval culture
and each craft guild had its own. Emile Male in The Gothic
Image, 1913, observes that the cult of the patron saint had its
roots deep in the life of the people, who felt closer to their patron
saints than to an omnipotent, distant God. 5� St Catherine and St
Margaret were the most frequently embroidered female saints.
Just as the church had attempted to suppress the apocryphal
midwives, so there had been moves against St Margaret. The Pope
had repudiated her in 494, but she appears in The Golden Legend,
c. 1260, and was represented not only in embroidery but in
illuminated manuscripts, sculpture and murals, for example, at
Hayles Church in Gloucester, Wiston Church in Suffolk and
Cliffe-at-Hoe in Kent. Echoing pre-Christian ceremonies when
fine textiles and embroideries would be offered at the shrines of
the goddesses, clothes would be dedicated to St Margaret. Sir
William Stokes of Loughborough left to the image of St Margaret
his wife's second best kerchief.
In the image of St Margaret we can see represented the
56
importance of fertility and reproduction to mediaeval society,

and the church's determination to control reproduction, using
t:he tactic of divide and rule in relation to women .
St Margaret was the patron saint of childbirth because, as
described in Chapter Two, after God, 'delivered' her from the
body of the dragon, she prayed that she might be permitted to
become i11tercessor for women in labour. Her story is one of great
physical courage. She not only survived repeated torture and
escaped from the dragon but she also wrestled with the devil in the
form of a man: 'She caught him by the head and threw him to the
ground, and set her right foot on his neck saying: "Lie still, thou
fiend, under the foot of a woman". '53
The particular power of St Margaret - her extraordinary
physical endurance - is explicable in terms of the original context
of the legends of the holy women of Christianity. They emerged
i n the third century when Christians, not yet politically power
ful, were persecuted by the Roman Government. The majority of
the women came into conflict with society over the issue of
chastity. St Margaret fought for her Christian faith, not for her
chastity, but relinquishing Christianity would ultimately have
meant the loss of her chastity to the governor. In an analysis of the
legends,Structural Patterns in The Legends ofthe Holy Women of
Christianity, 1978, Birte Carle suggests that 'one possible expla
nation of the sexual conflicts in the legends is that chastity, by the
women, was considered to be a female potential. The abstention
from a sexual life was not a dissociation from the female sex as
such, but a way of keeping it mighty. ''4 She links the holy women
to the particular pbce of virginity in the goddess cults that pre
ceded Christianity, specifically the cult of Vesta: 'The virgin
priestesses of Vesta represented the people in their relationship to
the power of the universe. The service by chastity was the contri
bution of the female part of the population to guarantee the public
wellbeing.''�
In the Opus Anglicanum image of St Margaret, we can see
overtones both of a culture which considered female chastity to
be a source of power, and a mediaeval representation of the power
of women's fertility . The mediaeval church, however, undercut
rhe militant St Margaret. The legends of the saints whose stories
turned on the might of virginity in conflict with the evil power of
the world were rewritten at the time of the production of Opus
Anglicanum. The GoLden Legend characterises St Margaret as
57
'white by virginity, little by humility and vinuous by operation

of miracles'. The Hali Meidenhad Treatise, a guide for female
holiness penned by men, quotes the saints Margaret, Juliana,
Cecilia and Catherine as maidens of irreproachable meekness. 56
Meekness was considered even more important than virginity: 'A
maid as regards the grace of maidenhood surpasses the widowed
and wedded, but a mild wife or meek widow is better than a
proud maiden.'57
The gap between the militant Margaret depicted by embroid
erers and the church's official description of the saint as the
representative of the virtues of meekness and mildness is,
perhaps, explicable in terms of audience. Written descriptions
were aimed at the nun or anchorite - women who committed
themselves to living out their lives enclosed in cells attached to
castles, churches, monasteries and convents. Both nuns and
anchorites were predominantly from the nobility. The character
istics ascribed to the virgin martyrs - slenderness, grace and
fairness - corresponded to the developing contemporary ideal of
aristocratic femininity. The embroidered image of St Margaret,
patron saint of childbinh, addressed the needs of other women,
amongst them the embroiderers themselves, for she provided a
powerful intercessor for women in labour.
Women were thus divided into those who inhabited women's
realm of fenility, and those allowed a place in the masculine
spiritual hierarchy on condition that, like Mary Queen of
Heaven, they were chaste, solitary, maidenly and meek.
To a certain extent the representations of St Margaret, humble
in writing and militant in thread, were a compromise between the
church's attitude to women and the domestic and economic facts
of mediaeval life. St Thomas Aquinas voiced the thirteenth
century church's necessary compromise towards the 'devil's
gateway' :
As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and mis

begotten, for the active forces in the male seed tend to the
production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the
production of women comes from a defect in the active force or
some material indisposition or even some external influence . . .
On the other hand, as regards human nature in general woman
is not misbegotten, but is included in nature's intention as
directed to the work of generation.5'
58
To the church, women and childbirth were a necessary evil , to the

embroiderers of Opus Anglicanum, men and women who
worked at the same craft within the household, childbirth was a
time of anticipation and celebration. Thus the church counten
anced St Margaret as dragon slayer, but curtailed and controlled
her influence by emphasising her virginity and providing a
written wmmentary in praise of her compliance and obedience .
In her we see a contest between fertility as women's strength, and
chastity as male control of that realm. Similarly the repeated
apocryphal scenes of birth - midwives and all - were prevented
from endowing earthly women with power and importance
because Mary remained above all, the Virgin.
The same dynamic that informed the content of mediaeval art
can be seen in lived rituals around childbirth. The ceremony
known as Churching allowed a measure of independent ritual to
develop around childbirth but imposed a stricture which returned
ultimate control to the church. A month after giving birth a
woman, accompanied by a female relative, entered a church
holding a candle. The priest then recited the following lines,
'Enter the temple of God, adore the Son of the Holy Virgin Mary
who has given you the blessing of motherhood.' Before
Churching a woman was forbidden to make bread, serve food or
have any contact with Holy Water. She was considered polluted
and dangerous. The Christian rationale for dubbing the post
partum woman a danger to society was that God had cursed
women to bring forth their children in pain.
The practices which isolated women after childbirth, although
they are often accompanied by apparent control of childbirth by
women, are closely linked to male domination. Conception and
birth, as I have stated, are central to the content of Opus
Anglicanum. Yet they are presented in such a way as to circum
scribe the power and significance of women. The ritual from
which men were excluded was made public on the garments worn
by the priests, taken out of the hands of women and placed on the
backs of priests.
59
4 : The Domestication of
Embroidery
' I n the practice of embroidery the needlewoman has an advantage

not now shared by workers in any other craft, in that technical
processes are almost a matter of inherited skill,' wrote W .R.
Lethaby in Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, 1906. ' The notion
that women are selected by nature for needlework - genetically
programmed to embroider - conceals the fact that up to the
eighteenth century the majority of embroiderers to the Kings
were men. However, the social and economic forces that were to
categorise embroidery as a feminine, domestic art (and finally as
almost a secondary female sexual characteristic) were set in
motion in the sixteenth century, a transitional time for the art.
During the Renaissance a new and powerful link was forged
between women and embroidery, ideologically within discourses
on sexual difference, and materially by changes in the economic
and social structure of European society. Feminist historians have
argued convincingly that women did not enjoy a Renaissance,
that the period had remarkably little effect on loosening the
restrictions circumscribing women's lives . : Indeed , within craft
production the tighter regulations and increasingly hierarchical
60
The Domestication of Embroidery
organisations worked to exclude women from positions of res

ponsibility and prestige; while among the upper classes an extra
ordinary preoccupation with the differences between men and
women actually limited women's sphere of action when their
family's financial position meant they no longer worked in the
family craft or trade.
The essential differences between the sexes had become a
central subject of theology and medicine, and of the ethical,
political and artistic writings of the day.-' For example, Baldassare
Castiglione in his highly influential Book of the Courtier, 1528, a
fictionalised discussion on the characteristics of the perfect
courtier at the Palace of Urbino, devotes space to a debate on the
role of women in social and political life. One protagonist offers
the mediaeval understanding of sex difference : '. . . very learned
men have written that since Nature always plans and aims at
absolute perfection she would if possible, constantly bring forth
men; and when a woman is born this is a mistake or defect,
contrary to Nature's wishes.,_. His opponent offers the
Renaissance humanist view that, 'male and female always go
naturally together, and one cannot exist without the other, so by
very definition, we cannot call anything male unless it has its
female counterpart, or anything female if it has no male
counterpart. '5
The humanist view is an advance on the mediaeval view that
women were the outcome of a 'mistake', but an ideology of sexual
difference - in which notions of masculine and feminine have
meaning only in relation to each other - leads to an endless
assertion of women's feminity to provide an opposite against
which men sustain their dominance. An anxious insistence on
absolute sex difference is evident in Castiglione's text:
I hold that a woman should in no way resemble a man as

regards her ways, manners , words, gestures and bearing. Thus
just as it is very fitting that a man should display a certain
robust and sturdy manliness, so it's well for a woman to have a
certain soft and delicate tenderness with an air of feminine
sweetness in her every movement, which, in her going and
staying and whatsoever she does, always makes her appear a
woman without any resemblance to a man.h
Lying behind this dogmatic assertion of how men and women
61
should differ from one another was contemporary medical

opinion, which had undermined the mediaeval certainty that
women were innately defective. Instead, it was argued that
women were as perfect in their sex as men in theirs . Numerous
texts on gynaecology and gynaecological diseases countered
earlier notions that women were dangerous and unclean during
menstruation, but provided new justification for women's sub
ordination. Women were inferior to men because of the
psychological effects of their cold and moist humour, 7 which
made them unable to control their emotions. This, together with
their less robust physique, predisposed them, it was argued, to a
more protected, less prominent role in the household and
society. �
The medical justification for women's restriction to the home,
and exclusion from public office, was accompanied by a body of
prescriptive writings on marriage, which closely defined the par
ticular roles of husband and wife. Embroidery was extolled as the
quintessential occupation for women. Thus Frederigo Luigini, in
Il Libro dell be/la Donna, 1554, asks 'What about the needle, the
distaff and wheel, do they belong only to low, mechanic and
plebeian females?' After citing examples of high-ranking ladies
who sewed, he concludes that the needle belonged to 'all women
both high and low, but where the poor find only utility in these
arts, the rich, the noble and beautiful lady wins honour also'.9
Luigini's words would have had their greatest impact not on high
or low-ranking women but on the increasing number of women
below the level of the court, yet above that of the artisan, who no
longer laboured in the family business.
Leon Battista Alberti in his work On The Family, 1437,
depicted the ideal merchant's wife :
She said her mother had taught her only how to spin and sew,
and how to be virtuous and obedient. Now she would gladly
learn from me how to rule the family and whatever I might
teach her. I did not imagine for a moment that I could hope to
win obedience from one to whom I had confessed myself a
slave. Always therefore I showed myself virile and a real man. 10
The fears aroused by the Renaissance recognition that the

attributes of masculinity and femininity existed only in oppo
sition to one another appear most markedly in Alberti's insistence
62
that he is 'a real man'. Interestingly, the 'real woman' was a

curiously cross-class image. The model merchant's wife was to be
entirely subservient to her husband and to practise domestic
crafts. Ruth Kelso has pointed out in Doctrine for The Lady of
The Renaissance, 1956, that the model generally proposed for the
lady was not a woman of leisure at all. It was the woman in the
home who was held up as the ideal - cooking, cleaning, sewing,
waiting on her husband and looking after the children. While the
Renaissance gentleman was distinguished by his activities from
the men of the lower social classes, the lady was not. 1 1
Although her sex was considered a stronger characteristic than
her class in determining a woman's behaviour, femininity- that
'certain soft and delicate tenderness with sweetness in every
movement' - was derived from the nobility's ideal of woman
hood. The merchant class wanted wives who combined the
appearance of nobility with the activities of the labouring class.
Needlework, particularly embroidery, as Luigini realised,
evoked the femininity of the nobility and yet suggested the service
and subservience required of the merchant's wife. By her femi
ninity a wife provided evidence of the status of her husband and
family in society. Sewing may have suggested a pleasing modesty,
but embroidery conferred noble distinction. It was, traditionally,
a badge of status.
The lady was encouraged to abandon previously sanctioned
activities associated with masculinity : ' . . . it is not becoming for
women to handle weapons, ride, play the game of tennis, wrestle
or take part in other sports that are suitable for men.' Instead she
was to practise those suited to women 'very circumspectly and
with the gentle delicacy we have said s
i appropriate to her'. ' !
Music and embroidery were singled out a s the ideal occupations
for the lady. Pattern books for the art began to appear, invariably
dedicated to a great lady to confirm the art's association with
social standing and to attract those who aspired to aristOcratic
distinction. Among the first was a volume published by Peter
Quentel in Cologne and translated into English in 1530 as 'A
neawe treatys as concerning the excellency of the nedle works
spanisshe stitches and weaving in the frame'. The Venetian
Frederico Vinciolo published a pattern book in 1587 dedicated tO
Catherine de Medici with a sonnet 'Aux Dames et Demoisilles':
. . . ladies, please accept (I pray you will so do)
63
These patterns and designs dedicated to you,

To while away your time and occupy your mind.
In this new enterprise there's much that you can learn.

And finally this craft you'll master in your turn.
The work agreeable, the profit great you'll find.
G . Ciotti also included a poem in his book dedicated to the

Lady Isabell Dowager of Rutland for 'the singular vertue,
wherewith God hath graced you, and therewithal the excellent
knowledge you have in Needleworkes'. The verses explained
why embroidery was a pre-eminendy female occupation:
Women's strength is unequal to the strenuous toil by which

men show their wit, but with the needle, in silk and gold their
white hands may reveal their own sharp and pregnant wit.
Great knowledge, pains and skill are required to win the prize
in needlework, which is suitable employment for all women,
queens and noble ladies as well as maids of low degree, who by
their skill and fame often come to be companions of noble
ladies and even teachers of the daughter of a king, and thus raise
their own rank. 1·'
The role of embroidery in creating an appearance of femininity

and nobility could not be more clearly exhibited. No other acti
vity so successfully promoted the qualities that Renaissance man,
anxious to define sex difference, wanted in a wife. Embroidery
combined the humility of needlework with rich stitchery. It
connoted opulence and obedience. It ensured that women spent
long hours at home, retired in private, yet it made a public
statement about the household's position and economic standing.
The new significance of the home for the merchant class was
concurrent with the development of an ideology of domestic
femininity . This was articulated not only in books on marriage
but also in religious imagery. Embroidered images of the Virgin
and female saints in the fifteenth century began to assume a new
humility. Mediaeval iconography had endowed Mary and the
virgin martyrs with admired aristocratic feminine attributes. But
in the fifteenth century, the willowy figures acquired a new
64
domesticity and intimacy, representing the emerging ideals of the

burgher class. Typical is the hood of a cope embroidered between
1460 and 1490. Although the Virgin is still enthroned, she is a
young woman smiling as she breastfeeds her baby. Her gentle
nurturing qualities are placed above her queenly characteristics.
Childcare, not childbirth, was becoming a central cultural
conctr n .
Marina Warner attributes the new intimate 'democratic' virgin

to the Franciscans who 'remoulded her to their revolutionary
ideal'. •� But as m
i portant is the prescription of the ideal family :
'For just as their frailty makes women less courageous, so it makes
them more cautious; and thus the mother nourishes her children,
whereas the father instructs them and with his strength wins
outside the home what his wife, no less commendably, conserves
with diligence and care.'15
St Monica, who dedicated her life to her son St Augustine, was
held up as a model for women. Texts on the family and marriage
advocated that the mother should have exclusive care and educa
tion of her sons until they were seven years old and of her
daughters until they left home.
The new emphasis on meekness and motherhood affected the
patron saint of childbirth, and on a Flemish cope hood, for
instance, St Margaret is depicted as a young, helpless girl at the
moment of her execution, rather than as a dragon slayer, so
familiar from mediaeval embroidery.
Counterbalancing the 'down to earth' image of the madonna,
representations of the Assumption of the Virgin were increas
ingly embroidered on ecclesiastical vestments. The Assumption
the image of Mary borne to heaven bodily after her death -
emphasises Mary's power and status, complementing the image
of Mary as breastfeeding mother and making of her a more
impressive manifestation of humility, and a more compelling role
model for women. Yet the Assumption acted as a reminder that
Mary's achievements were beyond the power of earthly women.
The story of Mary transported to heaven had been popular
since the twelfth century when a German nun, Elisabeth of
Schonau, d . l l64, had a vision of the Virgin rising to heaven. The
Pseudo Melito, a Greek document attributed to Melito, a second
century bishop of Sardis, described how Mary rose from the dead
and was transported to Paradise by angels because she was un
corrupted by original sin. Plate 39 is a typical example of a
65
fifteenth-century embroidered Assumption: an image of Mary is

appliqueed on brocade and surrounded by lilies and angels.
Not only did the ideological conception of the Virgin change
during the fifteenth century, but technically and stylistically the
embroideries of the period exhibit a move away from Opus
Anglicanum. English embroidery, like other arts, absorbed
European stylistic developments, emphasising a deep spatial
setting and modelled, weighty forms. The embroiderers concen
trated on a single homogeneous image rather than the dramatic
narrative sequences which had characterised Opus Anglicanum.
And instead of working images directly on to couched gold
backgrounds (see Chapter Three), embroidered motifs like that
of the Assumption were appliqueed on to imported textiles:
brocades, satins, damasks and velvets were all used for ecclesiasti
cal garments. 16 The economic conditions which had favoured the
slow and costly embroidery of Opus Anglicanum had been swept
away by repeated plagues, famines and the Hundred Years War
with France.
The ecclesiastical houses in Britain were decimated by the
Black Death of 1348: at least half the nuns died. Centres of
ecclesiastical embroidery were thus drastically reduced. But it
was not until the Reformation that ecclesiastical work was all but
extinguished. However this did coincide with a remarkable
expansion of embroidery for private houses.
In the secular sphere embroidered images of renowned women
of the past parallelled the Assumption of the Virgin in popularity.
During the middle ages theologians had eulogised women who
had transcended the supposed limitations of their sex. Because
women were considered innately evil and defective, their virtuous
acts were hailed as truly remarkable. Renaissance writers, con
vinced of the frailty of the sex, extolled the paradox of strength in
weakness, contrasting the grace of saintly women with the
failings of womankind. Thus the heroic woman who transcended
in virtue all women and all humans became a favourite theme not
only of those who demanded respect for women, but also of those
who advocated limiting women's sphere of action. Ovid's
Metamorphoses and Boccaccio's Famous Women of Antiquity
(De Claris Mulieribus) provided a source of heroines. Zenobia,
Lucretia, Dido, Penelope, Portia and Caesar's wife were all cited
for heroic defence of their chastity. Plate 40 is an embroidered
image of Lucretia's banquet. At Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire
66
36 Frontispiece, Frederico Vmciolo,
Les Singuliers et Nouv�aux Pourtraicts pour
Tout� Sortes d'Ouvrages de Lingerie, third
edition, 1606, first published 1587.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
LES
The author's dedication to Catherine de
SINGV L I E R S Medici, and the depiction of ladies
ET N O V V E A V X P O VR- with the embroidery, emphasises the
T R A i c Ts,.ov H I C N E V R F E D E R I C
art's association with elevated social
de Vinciolo V cniticn, pounouccs
forces
d'ouurages de Lingerie. status.
D E O I E A LA 1\0Y.NE,
Dov.alri.ctc dc Francr.
_
....:.�..-11.::-1 'D E R.ECHEF ET POV'R.._LA
T�OISIESME FOIS ..A'I'CMEI<oTEZ,
...,,J, r�fi�:..l".,,.,, er''''"''t•M"tt.:r LM;,,
.Ju
Jtflujit'Urt ,,..,.. 0'J,ffrrtnt/fftr�Us Jt rt{r
Jtpu;tiOtl,�u ft ,..,,,J,,, dn -.tilks., ch'.fl
.,.,tntlr'vn«"J uu1c·.tir.
A P A R I S,
Pourlean I� Clcrc , rue S, lean de Latran,
).taSalemandreRoyallc.
Auec priuilegc
du Roy.
1 6o6.
37 Frontispiece for a book of
�n ne� fun�(idl
embroidery patterns published by Peter
Quenrel, Cologne, 1527. A version was
--• bncl)tbairrn mcir �an Scc!,Bqunbtrt
· published in English as A Neawt Treatys
- -
· -.fagurcn;monfler abcr jlatcn bc(onbcnn/ aJConcerning the Excellmcy ofthe
wac mmm 11a bcr mbrtrartt Pcrlcnflic� Ned/eworke, Spannzshe stitches and
..auffer were� 1 6panfcf1c flicl1e!
fcrs/:!.
nut bcr n.\tcnroo:t "'P bcr 'ltamcn/'l)n� Wleavi11g i11 the Frame, c 1530. Victoria
"'P bcr tabcnJbO:bcn wircfcn fal l wilcf)c and Albect Museum, London.
flalcn al eJO (amen 'l)(rbcffcrt (lntroii ,,1 �unfl!tcbcr gc".!acl1u The pattern books were aimed at the
Oan btwrflm rnit -uti mtir IICUW( flalcn bact' by gcf413 :c. wives of the emerging merchant class,
6crc nul3ltcb allttwapcnflittcr/ frauU�CntaonffcrcnMlbm� and represented embroidery as an
Rcrtbair,B fokl1 Eunf! ltc�tlid) 130 lmnn occupation which combined an
appearance of nobility with the
touiau liurc autr plufcurtt fcicncc& tt patrono qui
�g t.. activities of the labouring class. lr
no11t poanct tflce cnco; imprimcc.
suggested both opulence, and the
fill)ebrucft �o <(ollcn "P �cmlt)ocm�off obedience wanted in a wife.
burcb peter Qucnctll.
Jmjair M. D. XLI,
38 H{)(Jd ofa rope, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. c 146G-1490. Linen
embroidered with coloured silks and silver-gilt.
39 Cope, Victoria and Alberc Museum, London. 1) !(� 1) ) 8 . Silk damask, the
hood and orphrey of velvet, embroidered with gilt chread and coloured silks.
Two complemenrary represencations ofthe Virgin were popular during the
fiftetnrh cencury: the Assumption- the image of Mar)' borne bodily tO heaven
after her death - emphasises her power and status; and the mother and child
presents her domestic nurturing qualities. Taken together, rhe two images
discourage rhe worship ofMary from raising the status of earthly women, while
nonetheless glorifying domesticity.
40 Penelope, from a set of embroideries Heroines Accompanied by Virtues, National
Trust, Hardwick Hall. c 1575.
41 Tht Story ofMyrrah, embroidered bed valance, Victoria and Albert Museum,
London. Sixteenth cenrury. Linen embroidered with wool and sdk. The story of
Myrrah is taken from Ovid's lflttamorphoses. Myrrah IS about lO hang herself
because she is in love with her father. Her nurse suggests chat they drug the father
and contrive to have him make love ro his daughter. Myrrah becomes pregnant,
and her father is about to strike her with his sword when Venus turns her into a
. tree. Supposedly sexually rapacious women, and women whose virtue transcended
the v1rruc of all women, became favourite themes in the art of the sixteenth
century. Chaste hero1nes like Pcnclope were invoked by those who demanded respect
for women, but also by those who advocated limiting women's sphere of action.
there is a set of five sixteenth-century patchwork applique wall

hangings depicting heroines accompanied by Virtues - Lucretia,
for example, is accompanied by Chastity and Liberality.
Twentieth-century historians of embroidery suggest that these
embroideries were the work of professionals. However,
historians have displayed a tendency to attribute any work of
considerable size and skill to professionals, projecting the
conditions of later embroidery production on to the sixteenth
century when the division between amateur and professional
work had not yet become firmly established. Differences between
male and female, amateur and professional workers were never
theless developing. Women's place within professional
embroidery had changed since the thirteenth century. At that
time, although London workshops which produced Opus
Anglicanum were largely controlled by men, there was nothing in
the structure of craft production that directly prevented women
from working as professional embroiderers.
However during the reign of Edward III the guilds were re
constituted and in 1394-5 the first livery companies were formed.
The master craftsmen had risen in the social scale, eventually
becoming rich traders who employed journeymen. The leading
crafts formed themselves into twelve great livery companies
wielding considerable civic power. During the fifteenth century
women were not debarred from participation in most craft guild
workshops, but increasingly rigid regulations did circumscribe
their access. To preserve the status of the master craftsmen from
aspiring journeymen the number of people entering a craft was
restricted, by limiting apprentices to three for one of the craft's
governing body, two for a guild member eligible to wear the
craft's livery, and one for an ordinary member. Apprentices had
to be under twenty-one years of age and could be bound to
householders only in corporate or market towns . Those who
wanted to enter a trade were required to produce some elaborate
and costly evidence of skill which the majority of women and men
could afford neither in time nor money. 1 7
Ordinances governing the art of embroidery have been traced
to the early years of the fifteenth century, when in 1402 wardens
were empowered to search out inferior work. That both women
and men were active as professional embroiderers is evident from
a commission issued by Henry IV to his embroiderer John
Mounshill. He ordered that embroiderer to take 'needleworkers
67
and broiderers, both men and women, necessary for the King's
works and to superintend the said works for certain charges to the
King's wages ; also to take silk thread, silver and gold of copper
and solder, and to imprison all men and women who resist.''"
However, when the guild was finally incorporated in 1552 all the
officials were men. '�
The crown used by the Broderers' Company in the ceremonial
crowning of a new warden - a band of crimson velvet
embroidered in metal thread and silk with pomegranates, straw
berries and roses - is still in possession of the company.
The livery companies with their formal ceremonies and
pageantry created a new demand for embroidery.�� The dis
tinguishing feature of their livery was stitched on to badges,
banners, streamers and palls.
As well as city companies, individual merchants commissioned
ceremonial embroidery. A member of the Fayrey family com
missioned a pall for the Fraternity of St John the Baptist, set up at
Duns table in 1442 and surviving until 154 7. Scenes from the life of
John the Baptist preaching are appliqueed to cloth of gold and
violet velvet grounds. On the panel at the end and sides are
stitched portraits of John and Mary Fayrey, Henry and Agnes
Fayrey.21
The Fayrey women are dressed in fine embroidered clothes,
providing visible evidence of their families' fortunes. Throughout
Europe such women frequently came under attack for their
embroidered finery. The Perugian chronicler Francesco
Maturanzi wrote that the wives of artisans and other men of mean
birth who 'emulated with their jewels and dress the ladies of noble
birth were much hated by the latter'. 11 And Sebastian Brant in the
Ship of Fools, 1497, ridiculed the tradesmen's wives who 'wear
more gauds of various kinds, skirts, rings, cloaks, broid'ries scant
and rare. It's ruined many a good man's life. He must go begging
for his wife.' l.\ However, Christine d e Pis an blamed the men 'who
encourage their wives in their folly and are angry if they don't
keep up'. She described the same 'senseless struggle' at every
level: the labourer's wife wants to dress like an artisan's wife, the
artisan's wife like her 'better' and the merchant's wife like those
above as far as his wealth will carry her. 2� She noted the
embroidery which adorned a merchant's wife's lying-in chamber
- embroidery of a richness once confined to the nobility. The
room was curtained with hangings made to her own design and
68
worked in gold thread. The bed was hung in beautiful

embroidered fabric, its coverlet was of gold embroidery, and
embroidered rugs lay on the floor. By the reign of Elizabeth I,
lying-in had become a social occasion - excitement was
considered beneficial to the mother. The wealthy vied in the
magnificence of their beds. The Countess of Salisbury had a bed
with white satin-embroidered hangings decorated with silver and
pearls at a cost of fourteen thousand pounds. 25
Below the level of the great landlord class, the class of
'gentlemen' was expanding- the merchants, lawyers and others
who had accumulated property as a seal of respectability. Their
houses displayed an increasing level of comfort and luxury with
panelled walls and glass windows - attributes of status . Although
the vast majority of the population still lived in flimsy two
roomed dwellings , Edmund Harrison, a contemporary
chronicler, observed that 'In the houses of knights and
gentlemen, merchantmen and some other wealthy citizens it is
not so geson [rare] to behold generally their great provisions of
tapestry and fine silk hangings and their tables with carpets and
napery . . . whereby the wealth of the country . . . doth
infinitely appear. ' 2 6
The distribution of wealth was increasingly polarised between
those whose only resources lay in what their hands could provide
and the propertied classes. By the 1520s the effects of the low
population levels of the fifteenth century were disappearing and
conditions developed which favoured embroidery production.
Population growth created a cheap pool of labour for the
embroidery workshops, and this coincided with a demand for
embroidered fabrics from the newly affluent.
The changed social and economic conditions not only pro
moted professional embroidery, evidenced by the incorporation
of the Broderers' Guild, but, most significantly for the future of
the craft, created the amateur embroiderer. Women, newly
detached from paid production, whose households' still
uncertain status demanded embroidered furnishings, were largely
responsible for the extraordinary spread of domestic embroidery .
Every conceivable surface became a site for embroidery : sheets,
valances and coverlets, table carpets, cupboard carpets, cushions
for benches and chairs, coifs, stomachers, sleeves, handkerchiefs,
bags, hawking gear, needlecases, book covers, book marks, book
cushions, shoes, gloves and aprons. Functional articles of
69
clothing heavily embroidered indicated a life 'unsullied' by

manual labour. Embroidered gloves were particularly significant.
Heavily embroidered with slender elongated fingers, they set
their owner apart from manual labourers, who in the days before
antiseptic treatment against infection had to protect their hands
with more functional gloves. Gloves encrusted with raised
embroidery and scented with, for example, civet, musk or
jasmine were exchanged by the wealthy at New Year. Queen
Elizabeth I employed a woman specifically to care for her
collection of fine gloves in their scented boxes.
A sewing casket with the embroidery carefully itemised
appears amongst the inventories of women's possessions. Dame
Agnes Hungerford, arraigned for murder in 1523, owned, for
example, a casket containing 'twenty-four quarterons of Venyse
golde, three pypes of damaske golde and sawing silk' .17 Wealthy
women both practised embroidery themselves and employed
professionals. In an angry exchange of letters between Bess of
Hardwick and her third husband George Talbot, the latter claims
that he paid the professional embroiderers who made some rich
hangings and that they therefore belonged to him. He wrote,
First, rich hangings made by Thomas Lane, Ambrose, and

William Barlow, and Henry Mr Cavandish's man, and had
copes of tissue, cloth of gold, and other things towards the
making thereof; meat, drink and wages paid to the
embroiderers by the Earl during the working of them; and of
hangings of green velvet, birds and fowls and needlework set
upon the velvet.
The Countess in response denied that she employed so many

professionals and insisted that her husband's men were not
involved in embroidering the hangings:
The copes brought by Sir William St Loe at Chatsworth at the

time of the Deed of Gift. Most of the hangings made at
Chatsworth, and some of the Countess's grooms, women and
some boys she kept, wrought the most part of them. Never had
but one imbroiderer at one time that wrought on them. His
Lordship never gave the worth of five pounds towards the
making of them.!�
70
The letters confirm that at that time both men and women still
embroidered, but unfortunately the sex of the 'one imbroiderer'
is not specified . Ann Sutherland Harris has suggested that by the
fifteenth century the existence of itinerant professional
embroiderers created 'a situation incompatible with extensive
female participation'.!<� However, household accounts do name
women in connection with embroidery purchases. For example,
expenses incurred by the marriage of Lord D'Arcy to Mary
Kytson of Hengrave Hall in 1583 include payments to two
women for embroidered clothing: 'Payde to Mrs Crockston for
three wrought smocks and 2 coyffes £6.10. Payde more to her 2
smockes wrought all over the sleeves and bodys £6. Payde to Mrs
Barbor of Bushe for 2 cawls of silver and golde and one smocke
wrought with greene, redd and silver £6. 10 . '�11
From the mid-sixteenth century professional embroidery

practice changed within the guilds towards a more rigid, hier
archical organisation, and during the same period amateur
embroidery dramatically expandeq. But the place of embroidery
within Elizabethan culture in relation to other arts changed
slowly. It was still one art among many - it had not yet been
designated and categorised as women's domestic art or working
class craft. Embroiderers continued to share the same stylistic and
iconographic concerns as painters, sculptors and metal workers.
Embroiderers inherited and developed the concern with both
naturalism and symbolism which had been manifest in Opus
Anglicanum. Plate 44 is a typical example of embroidery for
domestic furnishings. The coiling stems are the descendants of
Celtic ornament and the later Jesse Tree pattern of Opus
Anglicanum. The stem provides a formal framework for the
'slips' - animals, birds, or flowers usually applied to the
background material.
Each flower and creature could carry a number of symbolic
meanings for the Elizabethan embroiderer. Its physical qualities,
its medicinal properties and heraldic associations all determined a
plant's symbolism . The Elizabethans believed that the qualities of
flowers were influenced by neighbouring plants, except for the
strawberry whose purity protected it . The repeatedly
embroidered rose was a flower of considerable symbolic
importance. It was believed that inhaling the scent of dried roses
71
comforted the heart and quickened the spirit. In heraldic terms

the rose signified the unification of the Houses of Lancaster and
York under Henry VII. Some embroidery would actually be
perfumed with flowers. In the Newe Herbal! William Turner
recommended spikes of lavender: 'quilted in a cap and dayle
worne they are good for all diseases of the head that do come of a
cold cause and they comfort the brain very well.'' 1
Today flower embroidery is so closely associated with women
that it is easy to overlook that in the sixteenth century flowers
were not considered primarily the province of women. John
Gerard in his herbal wrote that they 'Admonish and stir up a man
to that which is comely and honest: for flowers through their
beautie, variety of colour, and exquisite form, doe bring to a
liberal! and gentlemanly minde the rememberance of honestie,
comeliness and all kinds of vertues. '·'�
A fascination with plants was part of a developing interest in
botany and gardening. In Embroidered Gardens, 1979,
Thomasina Beck traces the association of gardening with
embroidery. During the Elizabethan era she sees this as a relation
ship between equals. The language of the early gardening books
employed the terminology of embroidery, and embroiderers
depicted the new species that were being planted in the gardens
laid out around the new, spacious private houses.
In 1586 when Jacques Lemoine de Morgue published La Clef
des Champs (ninety-eight woodcuts of animals, birds, flowers and
plants coloured by hand) he intended it for the use of craft
workers and their patrons, especially goldsmiths, embroiderers
and tapestry makers, 'tant chez les Nobles, que parmi les
Artizans, et mesme pour toute d'ouvrage a lequille' (as much for
the nobility as for the artisans and for all workers with the
needle).
The dedication is significant. The author's insistence that the
book is intended for all craft workers in all media across class
boundaries suggests that artistic divisions along the lines of
media, sex and class were beginning to be drawn up.
Nevertheless, the fact that the woodcuts could be offered to
amateurs and professionals, nobility and artisans indicates that
the categories had not yet become rigid.
72
The DomestJCation of Embroidery
If we look at the place of the art of embroidery in the education of

young girls of the privileged classes, we can see the effects of the
fruitful interaction between embroidery and other media, as well
as the setting of a pattern for the future. Richard Mulcaster's
curriculum for girls, written in 1561, lists reading, writing, �ight
singing, music and skill in needlework as necessary subjects.
However, he distinguishes the education of girls in 'high position'
from that of others, and embroidery is the mark of difference:
If a young maiden is to be brought up with a view to marriage,

obedience to authority and similar qualities must form the best
kind of training; if from necessity she has to learn how to earn
her own living some technical training must prepare her for a
definite calling; if she is to adorn some high position she must
acquire suitable accomplishments . . . [including drawing) . . .
to beautify [her] needlework.��
The place of needlework in a woman's education was to

become primary by the seventeenth century. In the sixte�nth
century it served two functions: endowing an education with
elevated class associations, and making an education, which
might otherwise have been deemed dangerously masculine, safely
feminine.
Plate 44 is a book cover embroidered by Elizabeth I when she
was eleven. She stitched the cover for her own translation of The
Miroir or Glasse of The Synnefull Soul which she gave to
Katherine Parr as a New Year's gift. Interlacing strap-work of
chain stitch in metal thread traces the initials K.P. and pansies are
embroidered on each corner of the book. The gift, with its
combination of scholarship and skilled embroidery, represented
the Renaissance education received by the most privileged
women at the time. The interest in education amongst the upper
classes has been ascribed in part to the upward mobility within
European society during the 1530s and 1540s. C.S.L. Davies in
Peace, Print, and Protestantism, 1977, suggests it was 'stimulated
by the apparent success of clever humanist-trained graduates in
royal service'. He adds that 'To some extent the new upper-class
interest in education may have been a defensive reaction against
this sort of social threat by the educated outsider.' q Within some
families a humanist education was provided for girls who shared
their brothers' tutors . The court gave a lead when Katherine of
73
Aragon imported Continental ideas on girls' education in the

person of Luis Vives, author of A Plan ofStudiesfor Young Girls.
Although Vives advocated education for women, it was not to be
at the cost of those female virtues, silence and obedience, for
opponents of women's education argued that it would endanger
their chastity by making them talkative and thus less careful of
honour which is best preserved by silence. The underlying fear
that educating women would disrupt sex distinctions and under
mine male dominance was expressed in The BookofThe Courtier.
Baldassare Castiglione has one of the protagonists in the debate
on women exclaim, 'I am quite surprised that since you endow
women with letters, continence, magnanimity and temperance,
you do not want them to govern cities as well, and to make laws
and lead armies, while the men stay at home to cook and spin.' He
concluded that the whole idea was 'something one can neither
tolerate nor bear listening to'.-''
Women's education became tolerated only when it was suffici
ently differentiated from men's by the addition of music, dancing
and embroidery. Praise for a woman's learning was invariably
accompanied by words of admiration for her skill with a needle.
Contemporary commentators remarked that the ladies at Queen
Elizabeth's court were renowned for their knowledge of Latin,
Greek, modern languages, spinning, needlework and music. -'<•
Needlework was designated a frontline position in the defence
of women's chastity. Even Christine de Pisan, prow-feminist as
she was, advocated embroidery for ladies as a means of avoiding
the temptations that lay in idleness. Prescribing the behaviour of a
court lady she writes that 'On a week day, when the lady at court
retires to her chamber, if she has not great occupation she will
take up some handwork to avoid idleness. Around her will be
assembled to work her women and girls.' Yet she recognised that
women's restriction to the home and domestic work was a major
impediment in their education: 'If they understand less, it is
because they do not go and see so many different places and things
but stay at home and mind their own work. '.\7 Christine de Pisan,
like other Renaissance writers, wanted women to maintain their
difference from men. She urged them not to compete with men,
suggesting a separate but equal policy. Thus she advocated
embroidery and education, even though she recognised that con
finement to the home and domestic tasks limited women's
intellectual possibilities . Other supporters of women's education
74
feared that embroidery and other domestic arts were becoming

too all-encompassing. Erasmus wrote, 'The distaff and spindle
are in truth the tools of all women and suitable for avoiding
idleness. Even people of wealth and birth train their daughters to
weave tapestries or silken cloths . . . it would be better if they
taught them to study, for study busies the whole soul . . . '3M
Sixteenth-century feminist poet Louise Labe of Lyons had nv
doubt that the demand for women to practise domestic arts

prevented them from doing anything else: 'All I can do is to beg
our virtuous ladies to raise their minds above their distaff and
spindles and try to prove to the world that if we were not made to
command, still we should not be disdained as companions in
domestic and public matters by those who govern and command
obedience . '39
The key word here is virtuous. Domestic am were equated
with virtue because they ensured that women remain at home and
refrain from book learning. Ignorance was equated with
innocence; domesticity was a defence against promiscuity. By the
nineteenth century embroidery was to become synonymo�s with
chastity. The root of this later development lay in the
Renaissance, when embroidery was considered as both defence
and evidence of chaste femininity. The following epitaph for
Elizabeth Lucar, wife of a London merchant, who died in 1537,
demonstrates how embroidery permitted a woman to acquire a
humanist education without threatening the boundaries between
masculinity and femininity. Elizabeth Lucar's considerable aca
demic abilities are carefully prefaced by praise for achievements
with the needle.
ELIZABETH LUCAR'S TOMB
Every Christian heart seeketh to extoll

The glory of the Lord, our onely Redeemer:
Wherefore Dame Fame must needs enroll
Paul Withypoll his child, by loue and nature,
Elizabeth, the wife of Emanuel Lucar,
In whom was declared the goodnesse of the Lord,
With many high vertues, which truely I will record.
She wrote all Needle-worke!> that women exercise,

With Pen, Frame, or Stoole, all Pictures artificiall.
75
Curious Knots , or Trailes, what fancie could devise,

Beasts, Birds, or Flowers, even as things natural:
Three manner Hands could she write them faire all.
To speak of Algorisme, or accounts in every fashion,
Of women, few like (I thinke) in all this Nation.
Dame Cunning her gave a gift right excellent,

The goodly practice of her Science Musical!,
In diuers Tongues to sing, and play with Instrument,
Both Viall and Lute, and also Virginal!;
Not onely one, but excellent in all.
For all other venues belonging to Nature
God her appointed a very perfect creature.
Latine and Spanish, and also Italian,

She spake, writ, and read, with perfect utterance;
And for the English, she the Garland wan,
in Dame Prudence Schoole, by Graces purveyance,
Which cloathed her with Vertues , from naked Ignorance;
Reading the Scriptures , to judge Light from Darke,
Directing her faith to Christ, the onely Marke.
In the hands of such women, embroidery became infused with

an often complex symbolic content, in line with the intellectual
preoccupations of the time. Plate 4 5 is an example of emblematic
embroidery by Mary Queen of Scots. Emblems and their use in
art, literature and conversation were central to the culture of the
Elizabethan upper classes. They remained popular until the mid
seventeenth century . An emblem consisted of an image and a
saying or motto. The two lacked any apparent relationship; the
challenge was . to establish an intellectually convincing link.
Colour, gesture and action all had a double meaning. As
Rosemary Freeman has pointed out, in English Emblem Books,
1948, emblem art depended upon a close interrelation between
the art of poetry and the plastic arts. Poetry was regarded as a
'speaking picture' and painting as 'dumb poetry'. 40
The nobility adopted emblems as personal badges. Mary Stuart
represented herself with the motto 'sa vertu m'attire' - a play on
her name, Marie Stuart. This personal emblem was included as a
'signature' on much of her embroidery. Her education in needle
work began when she was at the court of France. Accounts
76
12 Glo"t�. En�:hsh.
Must:um of London
SiXlt>t>mh ccnwry.
EncrusreJ with t:mbroidery
and S{t:nn:d, they were exchanged
by tlw wealthy at New Year.
·'1.) Co1 f, English,

YICtorm and Alh�;:rr Musc:um, London.
Sixtet:nrh ct:nrury.
44 Book cover for The Attroir o1· Glasse of1he Synnejid Soul, Elizabeth I
( l 5 ))-1603), Bodleian Library, Oxford. Filigree of gold and silver wire on blue
corded silk.
Flizab<:"rh embroidered the book cover when she was eleven )'ears old for her own
Lranslacion of the Latin text, and gave ir ro Katherine Parr as a New Year's gift.
The combination of scholarship and skilled needlework well represents trle
edu(ar10n received by the most pnvileged of Renaissance women.
45 Embro•dcred Panel , Mary, Queen of Scots ( 1542-1587), Victoria and Allx:rc
Museum, London.
In the hands of women who had received a Renaissance lady"s education,
cmbro•dcry shared the preoccupation with emblems common eo other Ehabethan
arts Mary Smart stitched thi s pant>I in 1569. while she was under the surveillance
ufGeorge TaliJOt, husband ofBess cf Hardwick, and sent i t to the Duke of
Norfolk, whom she hoped to marry. The Latin motto reads "Virtue floumhes by
woundmg . The knife cumng dead branches from a vine carries the concealed
me�sage that the unfruitful branch of the royal family (Elizabeth 1) was tO be cut
off, whi le the fruitful branch (Mary) would live and bear fruit. (See M. Swam, Tht
NeedleworkofMary Qt�ttn ofScoiJ, VNR, 1973.)
!(> 71�< Bmb •1 Jubn th� Baptw, dtSIJ.:ncJ b}' Anronio Polhuuolo, Flor<:ncc.
fiht·cnth ccnrury. Photo: Mansell AIin.m
EmbrmJtr<:rs were abl(· tO athu:w rlw �.une pt:r�pt:( rival effects .1� paunns dunng
tht· Rt·n;ussance, by emplo} in� the r<:thnique known as ,,,. 1111<. Gold rhrl'JO� IJ1J
honwnt.•llr were shad(·d br llllourt·d silt.. 1n UJuch�ng srirthe�.
relating to the Queen of Scots in 1551 when Mary was nine years
old list the purchase of worsteds (twisted woollen yam) for Mary
to 'learn to make works' . She continued to embroider throughout
both her reign in Scotland and captivity in England. A visiting
English envoy to the Scottish court described how in council
meetings the Queen 'ordinarily sitteth the most part of the time,
sewing at some work or another' . " 1 Once in capitivity
embroidery became her major occupation.
Early in 1569 she was placed under the surveillance of George
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury and third husband to Bess of
Hardwick. When Mary first entered their charge, Shrewsbury
reported that 'The Queen continueth daily to resort to my wife's
chamber where with the Lady Lewiston and Mrs Seton she useth
to sit working with the needle in which she much delighteth and
in divising works. '"'1
While working together the two women stitched emblematic
embroideries . Bess made a memorial to her late husband
depicting tears falling on quicklime and the Latin motto 'Tears
witness that the quenched flame lives' which had been Catherine
de Medici's emblem, so Mary may have suggested that her
mother-in-law Catherine's emblem would make an appropriate
feature for a memorial. In the border are symbols of grief: a fan
with falling feathers (a play on the words pleurer, plume and
peine), a glove, the symbol of fidelity cut in two, broken and
interlaced cords, a cracked jewelled mirror and a snapped chain.
Mary's panel shows a hand with a pruning knife cutting dead
branches from a vine with a Latin motto that reads, 'Virtue
flourishes by wounding'. Mary's cipher is 1mpaled in the Greek
letters standing for her first husband Francis of France, and it is
surrounded by a trellis of flowers and fruit. The apparently
innocuous panel was sent to the Duke of Norfolk whom she
hoped to marry. The hidden message was that the unfruitful
branch of the royal house (Elizabeth I) was to be cut down while
the fruitful branch (Mary) would be left tO flourish and bear fruit.
Another emblematic embroidery referring to her relationship
with Elizabeth depicts a marmalade cat wearing a golden crown
watching a mouse. It represents the red-headed queen playing
with Mary, the mouse. The Catte was one of a series of
emblematic devices and mottos stitched on to a rich green velvet
ground and known today as the Oxburgh Hanging. The gallery
of strange and wonderful creatures with enigmatic mottos 'would
77
exercise the wit of courtiers well-versed in the contemporary

language of emblematic writings'. 4·1
The contemporary interest in emblematic embroideries is
voiced in a letter to BenJonson written from Edinburgh in 1619.
William Drummond describes an embroidered bed which he
believed to have been the work of Mary Stuart: 'The workman
ship is curiously done, and above all value, and truely it may be of
this Piece said Materiam superbat opus.' But what really concerns
him are the embroidered emblems. He describes roughly forty
images and mottos, some of which he recognised as emblems of
members of her family. He speculated on the meanings of others:
'This is for her self and her Son, a Big Lyon and a young whelp
beside her, the word, unum quidem, sed Leonem [one only, but a
lion]. An emblem of a Lyon taken in a Net, and Hares wantonly
passing over him, the word, et lepores devicto insultant Leone'
[and hares insult the defeated lion ].44 The embroidered bed has
disappeared, but examples of Elizabethan emblematic
embroidery still exist.45
Historians' views on the meanings of emblematic embroidery
have swung from one extreme to the other. Nineteenth-century
historians claimed that it indicated a generally high level of educa
tion amongst all Elizabethan women. Clearly such claims can be
discounted, but twentieth-century embroidery historians have
tended to go to the other extreme. J.L. Nevinson, for example,
writes that, 'Often one may presume, the deficiencies of women's
education and lack of feminine scholarship caused decorative
value to b e preferred to recondite allusion. '4�
While not denying that education was limited to the privileged
few, Nevinson's opinion overlooks the relationship between
embroidery and other cultural pursuits. 'Recondite allusion' was
a feature of the Elizabethan arts. Embroidery had not yet defin
itively separated from the other arts. Nevertheless comparisons
were beginning to be made between the different art forms- to
the detriment of embroidery. For example, Nicholas White,
envoy of Elizabeth I , reported the following exchange with the
Queen of Scots:
I asked her Grace, since the weather had cut off all exercise
abroad, how she passed the time within. She said that all day
long she wrought with the needle and that the diversity of the
colours made the work seem less tedious, and continued till
78
very pain did make her give over and with that she laid her hand
upon her left side and complained of an old grief newly
increased there. Upon this occasion she entered into a pretty
disputable comparison between carving, painting and work
with the needle, affirming painting in her own opinion for the
most considerable quality . '• ·
Mary was not alone in her opinion. The emerging artistic values
of the Renaissance finally favoured painting above embroidery .
At first, professional embroiderers participated in contemporary
artistic developments. Like painters they experimented with per
spective effects, discovering a technique known as or nue.
Initially they laid gold threads on material directionally tO follow
architectural lines, but the perspective effect, so successful from
one angle, fragmented when the light fell on a different angle. Or
nue overcame distortion : gold threads laid horizontally were
literally shaded by the irregular spacing of coloured silk couching
stitches . •x
It is usually assumed that technical limitations prevented
embroidery from attaining the trompe l'oeil effect achieved in oil
painting, so that as illusionism became the aim of art, embroidery
fell behind painting. However, technical problems could have
been overcome and indeed with or nue they were. Far more
important for the future of embroidery was the changing role of
the artist and accompanying developments within art production,
coinciding with the rise of the female amateur embroiderer.
It was in Italy that the ideals of the Renaissance artist first
emerged and spread across Europe. The new emphasis was on the
intellectual claims of the artist as opposed tO manual skill. Artists
wanted to be distinguished from those who were mere manual
executors of other people's ideas and designs. But as long as the
.
mediaeval guild system persisted for painters and embroiderers,
the modern notion of the artist as a special kind of person with a
whole set of distinctive characteristics, rather than a kind of
worker, did not gain general currency. Painters themselves did
not distinguish between the designs produced for tapestries, ban
ners, flags, chests, armorial bearings or shop signs. It was not
divine talent that entitled them to practise as professionals, but
instructions according to guild rules. The painters Neri De Bicci,
Antonio Botticelli and Squarcione are examplt'S of painters who
produced designs for professional embroiderers. Antonio
79
Pollaiuolo designed a set of embroidered vestments for the

Church of San Giovanni in Florence. Embroiderer Paolo da
Verona took twenty-six years to complete them.
The very fact that Pollaiuolo and da Verona were jointly
responsible for the vestments indicates one of the reasons why
embroidery was devalued as an art form. More often than not it
was a collective art form with a division of labour between
designer and executant, whose particular skill lay in the dis
position of colour, texture, and stitches rather than drawing.
However, the emerging rhetoric about the artist meant that evi
dence of a divine, inspired individual was the measure of
greatness in a work of art. Alberti, 1404-1472, considered paint
ing the highest among the arts because it contained 'divine force'.
This Renaissance notion was partly derived from classical ideas of
divine madness in the arts, as well as from the mediaeval concept
of God the Father, the architect of the universe.
The handwriting - the recognisable, individual touch - of the
artist became important as the direct trace of the inspired indi
vidual. Drawings and sketches were for the first time valued as
evidence of the creative process. Speed, and an appearance of
ease, were qualities admired in an artist: 'In painting, a single
brush stroke made with ease, in such a way that it seems the hand
is completing the line by itself without any effort or guidance,
clearly reveals the excellence of the artist.'J''
Embroidery, on the other hand, had always been admired for
the hard labour it demanded, the patience and persistence it
required.
Two examples serve to illustrate the changing professional
relationship between embroiderer and artist - and their place in
society. In the fifteenth century Cenino Cenini, in his treatise on
artistic techniques (1437), instructed artists on how to draw on
linen for embroidery. By the sixteenth century, however, artists
were no longer working closely with embroiderers. The latter
were using existing sketches rather than designs specially pre
pared for them, and transferring the sketches to material by the
technique of pricking and pouncing. The artist was above
collaborating with embroiderers .
This attitude is exemplified by Nicholas Hilliard in his A
Treatise Concerning the Art of Limning, c. 1600. He insists that
painting has no connection at all with other arts such as
embroidery or tapestry: 'It tendeth not to common men's use,
80
either for furnishing houses or any patterns for tapestries.'

Hilliard here expresses the class aspirations of the artist and the
determination to emancipate painting from the mundane, the
functional, and the domestic. Behind his words lie enormous
economic and social changes that both facilitated the aspirations
of the artist and increased the demand for domestic embroidery .
The weahhy who furnished their houses wanted paintings; fees
rose, and artists were able, to some extent, to free themselves
from direct commission. The demand for embroidered works of
art was largely supplied by the women of the household.
In the hierarchy of the art forms which then developed, a very
particular division occurred in embroidery because of the increase
in amateur domestic workers. Within the professional sphere,
painting was valued as the expression of the individuality of the
painter, while professional embroidery was placed lower in the
artistic hierarchy because it was a collective effort associated with
workers lower on the social scale than aspiring painters. It was the
amateur embroiderers who expressed in embroidery the new
individualism o f the age. Women amateur workers were in a
significantly different position to professionals. They came from
the class to which the male painters aspired ; the class associated
with intellectual as distinct from manual skills, the class which
was to express the developing individualism. For women this
meant that their creative work was to exhibit not a powerful
artistic personality but a feminine presence. Texts on women's
behaviour and embroidery patterns all advocated needlework to
promote the virtues of femininity - primarily chastity, humility
and obedience. The process had begun which not only divided
embroidery from painting, but sub-divided embroidery into a
public craft and a domestic art - an art so inextricably bound up
with notions of femininity that the nineteenth-century craft
historian Ernst Lefebure confidently and chivalrously exclaimed
of womankind: 'She is the sovereign in the domain of art needle
work; few men would care to dispute with her the right of using
those delicate instruments so intimately associated with the dex
terity of her nimble and slender fingers. ,,,,
Few men would risk jeopardising their sexual i dentity by
claiming a right ro rhc needle. Behind Lefebure's words lies an
ideology of sexual difference in which notions of masculine and
feminine arc meaningful only in relation to each other - and a
society which uses embroider> .ls a si�nificr of sc"ual difference.
81
5 : The Inculcation of
Femininity
' . . . Females are made women of when they are mere children,
and brought back to childhood when they ought to leave the
go-cart for ever,' wrote Mary Wollstonecraft in The Vindication
of The Rights ofWomen, 1792.' She is describing- and criticising
- the creation of feminine behaviour in middle-class women: a
process which began in the seventeenth century. Girls, she
claims, were encouraged to be precocious but sedentary, obedient
but seductive, in preparation for a lifetime of subjugation to a
husband whose manhood was affirmed by his wife's infantile
ways, naivety and ignorance. Wollstonecraft emphasises that her
description of middle-class women was a generalisation, that
exceptions existed. But by the late eighteenth century it was the
rare woman of the upper classes who escaped an education in
femininity, with embroidery taking pride of place in that process.
Philippe Aries has pointed out the new importance of child
hood in the seventeenth century. 1 However, for girls childhood
was significantly less separated from adulthood than it was for
boys. Whereas boys passed from childhood, through puberty, to
manhood, girls were early instructed to be little women, and
82
The Inculcation ofFemininity
embroidery was a continuum in their lives that linked childhood

and womanhood. It was taught in such a way as to inculcate
obedience and patience during long hour•; spent sitting still, head
bowed over an increasingly technically complex, demanding an.
Girls were taught embroidery in the family, although some,
from the gentry and nobility, learned the an at school. Boarding
schools for girls, many of which did little more than teach
accomplishments, were on the increase.-' The school in
Edinburgh to which Sir Hugh Campbell sent his daughters in
1677 offered music, dancing, embroidery and pastry baking.•
Susanna Perwich, who attended her mother's school in Hackney,
established in 1643, learned music, dancing, calligraphy,
accountancy, housewifery, cookery, crafts in silver, straw, glass,
wax, gum and fine embroidery for which she was famed:
Pictures of men, birds, beasts and flowers,

When Leisure serv'd at idle hours,
All this rarely to the life,
As if there were a kind of strife
Twixt Art and Nature: trees of fruit
With leaves, boughs, branches, body, root
She made to grow in Winter time
Ripe to the eye. 5
The vast majority of young girls left no record of their feeings

l
about embroidery, but those who raised their voices against it
characterise the art as the activity which separated them from
childhood and 'masculine' pursuits. Ann Fanshaw wrote:
Now it is necessary to say something of my mother's education

of me, which was with all the advantages that time afforded,
both for working all sorts of fine works with my needle, and
learning French, singing, lute, the virginals, and dancing; and
not withstanding I learned as well as most did, yet I was wild to
that degree, that the hours of my beloved recreation took up
too much of my time; for I loved riding in the first place, and
running and all active pastimes: and in fine I was that which we
graver people call a hoyting girl."
A hoyting girl was a tomboy. The existence of the term is reveal

ing. Femininity did not come naturally to little girls, tt was
83
The Inculcation of Femininity
difficult to instil, but because it was inculcated at a very early age

it appeared to be innate. Girls who chafed at it - those who were
characterised as inappropriately masculine 'hoyting girls' -
declared their dislike of the instrument of femin inity: 'and for my
needle I absolutely hated it', wrote Lucy Hutchinson. 7
Her attitude is in marked contrast to Grace Sherrington's feel
ings for her needle in the previous century. She learned to
embroider during the sixteenth century, when the art signified
that a girl's education was suitably differentiated from a boy's,
rather than an instrument for teaching femininity. Married aged
fifteen, Grace Sherrington described how she passed her days:
. . . also every day I spent some time in the Herbal! or books of

phisick, and in ministering to one or another by the directions
of the best phisitions of myne aquaintance; and ever God gave
blessing thereunto. Also every day I spent some tyme in works
of myne owne invention, without sample or patterns before me
for carpett or cushion worke, and to drawe flowers and fruitt
to their lyfe with my pulmmett upon paper. All which varietie
did greatly recreate my mynde; for I thought of nothing else
but that I was doing in every particular one of these exer
cises . . . . '
The young seventeenth-century embroiderer appears to have

enjoyed n o such freedom: not for her the all-absorbing pleasure
of creating her own patterns from fruit and flowers. Whereas the
Elizabethan embroiderer used a relatively restricted range of
stitches to represent the flora and fauna usually culled from
herbals and natural histories, the Stuart embroiderer laboured at a
range of demanding techniques through an ordained series of
embroidery projects. A poem which prefaces a seventeenth
century embroidery pattern book illustrates the techniques that
an embroiderer was expected to employ . The vast range was
facilitated by the manufacture of finer, more versatile thread .
For Tent-worke, Rais'd-worke, Laid'worke, Frost-worke,

Net-worke,
Most curious Purles, or rare Italian cutworke,
Fine Feme-stitch, Finny-stitch, New-stitch and Chain-stitch,
Braue Bred-stitch, Fisher-stitch , lrish-stitch and Queene-
stitch,
84
The Spanish-stitch, Rosemary-stitch and Mowse-stitch,

The smaning Whip-stitch, Back-stitch and the Crosse-stitch,
All these are good and we must allow
And these are everywhere in practise now.''
Changes in sampler making illustrate the new emphasis on

virtuoso technical perfomance in embroidery. A dictionary pub
lished in 1530, compiled by John Palsgrave, defines sampler as an
'exampler of a woman to work by'. Sixteenth-century samplers
had been broad linen rectangles stitched with a collection of
motifs often drawn from herbals or bestiaries. Shakespeare
evokes two girls embroidering a flower on a sampler :
0 is all forgot?
All schooldays' friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needle created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,
Had been incorporate. 1"
By the seventeenth century samplers were becoming educational

exercises in stitchery - individual tests of skill rather than store
houses of motifs. They provided evidence of a child's 'progress'
on the ladder to womanhood. Measured bands or rows of sym
metrical patterns on strips of linen up to three feet replaced the
random motifs of Elizabethan samplers. Of course the change
occurred gradually; spot samplers and band samplers co-existed
for a long time, even sharing the space of the same sampler. The
long band samplers were usually stitched in progressively harder
exercises . The first bands would be devoted to coloured border
patterns - stylised flowers and alphabets in silks. Often the colour
would disappear in bands of whitework embroidery - exquisite
cut work, drawn work and fine needlepoint lace. The latter was in
demand for the lace-edged ruffs and caps of contemporary
costume. The alphabets too had a practical application. The
increasingly affluent households of the seventeenth century
'marked' their newly acquired household linens. In 1619, for
example, the accounts of Lady Shuttleworth's household contain
an entry for 'coventrie blue thred to make letters in needlework
on the bed sheets'. 1 1
85
The first indication of the sampler's changing role is that signa

tures and dates appear on them in the late sixteenth century. A
process had begun which can be understood only in the context of
both the ideology of individualism and the developing ideas of
education and child discipline. Christopher Hill relates the rise of
individualism to the Reformation and the ideology of Protestant
ism: 'Protestantism popularised the idea of the individual balance
sheet, the profit-and-loss book-keeping of diaries. This pre
supposes an atomic society of individuals fighting for their own
salvation, no longer a community working out its own salvation
as it cultivated its fields in common.' 1 �
The slow, hard, concentrated labour of the Stuart long sampler
instilled the ethics of Protestantism and charted a girl's growth as
a feminine individual. The work demanded was , in part, a
response to the changing significance of domestic labour. Calvin
had replaced the old injunction 'Sell all thou hast and give to the
poor' with the idea that 'God sets more value on the pious
management of a household. ' The Protestant idea of a 'calling'
allowed a secular craft or occupation to be seen as God's work.
Numerous books on household management published by men
encouraged middle-class women to see domestic labour as a
calling. And by the end of the sixteenth century European pattern
books, dictating arduous exercises for needlewomen, were trans
lated into English.
John Taylor, 'The Water Poet', wrote a poem 'In Praise of The
Needle' to preface a very popular pattern book, The Needle's
Excellency, that appeared in 1624 and was in its tenth edition by
163 1 . The poem provides a royal heritage for the craft, naming
Katherine of Aragon, Mary I, Elizabeth I, Lady Mary Countess
of Pembroke and Lady Elizabeth Dormer as ladies who
immortalised themselves in thread. Wlhile extolling the needle on
account of the powerful women who used it, his real praise is
reserved for the fact that it renders women powerless, silent and
still:
And for my countries quiet, I should like,

That woman-kinde should use no other Pike,
It will increase their peace, enlarge their store,
To use their tonges less, and their needles more.
The Needles sharpness, profit yields, and pleasure
But sharpness of the tongue, bites out of measure.
86
Taylor's jocular lines are important. They suggest that embroid

ering was deeply implicated in the debates about women that
rumbled throughout the seventeenth century. Taylor was himself
involved in the pamphlet war over the right behaviour for
women. In 1639 he published 'A Juniper Lecture with the des
cription of all sorts of women, good, and bad: From the modest
to the maddest, from the most Civil to the scold Rampant, their
praise and dispraise compendiously related.' He called this
misogynist tract a Juniper Lecture because juniper wood burns a
long time like revengeful women harbouring malice. He followed
it by the equally provocative 'Crab-tree Lectures' in which 'Mary
Makepeace addresses her sister women and advises them never to
act in such a way as to deserve the names Tabitha Turbulant,
Franks Forward, Bettriss Bould Face, Ellen Ever-heard and so
on.' He was soon challenged by Mary Tattlewell and Joan Hit
him-home with 'The Woman's Sharpe Revenge'. Derisively they
wrote, 'Now concerning your very passionate, but most pittiful
Poetry, a question may be made whether you be a Land Laureate
or a Marine Muse; a Land Poet, or a Water Poet; A Scholler or a
Sculler; of Parnassus or Puddle Dock . . . '1·'
The ideological position represented by Taylor in his poem n
i
praise of the needle as an instrument of suppression, and his

'lectures' full of fear of women as disorderly and desiring to
dominate men, took a material form in the series of needlework
projects imposed o n small girls. They marked a gradual initiation
into full femininity. Martha Edlin, born in 1660, made a sampler
in 1668 covered with coloured bands. Then she undertook a lace
and whitework sampler, and finally applied her wide knowledge
of stitchery to pictorial embroidery on a casket or cabinet. A
similar cabinet was completed by Hannah Smith when she was
nearly twelve years old. She wrote a note which she placed inside
one of the drawers, revealing how important the needlework
projects were to the children who carried them out, how closely
bound in with the project was the child's sense of herself:
The yere o f our Lord being 1657 if ever I have any thoughts
about the time; when I went to Oxford ; as It may be I may
when I have forgotten the time to sarifi myself; I may Loock in
this paper and find it. I went to Oxford in the yere of 1654 and
my being there; near 2 yere; for I went in 1654 and I stayed
there 1655 and I cam away in 1656: and I was allmost 12 yers of
87
age; when I went and mad an end of my cabbinete; at Oxford

. . . my cabinet was mad up in yere of 1656 at London. I have
ritten this; to sartifi my self; and those that shall enquire about
it Hannah Smith. 14
The exactitude of the progression of sampler and casket

making, and its obsession with time, was part of the general
ideology of discipline and structured day that developed during
the seventeenth century. The problem of labour discipline- how
to establish a regular rhythm of labour (abolition of saints' days,
emphasis on the Sabbath rest, establishment of regular meal
times) - greatly concerned social thinkers. The importance of this
regularity, and of saving time, seems to have been accepted by the
middle class during the seventeenth century. 15 The sampler
system was a manifestation of the same ideology, applied to
women's lives . Sampler making also related to the changing
circumstances of seventeenth-century family life. Sheila
Rowbotham in Hidden from History, 1973, writes that 'There
was a need for a substitute for the shaken rule of priest and king.
The father assumed a new importance in the hierarchy of auth
ority. The puritans saw children as naturally sinful, and believed
they had to be beaten into holiness.'16
The importance of parental discipline increased with the advent
of Protestantism, when the celebration of the mass gave way to
the reading of scriptures as the central act of worship. The church
was tending to lose ground to the domestic hearth, and the
household was becoming the agency for moral and religious
control. The advent of samplers with embroidered pledges of
obedience to mother or father, and moralising verses, signifies the
changes:
My Father Hitherto Hath done his Best to make

Me a Workewoman Above the Rest. Margaret
Lucas 1681 Being ten year Old comeJulyThe First
I am a maid but young my skill

Is yet but small but god
I hope will bless me so I may live
To mend this all Rachel Loader
Wrought this sampler being
Twelve Years old the Tenth
88
Day September 1666
Martha Salter
The Fear of God is an excell
Lent Gift
o�...�...a!>ionally a sampler inscription deviates from the submissive

obedience the work was intended to inculcate. The following
verse is taken from an unsigned, undated sampler of the late
seventeenth century:
When I was young I little thought

That wit must be so dearly bought
But now experience tells me how
If I would thrive than I must bow
And bend unto another's will
That I might learn both art and skill
To get my living with my hands
That I might be free from band
And my owne dame that I may be
And free from all such slavery.
Avoid vaine pastime fie youthful pleasure
Let moderation allways be they measure
And so prosed unto the heavenly treasure.
This curious mixture of resentment and acquiescence, piety and

rebellion illustrates the strength of the ideology of sampler
making. The proud assertion of independence ends with an en
tirely conventional sampler sentiment, heavy with renunciation
of personal pleasure.
The topmost section of a sampler sometimes contained figurat
ive work. The biblical scenes selected for pictorial embroidery
depict parental power at its most absolute and violent. Jephta's
daughter and the sacrifice of Isaac were commonly depicted .
Jephta swore to God that if he was granted victory in battle he
would sacrifice the first person he met on coming home. It was his
daughter who was duly sacrificed. The story of Abraham prepar
ing to follow God's commands and sacrifice his son Isaac was well
established as a subject for embroidery by the seventeenth
century. But the constant repetition of the theme suggests it had a
powerful resonance within the family where the parents, particu-
89
larly the father, were assuming a new authority. Nevertheless,

biblical embroidery became the butt of male wit:
Sir, she's a Puritan at her needle too . . .

. . . she works religious petticoats, for flowers
She'll make church histories. Her needle cloth
So sanctify my cushionets, besides
M y smock sleeves have such holy embroideries,
And are so learned, that I fear in time
All my apparel will be quoted by
Some pure instructor
Jasper Mayne, City Match, Act II Se 2, 1639"
Despite the reference to 'she's a Puritan ', embroidery as an

education in femininity crossed religious and political bound
aries. It continued to be an important aspect of aristocratic life.
Thus, for many puritans pious subject matter could not erase the
art's association with vanity and decadence. So, paradoxically,
while they promoted it as a defence against idleness it was also
castigated as evidence of idleness:
Fear God and learn woman's housewifery,

Not idle samplery or silken folly
Thomas Milles, Treasure of Ancient and
Moderne Times, 1 6 1 31 8
As Roberta Hamilton points out in The Liberation of Women,

1978, whatever differences Puritans and Anglicans maintained
over Church matters, they were surprisingly in agreement where
conduct i n the family was concerned.·� Embroidery was to pre
pare upper- and middle-class girls for their place as wives
occupied with 'housewifery'.
The content--of the samplers and embroidered pictures that girls
were set to stitch presented marriage as their natural destiny . The
ideal was that all women would marry. The Lawes Resolution of
Women's Rights, published in 1632, states that 'All of them
(women) are understood either married or to be married . . . The
Common Law here Shaketh Hands with the Divine.' In among
the stylised flowers and geometric shapes which characterise the
pattern books prefaced by John Taylor's poem The Needle's
Excellency, is a pattern for a man and a woman - a couple who
90
become part of the vocabulary of samplers. The earliest surviving

of these 'family figures', as they are known, is dated 1630. The
representations of marriage and parental authority became more
common as the century continued . The Protestant idea of the
family was produced from two sources; the family partnership
which prevailed in the homes of the yeomen and craftsmen, and
the patriarchal families of the Old Testament. The appeal of the
Patriarchs of the Jewish people was that they had not only con
trolled the economic 'fortunes of their families, but also guided
their large households through spiritual crises, holding them
selves responsible only to God.10
In the iconography of samplers and embroidered pictures, the
image of man and woman, Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah,
standing hands clasped, celebrated the new ideology of the
conjugal bond as productive partnership and effective tie- made
in heaven. Sarah and Abraham were particularly popular. Sarah
represented obedience, wifely fortitude and submissiveness. St
Paul had invoked Abraham and Sarah to ratify women's absolute
subjugation in marriage: 'Let women be subject to their husbands
as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him Lord .' Adam and Eve were
almost as frequently stitched. However, embroiderers stressed
not Eve's wickedness but her role as Adam's companion and
helpmate. Thus a sampler verse reads:
Adam alone in Paradise did grieve

And thought Eden a desert without Eve
Until God pitying his lonesome state
Crowns all his wishes with a lovely mate
Then why should men think mean, or slight
her
That could not live in Paradise without her.
The verse conveys the contradictory place of women m the

ideology of marriage which developed under Protestantism and
pre-industrial capitalism. The Protestant reformers of the six
teenth century, arguing for the right of clergy to marry, asserted
the superiority of marriage to celibacy, a belief based on a
melange of the Bible and biology. Luther wrote, 'Men have broad
shoulders and narrow hips, and accordingly possess intelligence.
Women have narrow shoulders and broad hips. Women ought to
stay at home, the way they were created indicates this, for they
91
have broad hips and a wide fundament to sit upon, keep house
and raise children. '11 But he also emphasised that marriage should
be a productive partnership: 'The greatest blessing is to have a
wife to whom you may entrust your affairs, and by whom you
may have children. '11 Family life, of course, differed from class to
class, but where the family functioned as a self-contained pro
ductive unit it furnished the basis of a new ideology of the family,
linked with the new emerging ideas of private property and
individuaism.
l
There were uneasy contradictions for women within the Holy
State of Matrimony : the partnership may have been productive,
but it certainly was not equal. Rel igious , legal and political
changes enhanced the powers of the head of the household. A
woman's legal rights rested in her husband who had complete
control over her property and children. And while Protestantism
sanctified matrimony, it simultaneously asserted the power of the
individual consciousness which implied the right to choose one's
own marriage partner - a potentially disruptive notion when a
major function of marriage in the middle and upper classes was
still to cement alliances between families and transmit property.
The educationist Hannah Wooley wrote, 'But of all the acts of
disobedience, that of marrying against the consent of parents is
the highest. Children are so much Goods and Chattels of a
Parent, that they cannot without a kind of theft give themselves
away.'�3
The concentration of the conjugal couple in samplers was part
of the proliferating contradictory discourses on marriage. On the
one hand, the couple were represented as secure and symmetrical,
stitched in the centre of the sampler; on the other hand, they were
embroidered in the context of the constant emphasis on the virtue
of obedience - the major message of so many sampler verses and,
indeed, taugh t to girls by the act of embroidery itself.
The image of the married couple, a flower clasped between them

signifying fertility, was tran sferred from samplers to embroidered
pictures. Within the framework of a biblical narrative they are the
most common motif in stump work - the pictOrial embroidery
practised by young girls of the middle and upper classes, that
gained popularity during the middle decades of the century. The
name comes from the small blocks of wood or stuffing that
92
embroiderers used to give their embroidered figures the new

plasticity of post-Renaissance art. Wire was also employed,
allowing butterflies to fly from the satin background, petals to
stand out, and canopies to overhang the people beneath them.
Victorian embroidery historians strongly di�approved of stump
work. Marion Alford considered that it revealed 'how high art can
in a century slip back into no art at all'. She deplored 'the utter
want of beauty or taste in the whole effect'. �J Later historians
with a twentieth-century appreciation of the 'primitive', and
patronising enthusiasm for the 'na1ve', disinterred stump work.
Pictorial embroidery for its own sake, rather than as part of
furnishing, developed during the 1630s. The construction of the
seventeenth-century tent stitch and stump-work pictures, with
key scenes from a biblical narrative co-existing in the same frame,
clearly owes a debt to the Elizabethan tent-stitch valances where
consecutive scenes from a story form a frieze around the top of a
fourposter bed, and to the embroidered carpets where disparate
scenes occupy the same piece of material.
In stump-work pictures the same motifs appear again and
again. I n the background a spacious house or castle stands against
a sky where the sun breaks through the clouds. The narrative
unfolds in a garden with the pool or fountain popular in Stuart
gardens. Spangles and seed pearls adorn costumes, and tiny pieces
of mica glint in castle windows. The new metal threads and fine
silks provided a variety of textures, enhanced by the range of
techniques the needleworker had acquired in sampler making.
Different textures are used with mgenuity and care. Lacework,
couched thick metal thread, and delicate silk are juxtaposed and
contrasted, sometimes primarily for compositional purposes, at
other times to signify the character of the personage portrayed.
Royalty is garbed in smooth, gleaming silk embroidery in split
stitch, lesser personages are stitched in opaque thread with
rougher techniques. Their dress is always contemporary rather
than biblical. In a picture illustrating the story of David and
Bathsheba, the women's clothes are virtuoso technical per
formances. The outer garments are slightly raised and detached,
embroidered with flowers and edged with needlepoint lace. The
underskirtS are stitched in silver gilt thread. The towel clasped
about Bathsheba is carefully edged with chenille and the folds
conveyed not only by shaded colour but by padding and
directional stitches.
93
Despite such plentiful evidence of the thought and care that

went into the construction of these pictures, with their skilled
handling of texture and colour that echoes across the satin, com
mentators have dismissed stump work as simply 'quaint' because
of the embroiderers ' disregard for correct scale. Flowers tower
above people; birds are the size of trees, snails the size of a man's
head float beside him . This lack of scale has been attributed to the
embroiderers ' inability to draw and the slavish adherence to
patterns. Sheets of flower engravings were being produced by the
mid-seventeenth century and an embroiderer could have copied
them straight on to the satin. This could explain the lack of
perspective and the discrepancy of scale that characterises stump
work. There is no doubt that prints were used in this way. But if
stump-work pictures are considered within the history of
embroidery, rather than measured against the norms of oil paint
ing, the lack of perspective appears no accident and by no means
the aberration of a child faced with a printed sheet of flower
engravings . Stuart embroidery was the direct descendant of
Elizabethan applique work, with its individual pictures of flowers
and animals. Had the Stuart embroiderer worked to scale, the
flora and fauna in her pictures would have been so small that their
species and special characteristics would have been lost
to sight.
The prominence given to the flora and fauna in the biblical
narratives was a manifestation of contemporary interest in the
properties of the natural world, in gardening, and the rural
occupations of the class whose children stitched the pictures. A
huntsman with his hounds pursues hares around the lids of
countless embroidered caskets; representations of the seasons
repeatedly appear- a reminder of the extent to which the lives of
the embroiderers and their families were dominated by harvests
and the weather. The gardens can be linked to developments in
contemporary horticulture. They often represent what was
known as a nosegay garden : pansies, roses, violets, carnations
and marigolds. Thomasina Beck, in Embroidered Gardens,
relates curious objects to be found in the embroidered pictures -
birds with men's heads, distinctly odd plants and trees - to the
then current interest in grafting, dwarfing and topiary which
Alexander Pope derisively described: 'Adam and Eve in Yew,
Adam a little shattered by the Tree of Knowledge in the great
'�'
storm: Eve and the serpent very flourishing .
94
There was nothing new about the inclusion of details from

contemporary gardens n
i embroidery; during the sixteenth
century a reciprocal relationship existed between gardening and
embroidery, with gardening borrowing terms from embroidery
and embroiderers depicting the new imported plants grown in the
country. What changed with the seventeenth century was that
both flowt!r gardening and embroidery were increasingly be
coming the particular province of women, though professional
embroidery was still controlled by men. When John Evelyn
visited Lady Clarendon's house at Swallowfield in Berkshire in
1685, he admired the garden : 'My lady being so extraordinarily
skilled in the flower, and my lord in diligence of planting . . .'�6
Another explanation for some of the flowers and a11imals

embroidered is that they may be royalist symbols. Thus the
ubiquitous presence of lion, stag and leopard can be attributed to
the fact that they were the supporters of the royal arms. The
caterpillar is said to have symbolised Charles I, while the butterfly
stands for the Restoration. Given that royalist women declared
their allegiance to the Stuarts by embroidering portraits of the
royal family - particularly Charles I - it seems highly likely that
royalist meanings played an important part in the choice ofmotifs
for stump-work pictures .
There is however, another possible reason for the prominence
of certain floral motifs in Stuart embroidery. The content of
mediaeval embroidery had revolved around reproduction and
childbirth. By the seventeenth century, much of the apocryphal
imagery of reproduction and fertility had been repudiated by the
church, in conjunction with changing attitudes towards child
birth and motherhood . Male control over childbirth was
increasing; persecution of midwives as witches reached new and
appalling proportions, the male midwife was coming into his own
and, significantly, the worship of the mother of God was, under
Protestantism, the object of ridicule. Writing on religion in
France in 1673, Peter Heylin mocked Catholicism for honouring
a mother: 'If they will worship her as a Nurse with her Child in
her arms, or at breast, let them array her in such apparel as might
beseem a Carpenter's Wife, such as she might be supposed to have
worn before the world had taken notice that she was the Mother
of her Saviour. If they must needs have her in her state of glory as
at Amiens; or of honour (being now publicly acknowledged to be
the blessedness among Women) as at Paris: let them disburden
95
The Inculcation of Femmmity
her of her Child. To clap them thus both together, is a folly

equally worthy of scorn and laughter.' �7
The 'commanding mother' was banished. Childbirth was no
longer the subject of art in EngLand. But the symbols of the
Virgin's fertility lived on in women's work. All the flowers
associated with the Virgin were included in sampler and stump
work; a spray or branch with one full flower and a bud symbol
ised the mother and child, fruit piled in a basket and a lily in a pot
were traditionally associated with the Annunciation. The 'flower
pot of the Annunciation' was worked on the crown of a baby's
cap. �x How consciously these symbols were used is impossible to
tell. Possibly they had become incorporated as part of the basic
floral vocabulary of embroidery since the middle ages, but the
stitching of the symbol of the Annunciation on babies' clothes
suggests that embroiderers knew what they were doing.
The landscapes and flora and fauna of stump work indicate the
particular place women were beginning to occupy within culture.
Their work was inextricably part of the general culture of their
time, yet it was beginning to be concentrated upon particular
themes. What was appropriate for women was being defined for
them, according to ideas of sexual difference and an ideal of
femininity. Women themselves employed subjects to declare
their conformity to the feminine identity they were designated.
Yet in the embroidered pictures of biblical scenes we can also see
how women gave their own interpretations and particular
emphasis to the feminine ideal. Certain subjects were repeated
again and again.
The most popular Old Testament subjects were the stories of
Esther and Ahasuerus, David and Bathsheba, Rebecca and
Eleazar, J ael and Sisera, Ruth and Naomi, Judith and Holofernes,
David and Abigail, Miriam and Moses, Solomon and Sheba,
Susanna and the Elders, Jephta's Daughter, Abraham and Hagar
and the Sacrifice of Isaac. With the exception of the latter, all
represent heroic acts by women, whether locked in combat with
men, triumphing over evil in partnership with men or suffering at
men's hands. It is tempting to attribute the embroiderer's choice
of subjects to a feminist consciousness- an assertion of women as
active beings in the very medium intended to teach obedience and
passivity. However, a number of different factors determined the
stitching of biblical heroines.
First, there was the availability ofpatterns. London print sellers
96
The lnculcatLon of Femininity
marketed sheets of flower prints, animals, birds and biblical

narratives. Peter Stent, active from 1643 to 1647 at the sign of the
White Horse in Giltspur Street, London, sold books and indi
vidual sheets of prints. Embroidery historians have identified the
most popular sources o f engravings used by embroiderers : bibli
cal illustrations by Bernard Salamon (1508-1561), Jose Amman
( 1539-1591) and Gerard de Jode (1531-1591). Nancy Graves
Cabot has traced thirteen existing embroideries of 'Abraham
banishing Hagar' by de Jode. �� However, embroiderers were
selective in the prints they chose to copy. Among those available
from Peter Stent, 'Susannah and the Elders' and 'The Sacrifice of
Isaac' were often embroidered, but no embroidery survives of
'Moses Lifting the Serpent'. While historians have diligently
traced the printed sources of embroidered pictures, they have not
asked why certain subjects were preferred above others .
The common theme in the chosen subjects - the female heroine
- was not limited to needlewomen or to embroidery. Famous
women of the Bible were popular subjects for artists - men and
women - in all media. The theme of the female heroine had
traditionally been employed in arguments about the character
istics and potential of women since the middle ages. Heroines
were used to exemplify both women's power and their perfidy. In
the seventeenth century their depiction gained a new popularity .
Thomas Heywood's publications, Nine Books of Various History
Concerninge Women, 1624, and The Exemplary Lives and
Memorable Acts ofNine ofthe Most Famous Women ofthe World,
had countless imitators.
Sixteenth-century embroidered hangings, carpets and cushions
had been stitched with allegorical female figures and scenes from
Ovid's Metamorphoses. As discussed in Chapter Four, the stories
selected turned on a woman's heroic defence of her chastity, or
those which depicted women's capacity to rule. Possibly the
representations of Queen Elizabeth I in paintings and woodcuts
as goddess or biblical heroine- Deborah, Astrea, Judith, Cynthia
or Ceres- encouraged their use in embroidery.
However, the seventeenth-century embroiderer largely
eschewed profane subjects in favour of Old Testament stories.
Biblical heroines became particularly popular with the wide
spread vernacular translations of the Bible, some in pocket
editions. Indeed, Bible covers, book marks, Bible cushions and
bags became increasingly important sites for embroidery. The
97
same Bible stories appear in embroidery and in the tapestries

produced by the Mortlake workshops which were started in
1619. It has been suggested that the tapestries inspired the
embroiderers, but in fact workers i.n both media drew on the same
pattern sources: European prints. Painters, sculptors, metal
engravers and embroiderers all produced interpretations of the
same engravmgs, for the different media had not yet entirely
divided.
The particular characteristic of the favourite seventeenth
century biblical heroines was their participation in planned acts of
violence. When the embroidered pictures were produced, the
representation of women as potentially violent and sexually in
satiable still held sway. So in choosing to portray violent women,
embroiderers were not deviating from accepted representations
of women. Where amateur women embroiderers differed from
male workers, both within professional embroidery and other
media, was in the particular biblical figures they depicted.
Whereas Oelilah, Salome and Jezebel frequently figured in male
art and literature, amateur embroiderers ignored the women who
tempted and destroyed men in favour of Judith or Esther, whose
acts of courage saved their people.
Stories about women's power within marriage were popular
with embroiderers: Sarah who forced her husband to evict Hagar
from their household, Esther who successfully interceded with
her husband Ahasuerus on behalf of her people the Jews. The
Story of Esther illustrates how the same image can have different
specific meanings for men and women. Esther was often invoked
to symbolise a persecuted minority: the Royalists under the
Commonwealth, the Puritans under James II and the Jacobites
under William and Mary and the Hanoverians. But her particular
significance can be gauged by the pseudonym and title chosen by
a woman who replied to one o f the first of the century's
misogynist tracts written by Joseph Swetnam in 1615. Offering
an opening salvo in the pamphlet war over women's place, he
attacked women as idle, forward and inconstant. 'Ester
Sowerman' immediately replied with a pamphlet titled 'Ester hath
hang'd Haman or An Answcre to a lew'd Pamphlet'. Haman was
executed after Esther revealed his plot against the Jews.
The stitched stories of Queen Esther, too, gave prominence to
the hanging of Haman. Indeed they are recognisable largely by
the inclusion of the gallows in the background.
98
47 S.tmpl�r. VICtoria and Albert Mus"'um
London. 160�-25. Silver thr�ad and silk �n
linen, 50.!! X .�0. � cm.
The random embroidering of individual motifs
characterised sixteenth-century samplers. Durinf
the seventeenth century the samplers changed,
becoming long bands of progressively more
testing srirchery, m accordance with the new
emphasis on child d1sciplinc: and parental
control.
48 Samplers, embroidered casker and contents,

Martha Edlin, Victoria and Albert Museum.
London. 1668-7 1 .
A girl's childhood was structured by a series of
projects from sampler ro embroidered casket,
intended as much to inculcate an ideal of
fem10ine behaviour as to reach stitching skills.
49 The Sacrifirt of!Jaar. Bible cover, Bodletan Library, Oxford.
Second half of the seventeenth century. Stumpwork.
Biblical scenes popular in pictorial embroidery depict patriarchal power at its most
violent and absolute. The stOry of Abrahampreparing to follow the command of
God the Father tO sacrifice his son Isaac was an established subject for embroidery
by the seventeenth century, but the frequent repetition of the theme suggests that
ir had powerful resonance within the family, where the parenrs, particularly the
father, were assuming a new authority.
50 Thejudgtmmt ofSolomon, stumpwork panel, Victoria and Albert Museum,

London 1686.
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52 Sampler, derail ofAdam and E��t, Ficzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Seventeenth century.
) 1 Sampler, Susanna Wilkinson, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambradge. 1699.

The sampler couple are taken from a popular pattern book, Richard Shorltykt:r's
TheScho/ehome oftht Needle. in print by 1624.
53 The Story ofAbraham and Hagar, panel, Victoria and Albert Museum London. ,
Second half of the seventeenth century. Stumpwork, 35.6 X 25.4 cm. The
rel ationship between husband and wife first became a dominant theme of
embroidery during the seventeenth century. Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah,
or simply the image of man and woman standing side by side were often stitched.
Sarah, seen in the tent, here represents wifely fortitude.
54 (top right) EstherandAbasuerus, panel, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Second halfof the seventeenth century. Stumpwork.
55 (bottOm right) Print sold by Peter Scent, British L ib rary London. c 1643-47.
,
Embroiderers copied motifs from sheets of engravings. The tul ip, lion and parrot
which can be seen i n Plate 5 5 appear in num bers of embroidered pictures . The
flora and faun a stitched large to be i nstantly recognisable, were a manifestation of
,
a growing interest in properties of the nat ural world as well as carrying of symboli c
meanings. It has been suggested that the ubiquitous lion, stag and l eopard -
supporters of the royal arms -declared the Roy alist allegiance of the embroiderer.
'57 }m!and Sisera: Deborah and Barak, casket doors, Hannah Smith, Whiteworrh
Gallery, Manchester. 1654-56. Silk.
�6 Sampler, dewit of) udzth wtth the Htud ofH11lofe:nzeJ, Fitzwilliam Mu�eum,
Cambridge Seventeenth century.
B1blical heroine� who engaged in acts of vtO!tnce were popular subJects 1n all the
ilrtS throughout Europe m the seventeenth century- evidence of the era's
<:mbroilm<:nt in tssucs of sex roles and power. Whereas male painters depicted
Delilah, Salome and Jezebel as well as Esrher, Judith andJael, women and girl
embroiderers, from rhe surviving evidence, seem to have: eschewed chose women
who destroyed men 1 n favour of those who.e acts ofcourag..: saved their people
They celebrated 'mascu line' behaviour in women through the very medium
Intended to inculcate femnuniry.
5 8 The Bnrothal ofthe Vil·gin, Edmund Harrison, Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge. 1637. Silk and silver-gilt thread on linen.
Edmund Harrison was embroiderer to James I , Charles 1 and Charles II. One ofa
se t o( images from The Life ofMary made for William Howard, Lord Stafford, The
Betrothttl of 1he Virgin offers a considerable contrast tO the work of amateur women.
Technically it resembles Europc-.tn embroidery, with its use ofor nul.
Esther and the Hanging of Haman, Judith decapitating

Holofernes, Jael driving a tent peg through Sisera's temple, were
popular subjects with needlewomen because they proved
women's potential for heroic action. Some idea of the meanings
their chosen bibical
l heroines had for seventeenth-century
women can be gleaned from their pamphlets and poems.
Educationalists such as Bathsua Makin and Anna Maria von
Schurman often referred to the feats of famous women of the
past. Makin offers these women as inspiration for contemporary
women and employs biblical heroines such as Deborah, 'deliverer
of Israel', and Miriam, 'a great poet and philosopher', to provide
scriptural justification for women's education. 30 The poet Ann
Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), quotes Deborah as
proof that women's subjugation is imposed by man and not part

of the natural order:
Good breeding, fassion, dancing, dressing, play

Are the accomplishments we shou'd desire;
To write, or read, or think, or to enquire
wou'd cloud our beauty, and exaust our time,
And interrupt the Conquests of our prime;
Whilst the dull manage, of a servile house
Is held by some, our outmost art, and use,
Sure 'twas not ever thus, nor are we told
Fables, of Women that excell'd of old;
To whom, by the diffusive hand of Heaven
Some share of witt, and poetry was given . . .
A Woman here, leads fainting Israel on,
She fights, she wins, she tryumphs with a song,
Devout, Majestick, for the subject fitt,
And far about her arms, exalts her witt,
Then, to the peaceful!, shady Palm withdraws,
And rules the rescu'd Nation, with her Laws,
How are we fal'n, by the mistaken rules?
And Education's more than Nature's foob,
Debarr'd from all improve-ments of the mind
And to be dull, expected and dessigned . . .
The Introduction n
Finch, von Schurman and Makin quote the exploits of women

who exercised power, comparing their achievements with the
99
limited lives of seventeenth-century women. But the comparison

carried meanings only because the horizons of middle-class
women were expanding. It was the contradictions that such wo
men experienced in their lives that led them to question women's
position in society, and gave the biblical heroines such resonance.
In England the Cromwellian Revolution of 1640 brought new
opportunities and fresh responsibilities to women of all political,
and religious persuasions. 'A book might be wholly filled with a
story of the part taken by women in the political and religious
struggles of this period,' wrote Alice Clark in 1 9 1 9 . ' ' She also
cited the women who perpetually besieged the court for grants of
wardships, monopolies and patents. Royalist women were often
forced to take on the running of the family affairs and defence of
their property after 1640. Puritan women became famed as travel
ling preachers and faith healers. Sheila Rowbotham in Women,
Resistance and Revolution, 1972, comments that 'Despite the
distrust of female sexuality, despite the narrow scope offered
them, heresy proved consistently popular with a section of
women. These were the women i n the growing towns freed from
constant labour but not admitted to the privilege of court or
conven t . ' ' ·
Puritanism allowed women certain restricted dignity and pro
vided for a more humane concept of relationships between the
sexes. Objections were raised to wife beating, and women were
no longer churched after childbirth. Yet most women's legal and
financial position was deteriorating. The changing organisation
of industry and agriculture slowly forced women into an
increasingly subordinate relation to their husbands - or into
extreme poverty . Many avenues of work gradually closed to
married women. And the associations which were formed at this
time for public purposes - educational, scientific or political - did
not include women in their membership. '"'
It was these contradictions in women's position, the manner in
which their lives both expanded and contracted, that determined
the delicate needlework renderings of the violent biblical hero
ines. The co-existence in stump work of content celebrating
'masculme' behaviour in women with a form intended to confer
'femininity' indicates the extent to which the seventeenth century
was a time of upheaval and transition in the development of what
was considered acceptable behaviour in women. There were two
schools of thought; one insisted that women should be
100
The Inculcation ofFemninity
i
submissive, devout, obedient wives ; the other claimed men and

women were equal before God. The stump-work caskets are part
of the era's embroilment with issues of sex roles and power.
Judith, Jael and Esther assert women's potential.
For women they were affirming, for men they were pre
occupying but fearful. Men repeatedly attacked 'masculine'
behaviour in women. A publication appeared in the 1620s titled
Hie Mulier: Or The Man-Woman n
i which the author accused
women of changing 'needles for swords'. 3s In 1620 John
Chamberlein described how the Bishop of London called
together the clergy and announced that King 1ames had given an
express commandment to them 'to inveigh vehemently against
the insolencie of our women, and they're wearing of brode brim
med hats, pointed dublets, theyre hayre cut short and shorne, and
some of the stilettoes and poniards, and other such trinkets of like
moments ; adding withal that if pulpit admonitions will not
reform he wold proceed by another course.''6 Similar anxious
preoccupation with gender identity were manifested in William
Prynne's Another Blast against Manly Women and Effeminate Men,
and in Muld Sacke which charged all men with effeminacy who
allowed wives or daughters any authority, and accused any
woman of being a 'Man-Woman' who claimed independence
from her parents or challenged the supremacy of her husband. ·17
It was n
i this climate of acute consciousness and anxiety in
relation to sex roles amongst the middle and upper classes that
women embroidered the 'masculine' women of the Bible. In
addition to the active heroines, another group of subjects dis
played male aggression and power over women. The 1udgrnent of
Solomon, for example, was hugely popular with embroiderers.
Two women both claim ownership of a baby, and to ascertain
who is telling the truth Solomon threatens to cut the baby n
i half.
Jephta's rash vow mentioned above, which led to his sacrifice of

his own daughter, was another favourite. David and Bathsheba,
another constantly repeated subject, tells the story of how David
arranges to have Bathsheba's husband killed after she has become
pregnant by David . Initially David spied Bathsheba bathing and
asked that she be sent to him. It was usually with this salacious
scene that artists chose to represent the story, but em
broiderers included the entire narrative in a sequence of images
around the central bathing scene. Less popular but nevertheless
frequently stitched was the story of David and Abigail. Abigail's
101
husband, Nabal, refused hospitality to David and his troops.

Realising what a dangerous error her husband had committed,
Abigail rode out to the troops with provisions. Ten days later
God 'Smote Nabal; and he died' and David sent for Abigail to
marry her. We can thus identify three basic categories of
embroidered Bible stories : those which revolve around masculine
power and violence, those of women's heroic resistance, and
those images which suggest that reconciliation and partnership
between the sexes was possible.
Embroiderers employed the needle, not the pen - they left no
records of their attitudes towards their subject matter. We cannot
claim them as proto-feminists who stitched their heroines in
conscious opposition to their ordained role, in rebellion against
the inactivity, m
i mobility and obedience enforced by embroidery
itself. But their work was undoubtedly a declaration in favour of
their sex. From all the heroines who abounded in seventeenth
century art of every kind, they embroidered those who reflected
well on their sex, the same women whom writers evoked to
support their arguments in favour of wider opportunities for
women. Embroiderers throughout history were rarely n
i the
vanguard of the fight for women's rights - but it is in their work
that we can see reflected the constraints and contradictions that
drove some women to speak out.
By the end of the seventeenth century embroiderers had
abandoned the three-dimensional, minute, skilled silk stitchery
demanded by stump work, and women themselves had repudi
ated the biblical heroines. Judith, Jael and Esther were no longer
invoked to justify women's rights : 'The justification for women's
rights was no longer that of being God's handmatdens or
daughters of Jael but the demand to make women reasonable
beings. '-'" Scriptural role models came in for ridicule from women
themselves. In 1699 a woman calling herself Eugenia mocked
Sarah and Abraham, the subject of so many stump-work pictures.
In a reply to a sermon delivered at a wedding, she wrote a
pamphlet titled 'The Female Advocate; or a plea for the just
liberty of the Tender Sex, and particularly of married women,
Being Reflections on a late Rude and Disengeneous Discourse
delivered by a Mr John Sprint in a Sermon at A Wedding May
1 1 th at Sherburn Dorsetshire'. Sprint, in his sermon, had praised
Sarah for calling Abraharn 'Lord'. Eugenia remarked caustically
that 'it would look a little odd for a Man of low degree to be
102
greeted, My Lord, Your Lordships most obedient Servant etc by

his Lady in a blew apron.'-'"
Women were recognising that the biblical role models- indeed
the entire famous women genre - far from proving women's
potential, implied that by comparison the vast majority of the sex
were wanting and incapacitated. An anonymous essay of 1696
attacked the male writer 'who levels scandal at the whole sex, and
thinks us sufficiently fortified, if out of the story of 2,000 years he
has been able to pick up a few examples of women illustrious for
their Wit, Learning or Vertue . . . ' 'Pedants and schoolboys' is
how she describes those who 'rake and tumble the Rubbish of
Antiquity, and muster all the heroes and heroines they can find to
furnish Matters for some wretched Harangue, or Stuff a Miser
able Declamation with instead of Sense or Argument'. 40
Throughout the century embroidery had become ever more
closely associated with femininity, until it was almost axiomatic
that a woman wanting to enter a supposedly 'masculine' sphere of
activity repudiated femininity in the form of embroidery. In 1659
The Learned Maid, or Whether a Maid may be a Scholar by
Dutch feminist Anna Maria von Schunnan was translated into
English. She argued that embroidery - 'pretty ornaments and
recreations' - should be replaced in girls' curriculum by maths,
music and painting : 'Some object that the needle and distaff
supply women with all the scope they need. And I own that not a
few are of this mind . . . But I decline to accept this Lesbian rule,
naturally prefering to listen to reason rather than custom.'" 1
Anna Maria von Schurman represents an attitude tOwards
embroidery that was to appear more and more frequently
amongst critics of the state of women's education. Embroidery
became the object to attack for the women who spoke out against
the constraints of femininity. This was regrettable. Embroidery
was no more innately feminine than are women; it had simply
become part of the construction of femininity. By pouring scorn
on embroidery, critics of femininity found themselves in the same
camp as men who belittled women's activities and sneered at
sewing. Two British followers of von Schurrnan were more
circumspect in their criticism of embroidery .
Both Hannah Wooley and Bathsua Makin were middle class
women who earned their living by teaching and writing. Hannah
Wooley set herself midway between the women who were dis
trustful of their own capacities and the convinced feminists. Her
103
best known book The Gentlewoman's Companion, 1675, lays

forth her views on education: 'Man is apt to think we were merely
intended for the World's propagation and to keep its human
inhabitants sweet and clean; but, by their leaves, had we the same
Literature he would find our brains as fruitful as our bodies. '42
Nevertheless her ideal curriculum includes all the 'pretty orna
ments and recreations' dismissed by von Schurman, ' . . . works
wrought with the needle, all Transparent works, Shellwork,
Mosswork . . . Frames for Looking glasses, Pictures or the like.
Feathers of Crewel.' Frames for mirrors were used as sites for
pictures in raised three-dimensional embroidery; feathers of
crewel refer to the worsted embroidery which was becoming
increasingly popular during the latter half of the seventeenth
century. Wooley's inclusion of considerable amounts of
embroidery in her curriculum was pragmatic; both a tactic to
make education for girls acceptable, and a tool for producing the
characteristics she deemed necessary for women within marriage.
'Think not though grown to women's estate that you are freed
from obedience,' she wrote, because 'all such as are entered into
the honourable State of Matrimony (are ] to be loyal and loving
subjects. '43
Bathsua Makin's views are more radical than Wooley's. She
included embroidery in her curriculum to convince her critics
that her desire was to educate, not to unsex: 'I do not deny that
women ought to be brought up to a comely and decent carriage,
to their needle, to neatness, to understand all those things that do
particularly belong to their sex. But when these things are com
petently cared for, then higher things ought to be endeavoured.'44
Accordingly, half the day at her school was given over to 'all
things taught in other schools, works of all sorts, music, singing,
writing, keeping accounts,'45 while the rest of the girls' time was
devoted to Latin, French, Greek, Hebrew, Italian and Spanish.
Bathsua Makin is tacitly acknowledging that femininity is
inculcated not innate, as well as the extent to which embroidery is
enmeshed with women's sexual identity. They were 'brought up
to their needle', it was particular to their sex.
Like Wooley, Makin makes a great point of the fact that
education will not interfere with the marriage relationship. In
deed she claims that an educated woman would be more likely to
accept her husband's superiority and be satisfied 'if her husband
would consult and advise with her'. Similarly Mary Astell, author
104
of ASerious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their

True and Greatest Interest, 1697, while suggesting that an edu
cation which would 'furnish our minds with a stock of useful
knowledge, that the Souls of Women may no longer be the only
unadorn'd and neglected things' , nevertheless claims th:lt the
'making of good wives' would be an important outcome of her
ideal �t:minary .
The extraordinary care that campaigners for women's educa
tion took to include embroidery in their curriculum, and to
emphasise that their project would not undermine marriage,
relates to the dominant view of education post 1660. It was
considered politically dangerous to spread learning beyond a
chosen elite. 'Nineteen out of twenty of the species were designed
by nature for trade and manufacture', wrote a correspondent of
The Grub Streetjournal. 'To take them off to read books was the
way to do them harm, to make them not wiser or better, but
impertinent, troublesome and facticious. '"'" A similar fear of
insubordination, and an insistence on the present hierarchical
relationship between men and women, lay behind the resistance
to women's education. As Makin herself said, 'A learned woman
is thought to be a comet which bodes mischief whenever it
appears.'"'' Makin, Wooley and Astell all basically accepted the
conventional definition of women's nature, including the identi
fication of women with embroidery. They were demanding that
women's capacity to use their minds be recognised and allowed.
The Restoration did extend that possibility to some women. It
was a relatively advantageous time for women writers.
Cora Kaplan in Salt and Bitter and Good, writes that 'slightly
less repressive attitudes toward the female role in court society
meant that a few courageous women dared to write and show
their efforts to others'. 48 These women, such as Anne Bradstreet,
the Puritan poet, and Ann Finch, Countess of Winchil.sea,
employed embroidery as a metaphor for the constraints of
femininity:
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue

...,
Who says my hand a needle better fits, .
My hand delights to trace unusual things,

And deviates from the known and common way;
Nor will in fading silks compose
Faintly the inimitable rose . . . '5"
105
The Inculcation of Femimnity
Numbers of women were, however, dedicated to composing

the inimitable rose not in silk but in wool. The latter half of the
seventeenth century saw an upsurge in the embroidery known as
crewel work. Embroiderers covered large hangings with a mass of
coiling vegetation rising up from small rolling hills, alive with
exotic birds and animals. The designs owe a debt to Eastern
textiles . During the seventeenth century, trade with India and
China expanded, giving access to Chinese embroideries and
Indian printed or painted cotton. Whereas stump-work cabinets
were related to European art, by the end of the century embroid
erers were drawing on textiles for inspiration. This is welcomed
by historians of embroidery, who deplore what they consider to
be the seventeenth-century needlewoman's subservience to the
pictorial effects of oil painting, inhibiting her from developing the
art's own specific qualities and potential. However, the embroid
erer's alignment with other textile arts a.lso signifies the divisions
that developed between different media, and the increasingly
rigid categorisation of Art versus Craft.
In accordance with the new rational spirit of the age, the crewel
hangings could withstand constant and prolonged use and were
produced at comparatively little cost: the traditional embroider
ing of backgrounds was abandoned, so the labour involved was
considerably lessened.
Worsted wools, usually in shades of blue and green, were
stitched on a light background of cotton strengthened with linen .
Worsted embroidery was not a new phenomenon, but it increased
and evolved during the latter half of the seventeenth century. A
change in sheep's diet made worsted more easily available.
Christopher Hill writes that, 'Sir Thomas More's bitter joke
about sheep eating men turned out to be truer than he knew. For
in the sixteenth century, whilst the living standards of men and
women of the lower classes fell catastrophically, the living stan
dards of sheep improved equally remarkably . Enclosure and the
floating of water meadows led to better grass; this produced sheep
with coarser and longer wool, though more of it. This in turn
contributed to the decline of English broadcloth . . . and to the
rise of worsted.'51
At the same time housebuilding increased from the late six
teenth century, with styles which gave an important place to
embroidered hangings. The houses of people who were neither
very rich nor very poor grew bigger, and were subdivided so that
106
yeoman farmers, for example, began to have bedrooms, an

important move towards the notion of individuality and sexual
privacy.5� It was the women of the household who embroidered
the superb crewel embroidered curtains which festeoned the
beds. Low Elizabethan rooms had beds perhaps seven feet high,
but the lofty ceilings of post-Restoration England allowed for
monstrous tent beds. A letter of 4 August 1683 from the
correspondence of the East India Company provides some
indication of the work involved in bed hangings: 'You know that
only the poorest people in England lye without any curtains or
vallances . . . The vallances tO be 1 foot deep and 6V2 yards
compass. Curtains to be 3Yl yards wide and 2 yards long. Each
bed to have 2 small carpetts, 11h yards wide and 2 yards long, each
bed to have 1 2 cushions for chairs of the same work.'53 A bed
required between three and five curtains, sometimes
supplemented with narrow draft excluders, three valances, three
bases, a coverlet and cushions, all of which could be embroidered.
I have concentrated on amateur embroidery in the seventeenth

century because it is there that we can see the advent of children's
education in femininity through sampler making and, in
embroidered pictures, perceive a reflection of women's resistance
and resignation to the imposition of rigid sex-role differentiation .
But, of course, the religious, political, economic and social forces
that led to the vast increase of amateur embroiderers and the
insistence on femininity for women also gave rise to changing
conditions among professional embroiderers.
Charity schools spread, and the education of working-class
girls, like that of upper- and middle-class girls, included the
stitching of samplers. In 1713 the curriculum of a girls' school in
Lambeth, London, comprised reading, writing, spinning,
knitting, plain sewing and marking (lettering samplers). But
frequently such schools were merely a means of exploiting the
girls' labour. The Red Maids school of BristOl, for example, was
founded by John Whitson in 1627 so that daughters of 'dead and
decayed freemen of the City' could be taught reading and plain
needlework, since the lattn was 'laudable work towards their
maintenance' . The initial excuse for exploiting the children's
labour was that their indu:;try provided a salary for their
instructor. But by the end of the century the Red Maids were
107
simply apprentices carding wool."-'

There was no rapid--or sudden break with the conditions that
had prevailed in embroidery production during the sixteenth
century. Men continued to dominate and control the Broderers'
Company. Edmund Harrison, whose work is illustrated in Plate
57, was embroiderer to James I, Charles I and Charles II . Records
exist of commissions he received to embroider coats for yeomen
of the chamber and other servants, as well as for costumes used in
masques and pageants. But the only works surviving by his hand
are New Testament scenes in a style that resembles the European
rather than the pictorial techniques of amateur work, since he
employed the or nue technique developed in fifteenth-century
Florence to provide perspectival effects.
Women are listed as receiving payments for embroidery, but
their domain as professionals seems increasingly to have been
restricted to embroidered clothing. In 1630 a woman named Alice
Beardon received one hundred pounds for 'certain cutworks
furnished to the Queen for her own wearing'. 55
The future pattern of professional work began to be estab
lished. Working-class women were employed as sweated labour
in trades associated with embroidery, and middle-class women
became embroiderers because the craft's aristocratic and feminine
associations made it an acceptable occupation . John Milton's
daughters, for example, were apprenticed as gold and silver
embroiderers and makers of tinsel laces. SI> And when Jane
Martindale left her yeoman family in the North of England for
London, she was confident that her skill with a needle would
enable her to find employment with a wealthy householdY At
the other end of the social spectrum, signs of the future appeared
in the conditions of women workers associated with the crafts
stimulated by embroidery. Gold and silver thread were important
ingredients of seventeenth-century embroidery . The production
of metal thread had been in the hands of women, but a procla
mation of 1622 forbade the exercise of the craft by all except
members of the Company of Gold Wire Drawers. Few, if any,
women became members. 'Hampered by want of specialised
training, !women] were beaten down into sweated industries .'"�
Within metal thread production, women were employed as spin
ners for starvation wages, working in crowded sheds. In the
parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, there were eighty-five spinning
sheds that employed paupers. Despite the increased use of metal
108
thread, the demand for it was limited and capable of little expan
sion. The labour available in the pauper class was therefore suffi
cient to satisfy it. s y
In the more privileged area of embroidery production, the
fortunes of professionals fluctuated throughout the seventeenth
century. The Broderers' Company presented Charles I with a
petition stating that the trade had decayed and members were
forced to work as poners, waterbearers and the like - all reveal
ingly masculine occupations . 00 There are a number of possible
explanations for the troubles facing the Broderers ; amongst them
were the increase of work by amateur women, and the fact that
glossy materials were replacing embroidered clothing, which was
becoming limited tO small, richly decorated articles like
stomachers, the triangles of material worn point downwards in
front of a dress to create an impression of a tapering waist.
After the Restoration, the Broderers' Company appear to have
tried to enforce their control over embroidery production.
Amendments to the Company's by-laws, 1609, provided that no
woman should be taken on as an apprentice, and thus permitted
the Company tO fine women embroiderers as 'unlawful
workers'. "1 Hence, for example, Margaret Wadding and
Elizabeth Coleman were fined during 1681. In each case the
Company ordered that their work be destroyed, but relented on
the payment of a fine.
A judgment against the Company in 1710, ruling that their
legislative powers did not extend beyond their members, marked
the end of their privileges in relation to the work. Economic and
ideological factors together increasingly militated against
embroidery practice by male professionals . In 1630 the
Sumptuary Laws - regulations limiting the wearing of em
broidery and costly materials to people of rank - had been
revoked. Embroidery increasingly became the signifier of private
circumstances rather than public position. and ever more closely
intertwined with notions of femininity, as the division between
public and private spheres deepened, and masculine and feminine
areas became more rigidly distinguished.
109
6 : From Milkmaids to
Mothers
'My wife finished the sewed work in the drawing room, it having
been three and a half years in the doing,' Sir Walter Calverley
wrote in his diary for 1716, adding with admiration and satis
faction that 'The greatest part has been done with her own hands.
It consists of ten panels . ' '
The panels were originally worked for the drawing room at
Esholt Hall, but Lady Calverley's son removed them to
Wallington in Northumberland where they can be seen today.
Contemporary account books record the move: 'Item 4, a large
trunk with Lady Calverley's work in the best drawing room.'
Item 1 7 in the inventory was another large embroidery packed
carefully in a case, ' a six leaft skreen, Lady Calverley's work'. The
screen is of particular interest because it demonstrates the role of
women's domestic furnishing embroidery in representing her
family's social position, while also revealing the extent to which
the constraints of femininity were limiting what women could
depict.
Each of the six leaves is five feet nine inches high, and twenty
and a half inches wide. The whole is signed and dated 1 727 and
stitched with scenes from Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics in fine
1 10
From Milkmaids to Mothers
tent stitch on canvas in wools with some silk. The size of the
undertaking, the care with which Lady Calverlcy's husband
recorded her work and her son transported it, testify to the
importance of the work to the family . Its value lay not on!y in
sentimental attachment to the work of wife and mother, but
because i t offered a representation or rural life which the family
wanted - and needed.
Comparing the screen with late seventeenth-century pastorals,
we see what a change in content had come over embroidered
pastoral pictures. The stump-work and silk pictures of the
Restoration, though nominally of biblical subjects, are celebra
tions of rural, aristocratic life. Couples garbed in contemporary
courtly dress stand before stately homes in luxuriant gardens
while huntsmen pursue hares forever round the rims of embroid
ered caskets. Here there is no hint that the land on which the
mansions stand is cultivated by the labourers who take an
important place on Lady Calverley's screen. The seventeenth
century pictures can be read as one symptom of a reaction to the
Commonwealth and Puritanism, of the 'almost deliberate pagan
ism, hunting and open-air virtues contrasted with book keeping
sordidness. '1
Plate 60 is a transitional piece. It contains elements of the
stump-work pictures - a couple stand in a garden before their
house - but all biblical references are gone and the embroiderer
displays a concern with perspective and proportion that was quite
foreign to the young women who made the stump-work pictures.
The scene represents the new order - the great pastoral estates
and houses which replaced castles and fortified mansions and
provided 'the visible centre of the new social system'. 3
The Calverley screen reinstates narrative subject matter, but it
is now Virgilian rather than biblical. Religion was no longer such
a determining factor in the lives of embroiderers nor of such
symbolic importance in the decoration of their houses. Virgilian
associations in paintings, tapestry and embroideries 'identified
their owners as the Augustan patricians they aspired to be'. 4
Scenes from Virgil were stitched on countless chair backs and
sofas, pole screens and wall panels. Diligent historians have
traced the pictures' origins to Francis Cleyn's illustrations of
Ogilby's translations first published in 1654. �
Julia Calverley employed Cleyn's illustrations, juxtaposing
scenes from the Eclogues on the misery of civil war to passages
111
from the Georgics on the peace and plenty of rural life. Possibly
the screen refers to the Calverley family history, their misfortunes
during the Civil war, their recent clearing of debts and restoration
of the family fortune. However, the content marks a change in
the representation of rural life which was not confined to her
screen.
InThe Dark Side of the Landscape, the Rural Poor in English
Painting 1730-1840, 1980, John Barrell usefully analyses the
change from Arcadian pastorals to the emergence of a 'more
actualised though no more real' representation of rural life. The
Calverley screen contains both modes, with the piping shepherds
of Arcadia inhabiting the same world as the British ploughman;
classically garbed figures stroll over rolling hills while below a
basketmaker bends over his work, and a nobleman gallops in
pursuit of a stag. The combination of elements suggested English
rural life was timelessly harmonious and free of class conflict. The
nobility are displayed as both confidently leisured and the
benevolent overlords of a well-run, well-worked estate. Only in
embroidery, a medium free from the rules and proprieties which
governed oil painting, could disparate modes be so successfully
combined to make an ideological point. Julia Calverley utilised
the design of Chinese lacquer screens to convey 'the double image
of the aristocracy as the leisured consumer of Britain's wealth,
and as the interested patrons of her agricultural and mercantile
expansion'."
John Barrell argues that the inclusion in paintings of a culti
vated landscape was necessitated by a changing social and political
climate: 'natural property in land was being challenged by the
more mobile power of money, the hierarchical coherence of
"patemalist" society by what is perceived as a new economic
individualism. The disappearance of Arcadian Pastoral, and the
emergence of a more actualised poetry and painting of rural life,
makes it clear that an account of the ideal life which entirely
ignored this awareness could no longer be plausible, and to cease
to ignore it meant, inevitably , to admit some degree of concern
for work .'7
Lady Calverley's screen no doubt provided a pleasing and
reassuring image of security and plenty, ease and social control
for her family. Moreover, with the ideal image of her class, Lady
Calverley designated absolute differences between the sexes. The
representation of women on the screen contrasts markedly with
1 12
the biblical heroines of Stuart embroidery. The latter were shown

either in conflict with men or closely cooperating with them,
sharing power as queen to king. The women on the Calverley
screen are quite separate from the other sex, even to the point of
occupying their own leaf. In the sixth leaf, pride of place is given
to the lady and her pet squirrel, the attendant who carries the
lady's basket of flowers and a milkmaid who balances a pail on �i.:t
head. Compared with the marked differences between men of
leisure and labourers on the other leaves, little distinguishes the
women beyond variations in dress . All are static and slender in
contrast to the vigorous men on the adjacent leaf of the screen.
They are associated with nature and nurture rather than direct
labour.
However, the lady represents a feminine ideal which has
acquired explicit class connotations, defined not in terms of
economics but by a style of living and mode of behaviour
associated with the aristocratic lady, and characterised by an
absolute absence of visible work. To be feminine was to be seen to
be leisured. Lady Julia's own epitaph engraved on her memorial
expressed the ideal. It conveys what she was, not what she did:
Endowed with that equal disposition of mind which always

c reates its own happiness, with that open and flowing ben
evolence which always promotes the happiness of others; her
person was amiable and engaging, her manners soft and gentle,
her behaviour delicate and graceful; her conversation lively and
. .
mstructmg.
There is no hint of the determination, application, ambition and

education demanded by her monumental embroideries.
The aristocratic feminine ideal dictated the way Lady Julia

depicted women - but did not yet entirely dictate what was
considered quite proper for women to embroider. The twentieth
century historian of embroidery, Wingfield Digby, described the
screen as 'so charming and yet in such robust good taste'.� By the
middle of the eighteenth century Lady Calverley's depiction of
men would have been considered rather too robust. Wingfield
Digby s decription of the screen illustrates this shift - typically,
'
he employs notions of charm and taste, terms usually applied to

women, when describing this work of art. Women's work from
1 13
from the Georgics on the peace and plenty of rural life. Possibly
the screen refers to the Calverley family histOry, theirmisfortunes
during the Civil war, their recent clearing of debts and restoration
of the family fortune. However, the content marks a change in
the representation of rural life which was not confined to her
screen.
In The Dark Side of the Landscape, the Rural Poor in English
Painting 1730-1840, 1980, John Barrell usefully analyses the
change from Arcadian pastorals to the emergence of a 'more
actualised though no more real' representation of rural life. The
Calverley screen contains both modes, with the piping shepherds
of Arcadia inhabiting the same world as the British ploughman;
classically garbed figures stroll over rolling hills while below a
baskermaker bends over his work, and a nobleman gallops in
pursuit of a stag. The combination of elements suggested English
rural life was timelessly harmonious and free of class conflict. The
nobility are displayed as both confidently leisured and the
benevolent overlords of a well-run, well-worked estate. Only in
embroidery, a medium free from the rules and proprieties which
governed oil painting, could disparate modes be so successfully
combined to make an ideological point. Julia Calverley utilised
the design of Chinese lacquer screens to convey 'the double image
of the aristocracy as the leisured consumer of Britain's wealth,
and as the interested patrons of her agricultural and mercantile
expansion'."
John Barrell argues that the inclusion in paintings of a culti
vated landscape was necessitated by a changing social and political
climate: 'natural property in land was being challenged by the
more mobile power of money, the hierarchical coherence of
"paternalist" society by what is perceived as a new economic
individualism. The disappearance of Arcadian Pastoral, and the
emergence of a more actualised poetry and painting of rural life,
makes it clear that an account of the ideal life which entirely
ignored this awareness could no longer be plausible, and to cease
to ignore it meant, inevitably, to admit some degree of concern
for work.'7
Lady Calverley's screen no doubt provided a pleasing and
reassuring image of security and plenty, ease and social control
for her family. Moreover, with the ideal image of her class, Lady
Calverley designated absolute differences between the sexes . The
representation of women on the screen contrasts markedly with
1 12
the biblical heroines of Stuart embroidery. The laner were shown

either in conflict with men or closely cooperating with them,
sharing power as queen to king. The women on the Calverley
screen are quite separate from the other sex, even to the point of
occupying their own leaf. In the sixth leaf, pride of place is given
to the lady and her pet squirrel, the attendant who carries the
lady's basket of flowers and a milkmaid who balances a pail on her
head. Compared with the marked differences between men of
leisure and labourers on the other leaves, little distinguishes the
women beyond variations in dress. All are static and slender in
contrast to the vigorous men on the adjacent leaf of the screen.
They are associated with nature and nurture rather than direct
labour.
However, the lady represents a feminine ideal which has
acquired explicit class connotations, defined not in terms of
economics but by a style of living and mode of behaviour
associated with the aristocratic lady, and characterised by an
absolute absence of visible work. To be feminine was to be seen to
be leisured. Lady Julia's own epitaph engraved on her memorial
expressed the ideal. It conveys what she was, not what she did:
Endowed with that equal disposition of mind which always

creates its own happiness, with that open and flowing ben
evolence which always promotes the happiness of others; her
person was amiable and engaging, her manners soft and gentle,
her behaviour delicate and graceful; her conversation lively and
instructing.
There is no hint of the determination, application, ambition and

education demanded by her monumental embroideries.
The aristocratic feminine ideal dictated the way Lady Julia

depicted women - but did not yet entirely dictate what was
considered quite proper for women to embroider. The twentieth
century historian of embroidery, Wingfield Digby, described the
screen as 'so charming and yet in such robust good taste'.' By the
middle of the eighteenth century Lady Calverley's depiction of
men would have been considered rather too robust. Wingfield
Digby's decription of the screen illustrates this shift - typically,
he employs notions of charm and taste, terms usually applied to
women, when describing this work of art. Women's work from
113
the early eighteenth century onwards was increasingly viewed in

terms of what it displayed of the embroiderers' femininity. Julia
Calverley, though constrained to embroider women in
accordance with the developing feminine ideal, was still relatively
free of the imperative to conform to notions of feminine propriety
in the composition as a whole.
Lady Julia's permission to be 'robust' in her work was,
perhaps, a feature of her class position. Lower down the scale,
where a family's class position was more uncertain, maintaining
and demonstrating the feminine ideal associated with an aristo
cratic lifestyle became increasingly important. Correct feminine
behaviour was a central subject in the emerging magazines and
periodicals for women. The Ladies Library of 1714, published by
Richard Steele and 'written by a lady', contained essays 'compiled
from the Writings of Eminent Divines for a Guide to her conduct
to be of some Service to Others of her Sex, who have not the same
opportunities of searching into Various Authors themselves'.
Volume I contained essays on Chastity, Modesty, Meekness, Wit
and Delicacy. Volume II provided directions for femininity in
action as The Daughter, The Wife, The Mother, The Widow and
The Mistress.
The extent to which embroidery was becoming the activity
which connoted a feminine, leisured lifestyle is evident in a series
of letters to The Spectator in 1716. Addison wrote a mocking
essay on the art:
What a delightful entertainment it must be to the fair sex,

whom their native modesty, and the tenderness of men
towards them, exempts from publick business, to pass their
hours in imitating fruits and flowers, and transplanting all the
beauties of nature into their own dress or raising a new creation
in their closets and apartments. How pleasing is the amuse
ment of walking among the shades and groves planted by
themselves , in surveying heroes slain by their needle, or little
cupids which they have brought into the World without Pain.
This is methinks, the most proper way wherein a Lady can
show a fine Genius, and I cannot forbear wishing, that several
writers of that sex had chosen to apply themselves rather to
tapestry than rhyme. Your pastoral poetesses may vent their
fancy in rural landskips, and place despairing shepherds under
silken willows or drown them in a stream of mohair.''
1 14
Addison's satirical praise of the needle had been prompted by a

letter to the magazine deploring the lack of needleworking by
young girls. The author writes in the guise of an outraged aunt
whose nieces' lives are devoted to 'gadding abroad' instead of to
embroidery. She begs Mr Spectator to recommend the long
neglected Art of Needlework:
Those hours which in this age are thrown away in Dress, Play,
Visits and the like, were employed in my time, in writing out
Receipts, working Beds, Chairs and Hangings for the Family.
For my part, I have ply'd my Needle these fifty Years, and my
good Will would never have it out of my Hand. It grieves my
Heart to see a couple of idle flirts sipping their Tea, for a whole
Afternoon, in a Room hung round with the Industry of their
great Grandmother. 1 u
The outraged aunt contrasts the feminine ideal of the industrious

wife which had held sway in the seventeenth century with the
developing eighteenth-century aristocratic ideal.
Addison's reply included a set of rules and regulations for the
practice of embroidery. First he itemised the reasons why
embroidery was an excellent occupation for ladies. It distracted
from gossip and politics, 'Whig and Tory will be but seldom
mentioned where the great Dispute is, whether Blue or Red is the
more proper Colour.' Then there was 'the Profit that is brought
to the Family where these pretty Arts are encouraged . . . How
memorable would that Matron be, who should have it inscribed
upon her Monument, that she Wrought out the whole Bible in
Tapes try, and died in a good old Age having covered three
hundred Yards of Wall in the Mansion House. ' He then proposed:
1 . That no young Virgin whatsoever be allowed to receive the

Addresses of her first Lover, but in a Suit of her own
Embroidering. 2. That before every fresh Servant, she be
obliged to appear with a new Stomacher at the least. 3 . That
no one be actually Married, till she hath the Child bed, pillows
etc. ready Stitched, as likewise the Mantle for the boy quite
finished. These laws, if I mistake not, would effectually restore
the decayed Art of Needlework, and make the Virgins of Great
Britain exceedingly Nimble-fingered in their Business. 1 1
115
The next issue of the magazine carried a reply from a young

woman named Cleora.
Mr Spectator, the Virgins of Great Britain are very much

obliged to you for putting them upon such tedious Drudgeries
in Needlework . . . I would have you to know that I hope to
kill a hundred Lovers before the best Housewife in England
can stitch out a Battel, and do not fear but to provide Boys and
Girls much faster than your disciples can embroider them. I
love Birds and Beasts as well as you, but I am content to fancy
them when they are really made. What do you think of Gilt
Leather for Furniture ? . . . and what is more, our own
Country is the only Place in Europe where Work of that kind is
tolerably done . . . I am resolved to encourage the Manu
facture of my country. 1 1
The sexist ridicule that marks this correspondence suggests it to

be a male invention. However, male ridicule, like all good satire,
was based on accurate observation. Addison was right that
women considered their embroidery 'profit that is brought to the
family', and his rules on the practice of embroidery directly
related to the way in which embroidery structured a young girl's
life, and prepared her for marriage. His satirical description of
embroiderers 'transplanting all the beauties of nature into their
own dress or raising a new creation in their closet' was, moreover,
prophetic. Pastoral pictures and floral embroidery became
increasingly popular as the century continued.
The manner in which embroiderers changed the modes of
pastoral embroidery reveals the extent to which the identification
of embroidery and femininity determined what a woman
portrayed in her work. By the mid-century, painters of pastoral
scenes had discarded Arcadian imagery and adopted what John
Barrel! terms the 'jolly imagery of Merry England' . Happy
peasants labour in a lush countryside suggesting a rich, happy,
harmonious land, in which everyone works together and all
consume the fruits of that common industry. In fact, the
repressive actuality, that the good life is reserved for the rich, and
hard labour for the poor is contained within the pictures ; their
success is to conceal this contradiction by a careful handling of
iconography and structure.�.�
Embroiderers were able to participate in the new direction of
1 16
59 Bed hangings, Ab1gail Peer, VictOria and Alberr Museum, London. Last
quarter of the seventeenth century. Wool embroidery on corron with linen.
During the late seventeenth century house building mcreased and rhc homes of
people who were neither very rich nor very poor grew larger, and were subdivided
with separate bedrooms. Hangings by the women of the household became a
prominent feature.
60 Embroidered ptccure, Hannah Downes,
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. c 1690. A
transitional work, che embroidered picture
contains elements ofthe scumpwork pict ures bur ,
biblical reference s have disappeared and the

embroiderer shows a conce rn for perspective in
her desire tO depict rhe couple, their mansion and land
61 Needlework screen, Lady Julia Calverley,

National Trust, Wallingcon Hall,
Northumberland. 1727. Each leaf 176.6 X 5 2 cm
The screen is based on Francis Cleyn 's
illusuarions eo V irgil s Edog11tJ and GtQrgm
'
published in 1654. Julia Calverley juxtaposes

scenes on the misery of civil war with
illustrations of the peace and plenty of rural life .
62 Farmyard Scene, British, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. First quarter
ofche eighteenth century. 78.1 X 66.1 cm.
When Arcadian imagery gave way eo the 'jolly imagery of Merry England',
farmyard scenes became a common subject for the needle, portraying another shift
i n the feminine ideal. A dedication to all that was natural became an important
attribute of femininity.
63 Embroidered picture, Sarah Warren, Henry Francis du Pone Winterthur

Museum, Winterchur, Delaware. 1748. Silk and wool on linen, 64.5 X 13.7 cm.
Fishing Lady or Boston Common Pictures were worked in Boston boarding
schools. Like British embroidered shepherdesses they depict women with
gentlemen in attendance, and are perhaps related eo the preoccupation with
changing forms of courtship and marriage.
64 Drawing of Flowers for a Courr Dress, Mary Delany. Courtesy of Mrs Ruch
Haydcn. Mid-eighteenth century.
6') A derail of the petticoat of rhe courc dress, Mary Delany. Courr<:sy of Mrs Rurh
Hayden.
66 Dress and peuicoat, Victoria and Alberr Museum, London. c 1775-1800. A
move cowards naturalism in costume embroidery meant that by l 740 tO embroider
and eo "flower· were interchangeable terms. Mary Delany"s sketches for her courr
dress indicate chat drawing as well as embroidery was seen increasingly as a
fc:minin" accomplishment. The division between art and craft was becoming
elaborated by a division between chose media and subjects considered the sphere of
ladies and thnst which were the proper concern of gentlemen.
67 Embroidered picture Victoria and Albert
,
Museum, London. c 1780. Silk and watercolour

on silk.
From about 1780 and during the early decades of
the nincrccnth century, a new genre of silk
picture deve loped and flourished, depicting
ladies in gardensamong the flowers which they
were said eo resemble.
68 Embroidered picture Christies, London. First

,
quarcer of the nineteenth century. Chenille and

collaged contents of a workbasket, inc luding
needles. 30 X 33 cm.
pastoral an even though farmyard ife

l seems an inappropriate
subject for the polite 'feminine' needle, however carefully con
structed the image might have been in support of the class
aspirations of the family. Throughout the eighteenth century
embroiderers reflected every shift in pastoral m
i agery, using the
genre to make meanings specific to their experience as women. A
repertoire of motifs developed which each worker adapted to her
own purposes. A windmill on a hill, a peasant carrying corn or
rake, a duckpond, a shepherd and shepherdess appeared in
numbers of embroidered pictures. Ornamental farms were also
the latest development in gardening: ducks wandered through
ornamental shrubs while cattle and sheep grazed the lawns.•�
Both embroidered farm scenes and farm gardens were pan of
the developing ideology of the natural - that what was natural
was right. Farm scenes, though a far cry from the pastoral
embroidery satirised by Addison earlier in the century, were thus
entirely suitable subjects for ladies. An enthusiasm for nature and
a dedication to all that was natural became an important attribute
of the feminine ideal. Women who desired to abandon society
were praised as anless, sensitive, and admirably unmaterialistic.
Moreover, the milkmaids and shepherdesses that inhabited this
world conveyed specific ideas about femininity. On the right of
the farmyard in Plate 62 sits a shepherdess attended by a
shepherd. Her clothes mark her out as socially above the other
protagonists in the pastoral scene, and she is not shown at work
among her sheep but sitting prettily beneath a tree. The other
familiar female figure is the milkmaid, who is more of a country
girl than the 'silken shepherdess' in accordance with the 'Merry
England' image of this type of pastoral; nevertheless she s
i dis
tinctly feminine. In pastorals painted by men, the emphasis was
on the shepherdess's and milkmaid's appeal to male fantasies of
the demure but sweetly compliant rustic maid. In pastorals
embroidered by women, the shepherdesses and milkmaids
suggested that femininity - that highly artificial construct drawn
from an aristocratic ideal - was in fact simply part of women's
nature. The shepherdess who sits upon the ground is as feminine
as the lady who embroiders at home.
However, like all embroidered pictures, the pastorals had
many layers of meaning. They are also about courtship: the
shepherdess was waited upon - courted - by a man. The 'Boston
Common' or 'Fishing Lady' Pictures - the American comem-
117
porary counterparts to the English pastoral - are even more

explicitly about courtship. They were termed Boston Common
pictures because they were worked mostly by girls at boarding
schools in Boston and sometimes included John Hancock's
house - his was the first signature on the Declaration of
Independence - built on BostOn Common in 1737. A typical
example of such a picture shows each female figure attended by a
gentleman, in the same way that the British shepherdess was
accompanied by a man.
During the seventeenth century arranged marriages were the
norm but by the eighteenth century, middle-class women were
beginning tO take a more active part in the rituals of courtship and
marriage. By 1720 magazines addressed to women were even
including sketches of desirable husbands and discourses on love
grounded upon reason. In 1744 The Female Spectator came out
against arranged marriages, and latter The Lady's Curiosity or
Weekly Apollo published an essay on 'The Unreasonableness in
Confining Courtship tO Men'. By 1780 The Ladies Magazine felt
able to justify ladies proposing to gentlemen during leap year.
Courtship was becoming an area where women had, however
briefly, a sense of themselves as possessing potential power and
the ability to act. Jane Austen's heroines show how women
believed themselves able to operate and manoeuvre within court
ship structures, manipulating them to their own ends. Feminist
historians have offered various interpretations of the changing
patterns of courtShip and marriage. Sheila Rowbotham has
pointed out that the middle class was critical of the double
standard of behaviour expected of women and men in the
aristocracy, and rejected their 'kinship pattern in favour of the
idea of the individual in charge of her or his own destiny, in love
as in business ' . · � Patricia Branca also argues that 'population
pressure created a growing property-less group, for whom
dowries and detailed marriage agreements were irrelevant'. �<•
Women's other major art form - the novel - represented
eighteenth-century women's concern with courtship and
marriage more directly, and reading novels, in Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu's view, led young women 'to hope for
impossible events to draw them out of misery'. " Perhaps
embroidering the shepherdess and her gentleman in the 'natural'
environment afforded some relief too, and drew the emboiderer
'out of her misery', cooped up as she was in a drawing room.
1 18
Sampler verses compare the freedom and harmony of nature with

the embroiderer's own possibilities :
Sweet bird thy bower is evergreen

Thy sky is ever clear
Thou has no sorrow in thy song
Nor winter in thy year.
Moreover, although the stitched shepherdess suggests that

femininity is natural - a cross-class characteristic - paradoxically
she also suggests that in a natural environment, the constraints of
aristocratic femininity can be shed and class barriers crossed. That
at least is the role of country people in women's magazine
romances. It is necessary to exercise caution in looking to
women's magazines for evidence of women's feelings - the more
so as many were written by men. However, they were intended
to appeal to women, Thus The Female Spectator in 1747
published a rustic romance in which 'Mary a Squires daughter had
clambered over Hedge and Stile, to give a rampant Jump into the
Arms of a young jolly Haymaker . . . '
Running parallel to pastoral embroidery was a move towards
greater naturalism in costume embroidery. Women did, indeed,
'transplant the beauties of nature into their dress' as Addison
satirically put it. By 1740 the terms 'to embroider' and 'to flower'
were interchangeable. In Samuel Richardson's Pamela the
narrator wrote to her parents that 'Mrs J ervis shewed my master
the waistcoat I am flowering for him, and he said, "It looks well
enough; I think the creature had best stay till she had finished
it." ' 1 " Her master's mother had instructed her in the arts of
femininity, 'to flower and to draw too'. They were in part res
ponsible for gaining her her master's attentions, and Pamela
declared that the acquisition of the attributes of aristocratic
femininity were inappropriate for her and altogether a dubious
advantage: 'To be sure, I had better . . . have learned to wash and
scour to brew and bake and such like . . . ' In other words it would
have been better for her had she learnt to work rather than to
display leisured femininity which signified her availability for

men. For embroidery had acquired an additional connotation.
Once it was equated with a lifestyle that necessitated female
dependence, it quickly became synonymous with feminine
seductiveness. Female dependence was flattering but fearful tO
1 19
men. The helpless, leisured lady affirmed a man's social and

economic standing, but simultaneously produced the image of
woman as self-interested, subtle seductress. The role of
embroidery in Pamela - Richardson's attitude towards it as both
an instrument of seduction and a waste of time - again illustrates
how femininity and embroidery were fused in men's minds.
It is significant that drawing was also increasingly seen as a
feminine accomplishment. The division between art and craft was
further elaborated by a division within art itself between those
media and subjects considered the sphere of ladies, and those
which were the 'proper' concern of gentlemen. 'To model well in
clay is considered as strong minded and anti-feminine but to
model badly in wax or bread is quite a feminine occupation.'19
Behind the increasingly familiar ridicule lie changes in the status
of art and artist, instituted by the growth of academies of art
dedicated to making art the intellectual activity of a cultured
gentlemanly elite. 20
Women were excluded from the best of an education in the
academy schools and largely prevented from studying the nude
model and producing prestigious history paintings. One way
they reacted was to develop alternative areas of art practice. There
was an extraordinary burgeoning of new media. Women worked
with shells, feathers and paper collage. However, the artistic
value and potential of these new media were not recognised until
the twentieth century, when they were adopted by male artists.
The effects of the secondary status of all these materials to o l
i
painting can be seen clearly in embroidery. Rather than valuing
the intrinsic qualities of the art - the possibilities it offers in terms
of textures, stitches and material - mid-eighteenth-century
embroiderers wanted, above all, to imitate the slick trompe l'ceil
characteristics of oil painting. This imitation earned them an
entry in Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, 1762. He wrote
admiringly, 'This art of copying in work by the eye, with no
particular rule for the stitches, was invented by Miss Grey,
daughter of a clergyman.'2' Thus, to work directly from nature
became the embroiderers' ambition. A much admired eighteenth
century quilt was described as 'worked n
i flowers, the size of
nature, delineated with the finest coloured silks in running stitch,
which is made use of in the same way as by a pen etching on paper
. . . Each flower is different, and evidently done at the moment
from the original. '22
120
Embroidering from nature was prompted not only by the

embroiderer's sense of the inferiority of her own art in relation to
the much more admired oil painting, but also because sketching
from life had become a feminine accomplishment. A pattern book
was advertised as a 'Select collection of the most beautiful flowers
drawn after nature, disposed in their proper order in baskets.
Intended for the improvement of ladies in drawing and
needlework.'! 1
The amateur embroiderer developed a wide knowledge of
botany, but an 'interest in plants' was also noted as an important
advantage in a professional embroiderer recommended by Mary
Delany. l-+ Mary Delany was herself an amateur embroiderer and
botanist. She was the daughter of a landowner, and the diversity
of her art practice was typical of the women of her class. She
painted, made shell work, feather work, silhouettes, designed
furniture, spun wool, wrote and illustrated a novel and invented
paper collage. For the latter she was commended by Robert
Wa!pole who professed that 'he could not resist the agreeable
occasion of doing justice to one who had founded a new
branch.'l5 She began doing paper collage when she was eighty
years old. Using scissors, coloured paper and paste she produced
roughly one thousand botanically accurate illustrations of
flowers and shrubs collected into ten volumes knbwn as Flora
Delanica. Well before inventing what she called paper mosaic,
Mary Delany had been embroidering plants and flowers. She
embroidered her own court dress with over two hundred
different flowers on the overskirt, including winter jasmine,
hawthorn, sweet pea, love-in-the-mist, lily of the valley, forget
me-not, anemone, tulips, convolvulus, blue bell and roses. Like
ladies of her class, she not only embroidered costume but was
responsible for the embroidered furnishing of her home, and
stitched different chair covers for summer and winter use.!"
Mary Delany's letters provide useful insights into the attitudes
that shaped mid-eighteenth-century embroidery. Writing to her
sister Ann Dewes she described a costume she particularly
admired:
The Duchess of Queensberry's clothes pleased me best. They

were white satin embroidered, the bottom of the petticoat
brown hills covered with all sorts of weeds, and every breadth
had an old stump of a tree that ran up almost to the top of the
121
petticoat, broken and ragged, and worked with brown

chenille, round which were twined nasturtiums, ivy, honey
suckles, periwinkles, convolvuluses, and all sons of twining
flowers, which spread and covered the petticoat. Vines with
the leaves variegated as you have seen them by the sun, all rather
smaller than Nature, which makes it look very light; the
robings and facings were little green banks with all sorts of
weeds, and the sleeves and the rest of the gown loose twining
branches of the same sort as those on the petticoat; many of the
leaves were finished with gold, and parts of the stumps of the
trees looked like the gilding of the sun."
For a lady to have a 'landscaped' dress was part of the general

glorification of the natural. Fanny Burney remarked caustically
of a woman she knew that 'Nothing could she talk of but Dear
Nature and nothing abuse but Odious Affectation.'1s However,
Mary Delany's admiration of the Duchess of Queensberry's
costume reveals that a lady's embroidery was ideally not only
natural but specifically feminine. The leaves on the dress were
realistic but smaller than nature and the robes and facings were
little green banks. The whole effect was light.
The constraints that femininity laid on form as well as content
become clearer from Mary Delany's description of a costume that
aroused her disapproval. Lady Huntingdon's petticoat was 'black
velvet embroidered with chenille, the pattern a large stone vase
filled with ramping flowers that spread almost over a breadth of
the petticoat from the bottom to the top; between each vase of
flowers was a pattern of gold shells and foliage embossed and
most heavily gilt . . . it was a most laboured piece of finery, the
pattern much properer of a stucco staircase, than the apparel of a
lady .'19 But of course the Duchess of Queensberry's brown hills
and old stump were no more innately appropriate for the apparel
of a lady than Lady Huntingdon's stucco staircase. Mary
Delany's objection to the latter embroidery was moral. The
stitchery transgressed the proprieties of femininity ; it was showy
and artificial rather than small and natural, it boasted of human
finery rather than God's creation. For Mary Delany, a lady's love
of nature and the manifestation of her love of nature in her 'work'
were equated with love of God and natural piety. She prefaced
the first volume of Plants Copied after Nature in Paper Mosaic
with the following poem:
122
Hail to the happy hour when fancy led

My Pensive mind this flo'ry path to tread ;
And gave me emulation to presume
With timid art, to trace fair Nature's bloom:
To view with awe the great Creative Power,
That shines confess' din the minutest flower ;
With wonder to pursue the Glorious line
And gratefully adore The Hand Divine!
Even before Mary Delany's death in 1788 a somewhat different

relationship was developing between women, nature and
embroidery. Love of nature continued to be considered an
important aspect of feminine piety and purity, but, in addition,
women were coming to be seen as part of nature.
From about 1780 to the early decades of the nineteenth century
this was expressed by a new genre of silk picture - ladies in
gardens. Often combining watercolour · elements with
embroidery, these pictures depict the lady as one flower amongst
many. Behind the ever increasing identification of women, or
rather femininity, with nature lay the influence of Jean Jacques
Rousseau. Amongst all the theorists of the Enlightenment, the
intellectual movement that dominated Europe and America in the
first three quarters of the eighteenth century, Rousseau gave
clearest expression to the values associated with bourgeois
femininity.
His theories on education were popularised by English writers
on education and his book Emile, 1762, was serialised in The
Ladies Magazine during 1780. An ideal girl's upbringing is pre
scribed for Sophie, who was designated to become Emile's wife.
What in an individual is determined by nature and what by
nurture and environment is, according tO Rousseau, radically
different in relation to the two sexes. For boys he acknowledg�s
that their behaviour, abilities and achievements are an expression
of the total environment in which they are reared, but he presents
a lengthy list of feminine qualities which he considers to be innate
in women. Shame and modesty, love of embellishment and
finery, the desire to please and be polite to others , and skilful
shrewdness tending to duplicity - all these characteristics are
presented as inborn and instinctive in the female sex. 30 His ideal
was a homely girl, reared in a rural environment, wearing the
loose-flowing dress of Grecian women rather than stays , fed on
123
cream and cakes which she naturally preferred to meat, and

entirely unable to run: 'women are not made to run' . 1 1
A love of embroidery was, in Rousseau's opinion, natural to
women:
Dress making, embroidery, lace making come by themselves.

Tapestry making is less to the young women's liking because
furniture is too distant from their persons . . . This spon
taneous development extends easily to drawing, because the
latter art is not difficult - simply a matter of taste; but at no
cost would I want them to learn landscape, even less the human
figure. Foliage, fruits, flowers and drapery is all they need to
know to create their own embroidery pattern, if they can't find
one that suits them ..l!
Rousseau argues that a girl has a primary propensity for the art of
pleasing. He wrote that:
The liule creature will doubtless be very desirous to know how

to dress up her doll, to make its sleeve-knots, its flounces, its
head-dress etc . . . And, in fact almost all of them learn with
reluctance to read and write; but very readily apply themselves
to the use of their needles. They imagine themselves already
grown up, and think with pleasure that such qualifications will
enable them to decorate themselves. 1·1
He goes on to tell the story of a young girl who repeatedly makes

'O's with her pen as she learns to write until she catches sight of
herself n
i the mirror and sees how awkward the effort makes her
appear. She is persuaded to resume her lessons only because

without knowing her leners she will be unable to stitch her name
on her linen and thus prevent other women from using her
family's property. And of course needlework shows off her hands
to advantage .�.
.
Needlewomen depicted Rousseau's tomb, evoked his repre

sentation of ideal femininity in a natural family, stitched portraits
of his heroines and even of the philosopher himself. Realising
how influential his work was - and how pernicious in relation to
women - Mary Wollstonecraft devoted a large section of her
Vindication of the Rights of Women to attacking his views on
natural femininity and the subordination of women which he
124
believed naturally followed. She argued that there was nothing

natural about a girl's behaviour; rather 'their understanding is
neglected, and [they are] forced to sit still, play with dolls and
listen to foolish conversation'. Rousseau, she pointed out, was
taking as 'undoubted indication of nature' what was in fact 'the
effect of habit' . .1 s
The development of an aristocratic feminine ideal, asserted as

natural to women, and the role of embroidery in conveying a
leisured lifestyle had a disastrous effect on the professional branch
of embroidery . Because embroidery connoted 'not work' its
status as a profession dropped, and yet the feminine ideal of
delicacy, purity and naturalness, preached so persuasively by
Rousseau, stimulated the demand for whitework floral
embroidery.
The invention of Crompton's mule in 1779 enabled British
manufacturers to produce very fine muslin as a base for
embroidery. Mills in the West of Scotland concentrated on this
type of cloth which was then embroidered by women and
children. In 1782 an Italian named Luigi Ruffini set up a
workroom in Edinburgh with girls of six or seven as apprentices
producing flowered muslin. By 1793 parish ministers all over the
West of Scotland reported similar workrooms.-16 One minister
offered a somewhat surprising criticism of them :
About 200 young girls are employed at dotting and

tambouring etc. Some of them being at eight or nine years of
age, and at this early period gain sixpence or eightpence a day .
Although this may be profitable to one class, it is attended with
much material inconvenience to another. Farmers complain of
the high wages of servants and sometimes have difficulty in
procuring them at all. Is there no remedy for this growing evil.37
Four girls worked together at a tambour or hoop, with the

youngest girls employed at 'dotting' in darning or satin stitch,
while the older ones embroidered the flowers with a tambour
hook which creates a fine, continuous chain stitch. They fol
lowed a pattern placed below the fine muslin . In 1786 Ruffini
applied to the Board ofTrustees in Edinburgh for three of his boy
apprentices to be allowed to learn drawing at the Drawing
125
Academy maintained by the board . He employed one hundred

and ten girls and only four boys. Although there were no
regulations preventing girls from training as pattern drawers, no
girls were admitted to the school in Edinburgh. In 1797 Sir
William Forbes suggested that a second school be opened speci
fically for women to provide a knowledge of drawing 'to such of
them as are engaged in flowering muslin, in tambouring,
embroidery and other works of fancy.' Although the plan was
approved, a school was never established.
Tambour workshops employed children bound by the parish,
and the evidence is that they were often severely mistrea��d. The
Lancaster Gazetter of 4 July 1801, for instance, reported the
prosecution of a London tambour master who was found guilty
of ill-treating his apprentice, Sussanah Archer, aged fifteen. He
was charged with assaulting and beating her, 'employing her
beyond her strength, at unseasonable hours and times; of
neglecting to provide for her proper clothing and necessaries,
whereby she was stated to be emaciated and her health impaired.'
Five out of the man's seventeen apprentices had already died and
at the trial it was admitted that the treatment of tambour
apprentices was 'disgraceful to any civilised state' . .lx
Embroidery outworkers were in a marginally less miserable
state than tambour workers, but the work was overcrowded and
low paid. Its aristocratic associations made embroidery one of the
few acceptable forms of employment for women whose class
background would normally forbid paid employment.
Moreover, needlework was the only manual skill they would
have acquired - and thus they entered the trade.
Robert Campbell in The London Tradesman, 1747, describing
the different occupations in the city, lists embroiderers among the
employees of the Lace Man, along with lace weavers, spangle,
bugle and button makers, bone lace makers, orrice weavers, silver
thread drawers and wire drawers. Campbell had nothing good to
say of women workers. He describes, for example, women silver
and gold button makers as gin drinkers and thieves who 'reduced
the trade to small profits, and small reputation; the women are
generally Gin-Drinkers, and, consequently bad Wives; this
makes them poor, and to get something to keep Soul and body
together work for a mere trifle.''u In other words, if women are
sweated the fault lies in their womanhood, not in the Lace Man.
Embroiderers, on the other hand, he describes as not bad women
126
but simply bad at their work:
Few of the workers at present can draw, they have their

patterns from the pattern drawer, who must likewise draw the
work itself, which they only fill up, with gold and silver, silks
or worsteds, according to use and nature. We are far from
excelling in the branch of business in England. The nuns in
foreign countries far exceed anything we can perform . . . This
I take to be chiefly owing to the want of taste for drawing in the
performers. An embroiderer ought to have a taste for design
ing, and a just notion of the principles of light and shade, to
know how to range their colours in a natural order, make them
reflect upon one another, and the whole to represent the figure
in its natural shade ....
Campbell's expectations of the embroiderers and his

employment of the word 'taste' suggest he assumed they came
from a more privileged class than the button makers . However,
his suggestion that the embroiderers simply had a want of taste for
drawing is ludicrous. Elsewhere he makes it perfectly clear that
pattern drawing was strictly the province of men. 'If a boy is
found to have any scrawling Disposition he may be bound as soon
as he can write,'41 commented Campbell on pattern drawers, and
proceeded to outline the trade's requirements:
This requires a fruidul Fancy, to invent new whims to please

the changeable foible of the ladies, for whose use their work is
chiefly intended. It requires no great taste in painting, nor the
principles of drawing, but a wild kind of imagination, to adorn
their work with a son of regular confusion fit to attract the eye
but not to please the judgement. J�
There is a dichotomy between Campbell's demands for judg

ment and a sense of design from professional embroiderers, and
his expectation of mindless, natural confusion from the lady
amateurs.
Apart from the sweated outworkers and workroom appren
tices, there were embroiderers with businesses of their own.
Elizabeth Watson, for example, in the early years of the century
advertised : 'At the sign of the Wrought Bed, all sorts of the richest
and newest-fashioned Wrought Beds, being much finer than any
127
ever yet made for Sale. All sorts of lower price Wrought Beds and
worked Callicoes, for Bed Linings and Window Curtains,
Wrought Quilts, Imbroidered Aprons, and loose Flower fit for
Gowns, Scarfs and Aprons. ' Miss Hare sold patterns pro
fessionally: ' All kinds of silks, gauze or muslin, painted or stained
in most elegant tastes for ladies negligees, shawls, or aprons, and
. . . drawings of all sorts for every kind of needlework on the
shortest notice. '�3
An ideology of femininity was produced right across society, but

it was powerfully reproduced in bourgeois families through the
mother/daughter relationship.
In the seventeenth century samplers had been employed to
inculcate obedience, submission, passivity and piety. Parental
authority and the primacy of the marriage bond were dominant
issues in all pictorial figurative embroidery. In the eighteenth
century samplers continued to inculcate femininity, but parents -
particularly mothers - are represented as not simply honoured,
but loved. Ties of affection within the family gained a new
importance in the latter half of the century. Women were
increasingly locked into a place within the family; femininity was
to be realised in child bearing and child rearing. The new ideology
of motherhood coincided with and sanctified the effects of a rising
birth rate and declining death rate, which meant that women had
more living children and the family more domestic
responsibilities.
Motherhood became an overriding issue for radical . and
conservative writers. Thus Rousseau exhorted women to fulfil
their 'proper purpose' to which they were destined by nature :
'Where mothers resume nursing their children, morals will be
reformed ; natural feelings will revive in every heart; the state will
be repopulated ; this first step alone will re-unite everyone.·��
Ironically embroidery came under suspicion in the new
concern for motherhood. Embroidery prepared women to be
pleasing to men, but was it such a good preparation for
motherhood? William Buchan thought not. In Domestic
Medicine, or a Treatise on the Prevention and Care ofDiseases by
Regimen and Simple Medicines, 1769, he wrote:
Miss is set down to her frame before she can put on her clothes,
128
69 Embroidered picture ofRousseau's comb (died
1778). Chrisries, London. Silk and chenille,
42 X 52 cm.
70 Embroidered picture, Christies, London .
c 1810. Silk and chenille, 32.5 X 40.5 cm.

Rousseau's theories on innate femininity, and his
prescriptions for a girl's education, were popular
throughout Europe. During 1780 his book Emtle
was printed in English in The Ladies' Magazine.
Embroidered piccures reflect his influence and
celebrate his ideal of rural famtly life. The
embroiderer in the garden assens char femininity
is pan ofwomen's narure and that the ability to
embroider is, in Rousseau's words, 'a
spontaneous development'.
71 Bedspread, English, private collection. Late

eighteenth century.
For embroiderers of the working class, the
invention ofCromptom's Mule led to the
production of fine muslin as a base for white
embrotdery. The flowers and dots were created in
fine chainsutch with a tambour hook.
Tambour workshops origmated in Scotland
dunng 1792. In 180 l, at the London trial ofa
tambour workshop master for cruelty, rhe
conditions of tambour embroiderers were
condemned as 'disgraceful to any civilised state'.
71 L<� \I err LttbfJrinm. ) can BaptlStc Chardin
(French, 1699-1779). Mus�'" du Louvre, Paris.
Od on t.mvas.
Morhcrhood lx,came a popular subject in arc

during the mid-eighteenth century. Chard in
shows a mother and daughtc::r with their
cmbr01Jcry - the daughtc:: r karmng the virtues of
femimnc industry fro m her mother.
7 � Embroide red picturt, Strangers Hall

Museum, Norfolk. Late c::ightccnrh century. Silk
and water colour.
Mothers and daughters in a rustic setting were
repeatedly depicted in the latter halfof the
c•ghtctnth cencury, as the relationship gained a
new social significance.
74 Sampler, Elizabeth Louisa Money, Christies,
London. 1844.
Sampler verses on the brevity ofyouth, and the
pain and ennui of life, from which death is
viewed as a release, were extremely common well
into the nineteenth century. The concept of
reward or retribution in the after-life pro�ided a
powerful weapon for instilling obedience and
docility. The religious revivals at the end of the
eighteenth century appear ro have �·imulared the
use ofthreats of death in disciplining children.
75 Needlework Memorial, Caroline L Newcomb,

The Daughters of the American Revolution
Museum, Washington. 1817. Watercolour and
silk, 64.8 X 80.6 cm. A concern with death and
mourning informed all the arcs in the latter half
of the eighteenth century when embroidered
mourning pictures began to be stitched.
Traditionally, embroidery had played an
important part in mourning rituals. In the
United States, mourning pictures became
specifically family memorials.
76 \'(/oodmart irt a Storm. after Gainsborough,
Mary l.inwood, Leicestershire Art Gallery,
Leicester. Worsted wools.
Lace eighteenth-century embroiderers reproduced
rural genre paintings in thread. They selected
pictures that represented the poor as pious,
hard-working and deserving of the charitable,
concerned compassion which women of the
privileged classes were expected to manifest
naturally in their life and needlework.
77 Chert)• Ripe, after a paincing by Francis

Wheadey, gift of lrwin U ntermeyer tO the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Last
quarter of the eighteenth century. Original
mezzotint, pardy cue out and applied upon
painted and embroidered silk. 50.8 X 4 1 .9 cm.
and is taught to believe that to excel at her needle is the only

thing that can entitle her to general esteem. It is unnecessary
here to insist upon the dangerous consequences of obliging
girls to sit too much. They are pretty well known, and are too
often felt at a certain time of life. But supposing this critical
period to be got over, greater dangers still await them when
they come to be mothers. Women who have been accustomed
to a sedentary life generally run great hazard in childbed . . .
Would mothers, n
i stead of having their daughters instructed n
i
many trifling accomplishments, employ them in plain work

and housewifery, and allow them sufficient exercise in the
open air, they would both make them more healthy mothers,
and more useful members of society. �5
Buchan voices the new assumption that mothers would have total
responsibility for the mental and physical development of
daughters, that they would singlehandedly and devotedly form
their children. The ideology rationalised the growing limitation
on middle-class women's sphere of action - although Buchan
allows them a useful role in society - and sanctioned their
economic dependence on their husband. Their 'survival' was thus
dependent on conforming to the feminine ideal and they
inculcated a feminine identity in daughters - for the children's
sake. Motherhood was accepted as a personal, moral duty. Tracts
appeared with such titles as An Unfortunate Mother's Advice to
her Absent Daughter, 1761 and The Polite Lady, or a course of
Female Education in a Series of Letters from a Mother to her
Daughter.
Motherhood became a popular subject in all the artS. A new
kind of genre painting developed in France representing child
hood and domestic bliss. The subject of La Mere Laboreuse by
Jean Baptiste Chard in, ( 1699-1779), shows a mother and
daughter both embroidering with a tambour hook. But nowhere
more than in embroidery itself was the mother/daughter
relationship celebrated and idealised.
A new silk picture subject developed: mother and daughter in a
rustic setting. The two are usually represented hands clasped, the
daughter a tiny replica of the mother, as they walk together in the
countryside to underline the naturalness and healthiness of the
relationship. And as Chardin's painting indicated, not only was
the mother/daughter relationship a major subject of embroidered
129
pictures , but embroidery itself became a major factor within the

relationship. Sampler verses set fonh a mother's love and moral
duty and called for the daughter's absolute love and obedience:
All youth set right at first, with Ease go on,

And each new Task is with new Pleasure done,
But if neglected till they grow in years
And each fond Mother her dear Darling spares
Error becomes habitual and you'll find
'Tis then hard labour to reform the Mind
Ann Maria Wiggins aged 7
It was precisely because sampler-making and embroidery

originated within the increasingly emotive mother/daughter
relationship that embroidery, and the femininity it was intended
to inculcate, became such a 'habit', to use Wollstonecraft's word
for the power of the ideology of femininity . In itself sampler
making could nor have reproduced femininity, however long a
child laboured over pious phrases and selfless sentiments. The
key to the hold embroidery and femininity established over
middle-class women was that it became implicated in an intense
relationship, shot through with as much guilt, hatred and
ambivalence as love.
The embroidered picture of mothers and daughters, with the
daughters appearing as diminutive versions of the mother,
illustrate the intense identification between the two. Because
women are the same gender as their daughters they tend not to
experience the infants as separate from themselves in the same
way as they do sons. In both cases a mother is likely to experience
a sense of oneness and continuity with her child. But the sense
can last longer and be stronger in relation to a daughter, whom
she can experience as an extension or double of herself. 46
For a daughter, learning to embroider and to absorb the
message in samplers took place in the context of her deep,
unconscious primary bond with her mother.
The very intensity of this relationship, however, (which began
to a��ume its contemporary character in the latter half of the
eighteenth century) creates conflicts. Children seek to escape
from the mother as well as to return to her.�' Yet development for
a daughter necessitates growing away from her mother and
becoming more like her. The conflict appeared at the heart of
130
embroidery. On the one hand sampler making symbolised unity

with the mother expressed in obedience and gratitude, on the
other embroidering could be experienced as an oppressive forced
bonding with the mother - a denial of the child's individuation.
Similarly, a mother's feelings towards her daughter could be
played out around embroidery. Mothers react tO their daughters'
ambivalence towards themselves by wanting both to keep their
daughters close and to push them into adulthood. Teaching a
child to embroider asserts the identification and unity of mother
with daughter, yet instils skills intended for the moment when the
daughter leaves parents for husband.
Whether selected by child or imposed by mother, sampler
verses are imbued with guilt and the desire to make reparation:
On this Fair Canvas does my needle write

With love and Duty both this I indite
And in these lines dear Parent I impart
The tender feelings of a Grateful Heart.
Behold the labour of my tender age

And view this work which did my hours engage
With anxious care I did these colours place
A smile to gain from my dear Parents face
Whose care of me I ever will regard,
And pray that God will give a kind reward.
An entry in Fanny Burney's diary made at sixteen illustrates the

mother/daughter conflicts so strenuously denied by sampler
verses:
I make a kind of rule never to indulge myself in my two most

favourite pursuits, reading and writing, in the morning - no,
like a very good girl I give that up wholly to needlework, by
which means reading and writing in the afternoon is a pleasure
I cannot be blamed for by my mother, as it does not take up the
time I ought to spend otherwise . ..x
Fanny Burney was in fact referring to her stepmother. Her own

mother had died in 1762 - a sampler by her exists at Parham Park
in Sussex. Fanny began writing a diary in 1768 after her father
remarried. Her stepmother, like her mother, was an educated
131
woman, but considered that Fanny was unbecomingly bookish.

By insisting that her stepdaughter embroider, rather than giving
all her time over to literature, the stepmother was in all
probability recapitulating her relationship with her own mother.
That Fanny experienced mixed feelings towards her stepmother's
demand is evident in her diary entry with the emphasis on moral
imperative and the repeated use of hyberbole. Fanny wanted to
be 'a very good girl', loved and at one with the woman of the
family, and yet she desires the independence, adulthood and
autonomy signified by reading and writing.
The very nature of needlework, the stillness, concentration and
patience it required simply made it a penance for some children:
'Polly Cook did it and she hated every stitch she did in it' says one
sampler. Aware that embroidery could be a double-edged tool for
inculcating femininity, an educational tract for parents observed
that the ideal mother 'bred up her children in all the plain and
flowery arts of the needle; but it was never made a task nor toil to
them.·��
Ironically the author was Dr Isaac Watts whose Divine and
Moral Songsfor Children, first published in 1720, provided verses
for so many of the samplers toiled over by small girls throughout
the century. Dr Watts recommended that parents teach his verses
to their children 'that they may have something to think upon
when alone and sing over to themselves . . . Thus they will not be
forced to seek relief for an emptiness of mind out of the loose and
dangerous sonnets of the age.'5" Amongst Watts' songs, 'The
Rose' was particularly popular with sampler makers :
Then I'll not be proud of my youth or my beauty

Since both of them wither and fade;
But gain a good name by doing my duty:
This will scent like a rose when I'm dead.
Similarly, verses from Watts' Solemn Thoughts on God and

Death were frequently embroidered:
There s
i an hour when I must die
Nor can I tell how soon 'twill come

A thousand children young as I
Am called by death to hear their doom.
132
Death was of course closer to women's and children's lives than it

is today. The family died at home, nursed by the women of the
household. But as greater numbers of children survived, death in
the family became less familiar, and more dreadful. Threat of
death and retribution in the after life was a powerful weapon for
instilling obedience and docility. The religious revivals at the end
of the century ncreased
i the use of death threats in children's
upbringing: 'Death at last surprised her; and surprised we all must
be, if we do not live as if the present day may be our last,' wrote
Jonas Hanway in Domestic Happiness Promoted: in A series of
Discourses from a Father to His Daughter, 1786, adding that 'half
who are born, are dead by seventeen years'.
There was no shortage of doom-laden verses for samplers. The
works of Phillip Doddrige and John Wesley both emphasised the
transitory nature of life and the desperate importance of virtue for
avoiding eternal damnation :
Dear Child delay no time

But with all speed amend
The longer thou dost live
The nearer to thy end.
Sampler dated 1713
And am I born to die

To lay this body down
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown.
Sampler dated 1819 from Rev. C. Wesley
But all embroidery, however oppressive the chosen or imposed

subject may appear, invariably incorporates a source of comfort,
satisfaction or pleasure for the embroiderer. Thus the saddest
samplers suggest that there will be an end to tediousness, bore
dom and constraint:
There is a calm for those who weep,

A rest for weary Pilgrims found,
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground
Jesus lover of my soul
Let me to thy bosom fly.
133
As One Day Goes Another Comes

And Sometimes Shew Us Dismal Dooms
As Time Rools on New Things We See
Which With us Seldom do Agree
Though now and Then a Pleasant Day
Its Long A Coming and Soon Away
Wherefore The Everlasting Truth
Is Good for aged and For Youth
For Them to Set Their Hearts Upon
For What Will Last When Time is Done.
1755
Sometimes a note of vindictive triumph sounds in samplers -

you'll be sorry when I'm dead - as in the following verse which
was popular throughout the eighteenth century:
When this you see, remember me,

And keep me in your mind,
And be not like a weather cock
That turn at every wind.
When I am dead, and laid in grave,
And all my bones are rotten,
By this may I remembered be
When I should be forgotten.
A concern with death was, of course, not limited to

embroidery but informed all of eighteenth-century culture.
Death was a central subject for Neo-classic art with its 'sobering
lessons in the more homely virtues, stoic exemplars of unspoilt
and uncorrupted simplicity, of abstinence and continence, of
noble self-sacrifice, and heroic patriotism. The stark deathbed
and the virtuous widow replace the chaise longue and pampered
cocotte.'51 Thus Hugh Honour characterises the shift from
Rococo art to Neo-classicism in terms of representations of
women. There was, indeed, an increasing concentration on
women's behaviour throughout the century, couched either in
highly sentimental or deeply moralistic terms. Because the virtues
of bourgeois femininity were inscribed within every aspect of
Neo-classicism it was a decidedly appropriate style for the
embroiderer to adapt to her own uses. By embroidering the
VIrtuous widow she became a virtuous widow - for an
134
embroiderer's personality was considered to be displayed by the

form, content and act of embroidering.
Moreover, the Neo-classical insistence on the educative
mission of art, appealing to morality through sentiment, helped
purge embroidery of its association with vanity and frivolity. The
'severe and chastened style'�:, representing a life of simple.
uncomplicated passions, yet moral, rational and touched with
sentiment, largely banished the silken shepherdess, replacing her
with women mourning at tombs beneath willow trees, strewing
flowers sadly upon urn or monument. The mourning pictures
referred to in Chapter One dominated pictorial embroidery from
the latter half of the eighteenth century until at least 1825.
Neo-classical paintings provided a wealth of patterns for such
pictures which could be appropriated as the basis for embroidery.
In art, as in life, women played a key role in mourning rituals. For
painters and sculptors the inclusion of grieving women provided a
note of pathos and emotionality, making the male protagonists
appear all the more stoic and heroic by contrast. InJacques Louis
David's Oath of the Horatii, t 785, the weeping women allow
'masculine courage and resolve I to be] contrasted with feminine
tenderness and acquiescence'.�' But even though the iconography
of Neo-classicism depicted the difference between the sexes as
one of weakness versus strength, self-control versus self
abandon, women were allocated significantly virtuous roles. That
in part explained the appeal of the 'Neo-classical way of death' to
needlewomen - forever judged by the work they had in hand, in
terms not of its aesthetic value but of what it said about their value
as women.
There is, however, a profound difference between embroidery
and painting in the representation of mourning women. The dead
are offered as noble, heroic and tranquil in painting, while
desolation and loss is expressed entirely by the grief of the
survivors - the mourning women - or by the heroic struggle for
self-control if the survivor is a man. In embroidery, on the other
hand, the mourning woman is endowed with power and self
control. She stands beside the tomb, bravely and dutifully
strewing flowers. She becomes the heroic survivor, dutiful in that
she treasures the memory of the departed, but very active and
alive.
Traditionally, embroidery had played an important part in
mourning rituals and, to some extent, mourning pictures and
135
memorial samplers were the eighteenth-century equivalent of the

black embroidered beds of the middle ages. But as middle-class
women become increasingly detached from the family business,
domestic rituals tended to expand. Mourning, in particular, grew
ever more complex and important. Mary Delany's letters
repeatedly itemise the appropriate clothing for different stages of
mournmg.
In the United States an embroidered mourning picture followed a

sampler as the next stage in a girl's education. Both became
popular in the 1790s, when the expansion of the middle classes in
the North and Middle Atlantic states led to an increase in private
schools and embroidery was taught in emulation of European
habits. Writing in the Feminst
i Artjournal, Winter 197(r77, Toni
Flares Fratto describes the curiously contradictory ideology of
American society which prompted the expanding production of
samplers and embroidered pictures:
It was an age that called itself egalitarian but was less opposed
to social distinction than it was individualistic and socially
mobile. One of the consequences of this thrust was an
intensification of the desire to spread the social graces and the
arts, formerly the prerogative of the upper class alone,
throughout society. What had once been luxuries were coming
to be seen as necessities, and were in fact necessary to the
maintenance of a new and not altogether stable standard of
gentility. 54
When Martha Jefferson was at school in Paris in 1787, her father

Thomas Jefferson wrote to impress upon her the social
importance of needlework: 'In dull company, and in dull
weather, for instance, it is ill-manners to read, it is ill-manners to
leave them; no card-playing there among genteel people - that is
abandoned to blackguards. The needle is then a valuable resource.
Besides, without knowing how to use it herself, how can the
mistress of a family direct the work of her servants?' Martha
Jefferson's reply is unenthusiastic but resigned, 'As for needle
work, the only kind that I could learn here would be embroidery,
indeed netting also; but I could not do much of those in America,
because of the impossibility of having proper silks; however they
136
will not be totally useless. '55

Embroidery silks were soon in abundant supply, judging from
the number of samplers and embroidered pictures produced. The
European Neo-classical model was adapted for the United States
with the addition of Christian and domestic symbols, and the
eviction of literary references. The American mourning picture is
specifically a family memorial : a house symbolised the dead's
earthly home, a church was included for faith and hope, a
withered oak for the transitoriness of life, the sea for tears and a
ship for departure Stencils of these individual elements were
.
available for the embroiderer to dispose as she wished. Gradually

water-colour mourning pictures replaced embroidery, but
stitching carried such important associations that short brush
strokes were employed on roughened paper to imitate
embroidery.
Writing to his daughter at school, a father directed her to
embroider the family a mourning picture :
Dear Daughter
We are well and hope this will meet you with the same. 1 wish
you now to work in embroidery a mourning piece n
i memory
of your brother Strabo - who died June 29 1799 aged eight

months and 13 days. You must wright by every post and let me
know how fast you progress in your education and at all times
remember to behave well and conduct in Decency in all your
transactions through life.
from your affectionate father
Isaac Clark5c.
The letter is dated 1806, seven years after Strabo's death, which
suggests that for the embroiderer mourning pictures were at times
little more than exercises in piety and obedience rather than
personal expressions of sorrow. Occasionally, however, a
memorial sampler strikes a note of specific grief and guilt - as in
this early nineteenth-century British sampler :
On The Death of My Affectionate Mother

Lord thous wast pleased to bestow on me a mother truly kind,
Whose constant care was to bestow good precepts on my mind
And plant the seeds of virtue on my young and tender breast
Ere thou didst snatch her from my sight with thee to be at rest
137
From Mlkmaids
i to Mothers
Grant me 0 Lord they constant aid to do the holy will

That a tender Mother's pious wish may be in me fulfilled
Eliza Richardson, 10years old, 1837
Sewing a sampler declaring the child's intention of continued

goodness and obedience was a means of maintaining a sense of
one-ness with the mother whom embroidery and sampler
making signified. At the same time perhaps the protestations of
love and appreciation denied the guilt/ambivalence that
characterises the mother/daughter relationship, thus stilling the
guilt death invariably brings in its wake. Moreover, the time
taken to complete a memorial sampler or picture allowed a period
of mourning, and possible acceptance of separation and loss,
despite the attempt to 'retain' the mother by maintaining the code
of behaviour laid down in sampler making.
Although images of death and mourning were the most popular
Neo-classical subjects adopted by embroiderers, other subjects
revolving around loss, separation and renunciation were taken up
enthusiastically, for example, Comelia Mother ofthe Gracchi and
Hector Taking Leave of Andromeda. Hector's parting words to
Andromeda were 'Go therefore back to our house and take up
your own work, the loom and distaff.' The image evoked all the
feelings associated with loss and separation which women
constantly conjured up in their work. From the moment of
weaning, women's lives were a continual pattern of separation
separation from their mothers, their primary family, their own
children. But in Hector and Andromeda a new element of
separateness enters the iconography of women's needlework, the
separation of the private and public spheres. Hector instructs
Andromeda to stay at home, to occupy herself with domestic
activities. Femininity was to be lived in terms of specific domestic
responsibilities. The aristocratic feminine ideal had been defined
in terms of not being seen to work. Middle-class women could
not fulfil this ideal, simply because they had to work in the home.
The new emphasis on mothering makes this quite clear. The work
they did was, however, not viewed as labour but rather as the
expression of their innate domesticity. A new feminine ideal was
constructed - domestic femininity. And for women urged and
instructed to 'achieve' a domestic feminine identity, it became
increasingly important that embroidery be seen not primarily as a
badge of leisure but as a contribution to the happiness and well-
138
being of the home. I n the debates on the role and right conduct of
women, embroidery became a constant reference point - and the
content of the art soon reflected the recodification of ideas about
women stirred by the often contradictory effects of industrial
isation, evangelicalism and political radicalism.
The Revolution in France prompted debate in Britain about the

nature and role of women voiced by Mary Wollstonecraft in The
Vindication of the Rights of Women. Published in 1792, it was
both a demand for bourgeois women to be granted legal and
political equality with men and a furious attack on the supposed
virtues of femininity. Mary Wollstonecraft claimed that
gentleness was a meaningless virtue 'when it is the submissive
demeanour of dependence'/' and obedience was a virtue 'ever
sought for by tyrants ,'5x while fragility never provoked real
respect'. If the female mind were strengthened and enlarged, she
argued, there would be an end to 'blind obedience?' She
demonstrated how the construction of feminine characteristics
sanctioned middle-class women's subjugation and economic
dependence and why women embraced the constraints of
femininity. She claimed that the only semblance of power women
could obtain was through femininity: 'While they have been
insulated, as it were; and while they have been stripped of the
virtues that should clothe humanity, they have been decked with
artificial graces, that enable them to exercise a short-lived
tyranny.'<>" Identifying needlework as a prime agent in the
construction of femininity, Wollstonecraft summarised the
attacks levelled at the art since the seventeenth century. 'This
employment', she wrote, 'contracts their faculties more than any
other by confining their thoughts to their persons. '" 1 Previously,
embroiderers had been criticised for vanity and frivolity.
Wollstonecraft went further and speculated on the destructive
effects of an activity intended not for personal creative pleasure
but to enhance the femininity of the embroiderer in other people's
eyes. Moreover, because embroidery was a sedentary occupation
it 'renders the majority of women sickly . . . and false notions of
female excellence make them proud of this delicacy'.":
Other considerably less radical women and conservative men
were equally concerned about the effect on a woman's health of
hours spent at embroidery . Mrs Chapone in Letters on The
139
Improvement of The Mind Addressed to a Young Lady, 1774,

recommended needlework only with reserve, observing that it
was more important to strengthen the mind by reading, and
health by exercise. In Domestic Medicine, 1769, William Buchan
attributed the weakness he saw in young women entirely to
excessive embroidery:
One hardly meets with a girl who can at the same time boast of
early performances by the needle, and a good constitution.
Close and early confinement generally occasions indigestion,
head-aches, pale complexions, pain of the stomach, loss of
appetite, coughs, consumptions of the lungs, and deformity of
the body. The last of these indeed is not to be wondered at,
considering the awkward postures in which girls sit at many
kinds of needlework, and the delicate flexible state of their
bodies in the early periods of life. o.\
Buchan's book was an exhortation to mothers to improve the

health of their daughters, but ironically the effect of such
admonitions was that gratitude for good health became another
subject for sampler verses :
Health seems a cherub Most Divinely Bright

More soft than Air, more gay than Morning Light,
Hail, blooming Goddess, thou Propitious power,
Whose Blessings Mortals Next to Life implore
Such Grace in your Heavenly Eyes Appear
That Cottages are Courts when you are there
M. Fennah
Wollstonecraft felt the most unforgivable aspect of the art was

that it made women dull: 'The conversation of Frenchwomen,
who are not so rigidly nailed to their chair to twist lappets, and
knot ribands, is frequently superficial; but, I contend, that it is
not half so insipid as that of those Englishwomen whose time is
spent making . . . the whole mischiief of trimmings.'"4
There was no place in Wollstonecraft's polemic for any
sympathy for or understanding of the support and pleasure
women found in embroidery. An earlier critic, calling for
education for women, realised that embroidery and other
'feminine crafts' were a source of creative satisfaction for women
140
in default of any other outlets. Eliza Heywood in The Female

Spectator, 1 746, asked 'Why do they call us silly women, and not
endeavour to make us otherwise?' She goes on to claim that 'The
Ladies themselves begin to seem sensible of the Injustice which
has been done to them, and find a Vacuum in their Minds, which
to fill up, they of their own accord invented ways of sticking little
Pictures on Cabinets . . . '65
Less sympathetic but more searching, Wollstonecraft offered a
class perspective of the place of embroidery in women's lives. She
recognised that 'women of the middle rank' aped the fashions of
the nobility, though 'without catching their ease'.oo Nevertheless
one of the major arguments she offered for middle-class women
to abandon embroidery and needlework revealed how deeply
embedded she was in the ideology of her time. 'The custom of
confining girls to their needle' she wrote, 'and by thus narrowing
their minds they are rendered unfit to fulfil the peculiar duties
which Nature has assigned them.'", An almost evangelical
moralism sounds in her solution to the time middle-class women
put into needlework :
When a woman in the lower rank of life makes her husband's

and children's clothes, she does her duty, this is her part of the
family business; but when women work only to dress better
than they could otherwise afford, it is worse than a sheer loss of
time. To render the poor virtuous they must be employed, and
women in the middle ranks of life . . . might employ them,
whilst they themselves managed their families, instructed their
children . . . 0'
The evangelical Anglican writer and educationalist Hannah More

also extolled the virtues of industry for the poor and the duty of
motherhood for the middle class. Indeed, More and
Wollstonecraft were united in their concern over the importance
of mothering and disdain for embroidery. But the profound
differences between them cannot be overestimated : whereas
Wollstonecraft admitted a 'wild wish' that sex distinction be
abolished because it created femininity, that 'weakness of
character ascribed to women, her understanding neglected,
whilst accomplishments are acquired with sedulous care', 0"
Hannah More wanted sex distinctions re-codified : she argued for
'good originals instead of bad imitators . . . to be the best thing of
141
one's own kind rather than an inferior thing, even if it were of

higher kind'. She wanted women to be 'excellent women rather
than indifferent men'. 70
Embroidery presented something of a problem for reformers
like Hannah More and Maria Edgeworth. They wanted to defend
femininity but they nevertheless agreed with Wollstonecraft that
embroidery was redolent of both aristocratic decadence and the
cardinal sin of vanity. Accordingly they attempted to delineate an
attitude towards embroidery appropriate for the industrial
bourgeoisie - the class that was defining itself not only in
opposition to the new proletariat, but also to the landed classes -
the gentry and the aristocracy.
Hannah More claimed that the practice of the art had changed
significantly since its hey-day in the hands of the nobility:
It is a matter of triumph that they [young ladies of the

industrial bourgeoisie I are at present employed in learning the
polite arts, while others wore out their days in adorning the
mansion-house with hangings of hideous tapestry and dis
figuring tent stitch. The superiority of the reigning modes is
cheerfully allowed; for certainly there is no piety in bad taste.
Still, granting all the deformity of the exploded ornaments, one
advantage attended them: the walls and floors were not vain of
their decorations; and it is to be feared that the little person
sometimes is; and while one admires the elegant fingers of a
young lady busied working or painting her ball dress, one
cannot help suspecting that her alacrity may be a little
stimulated by the animating idea, how very well she will look
in it. 7 1
Hannah More had a solution to the dangers attending

embroidery; the young lady should always embroider for others
'habituating [herself! to the service of those to whom she is bound
by every tender tie.'71
Maria Edgeworth, novelist and educationalist, enlarged upon
More's plan. She warned young ladies away from music and
dancing because they encouraged competition, and were 'too
often used as a means of attracting temporary admiration' .
Embroidery on the other hand was an admirable 'domestic
occupation' which she happily endorsed because 'every art,
however trifling in itself, which tends to enliven and embellish
142
domestic life, must be advantageous not only to the female sex,

but to society in general.' · ·'
Wollstonecraft was defeated on her own ground. She argued
that the middle class should abandon embroidery for it made
them sickly and self-absorbed, and thus unfit for motherhood.
More and Edgeworth claimed that embroidery practised in the
right spirit made women into selfless, domestic beings and thus
ideal mothers. The great upsurge of embroidery in the nineteenth
century performed in the name of love (of home and husband)
reveal whose arguments carried the day.
The debate on femininity and the doubts about embroidery
inevitably combined to affect the content of embroidered
pictures. Each shift in the ideology of femininity was part of
general social change and just as earlier embroiderers had found
appropriate patterns in the paintings of Neo-classicism, so
embroiderers in the late eighteenth century turned to rural genre
pictures. These paintings endowed the poor with the very virtues
demanded of bourgeois women - cheerful dutifulness and simple
neatness. Unlike the rural genre of the middleyears ofthe century
which celebrated the vitality of rural life, these were images of
domestic idylls, the peaceful family life of the honest, contented
labourer. In the actions they depict, and in the values they seem to
endorse, they are strikingly similar to the essays,.tracts, sermons
and treatises on the poor which became suddenly more numerous
in the 1780s, such as Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts,
moral stories which sold in huge numbers. Their theme was right
thinking and right living to be attained through hard work,
sobriety, piety and absolute acceptance of the present social
order. The paintings - the contemporary rural genre pictures -
which embroiderers based their work upon, suggest that poverty
is inevitable, thus concealing oppressive labour relations. The
rustic appears only to be working for his family and the solution
to his poverty is honest industry . Describing the work of the
painter Gainsborough and the poet Crabbe, John Barrell
observes that both
depict the poor as degraded, as indeed they had become by the

process of transforming a paternalist into a capitalist economy ;
but the sympathy of both men presents itself as a sort of moral
compensation for the effects of that process. They become
more expansively benevolent in proportion as they represent
143
the poor as more repressed, and congratulate the very classes

that were responsible for the repression of the poor for the very
humane concern they feel at the results of their own actions. 7•
It is easy to see why embroiderers chose to reproduce the work

of Thomas Gainsborough, Francis Wheatley and George
Morland, bearing in mind that through the century embroidery
was increasingly viewed as an extension of the embroiderer.
Because the paintings represented humane concern, the ladies
who stitched them conveyed preoccupations which entirely
exonerated their art from the accusations of vanity and
selfishness.
And rural genre, as importantly, celebrated women's now
designated sphere of family life and domesticity. Morland's
work was particularly popular with needlewomen. They worked
from prints of his paintings which were widely available and
thoroughly sanitised. Rustic complexions were cleared and
thatched cottages subtly repaired , making them entirely
acceptable source material for the feminine needle.
But while affirming the primacy of the domestic sphere, these
pictures were, nevertheless, designed to have an effect on the
outside world. They signify a change in notions of femininity: the
women who at an earlier time had stitched ladies in gardens to
represent the naturalness and rightness of femininity had been
asserting their own virtue; whereas the women who stitched the
rural poor were asserting the power of femininity to evoke virtue,
morality and spirituality in others. Morland's The Blind Beggar,
not lazy but disabled and thus deserving of charity, was stitched
to provide an example of the deserving poor. Gainsborough's
poor children were similarly popular for they demonstrated
children learning the habits of pious industry.
It was perhaps women's sense that their work should have
some moral and emotional impact on society that led to the
development of needle painting - the exact reproduction of oil
painting in stitchery. Once embroidery was indistinguishable
from oil painting it was granted entry into the public sphere with
public exhibition. Mary Linwood is the best known needle
painter. She developed a method of imitating oil painting with
specially dyed worsteds worked on thick cloth in small, short and
long stitches. An exhibition of her work toured the country and
became a regular tourist attraction in London. One hundred
144
needle paintings were on display including six after Morland,

Reynolds' Girl and Kitten, Raphael's Madonna de/la Sedia and
Gainsborough's Woodman in a Storm. Linwood placed them in a
carefully constructed environment: for example a lioness after
Stubbs was hung in a cave strewn with bones. The enthusiastic
reviews were concerned not with the quality of embroidery but
with the quality of femininity on display. The Ladies Monthly
Magazine, 1798, praised the exhibition as:
An effort of ingenuity and indefatigable industry, this

Exhibition is equal, if not superior to any that has been
produced in this country. The taste and judgement, the variety
and gradation of tints cannot possibly be exceeded in effort by
the pencil. The Lodona from Maria Cosway, is a most happy
desplay in excellance in drapery . . . There cannot be a more
.excellant school for the study of all ladies, who are desirous of
attaining proficiency in this wonderful art of needlework.
The Morning Post thought that the greatest praise it could offer
Miss Linwood was to record that not only ladies but 'Great
numbers of Noblemen and Gentlemen go to Miss Linwood's
exhibition.' And typically, The Library of Anecdote paid
attention to Miss Linwood's person rather than her pictures: 'The
ladies of Great Britain may boast in the person of Miss Linwood
of an example of the force and energy of the female mind, free
from any of those ungraceful manners which have in some cases
accompanied strength of genius in a woman.' The reviews amply
illustrate the way a woman's embroidery was seen as an extension
of her sex and judged accordingly. It need hardly be said what a
constraint that was on the embroiderer, or to what an extent it
devalued the work once that particular brand of femininity ceased
to be demanded of women. When Mary Linwood died in 1845 so .
did interest in her work. The British Museum refused the
collection and it was dispersed.
Mary Linwood is also credited with the invention of 'black and
whites' - embroidery that emulated prints and drawings with
fine black silk and sometimes human hair. Country houses were
the usual subjects of 'black and whites'. The Library ofAnecdote,
1839, described how Mary Linwood discovered the technique:
'by copying such prints as struck her attention, with rovings of
black and puce coloured silk on white sarcenet. The needle in her
145
hand became like the spear of lthurial; she but touched her
ground work and her figures assumed form, and started into
life.'-5 In other words, it was all a happy accident, a natural
spontaneous production involving no mental effon.
146
7 : Femininity as Feeling
'By far the greater portion of young ladies (for they are no longer
women) of the present day, are distinguished by a morbid listless
ness of mind and body,'1 wrote Sarah Ellis in 1839. Her books
were among the most popular of the guides to gentility that
proliferated from the late 1830s. She was addressing middle-class
women and blamed their listlessness on their apeing of the aris
tocracy: 'false notions of refinement are rendering them less
influential, less useful and less happy.' Sarah Ellis issued the
'ladies' with a rallying cry: 'This state of listless indifference, my
sisters, must not be. You have deep responsibilities, you ha\fe
urgent claims; a nation's moral wealth is in your keeping.'2
Sarah Ellis recognised that notions of femininity were in flux.
Indeed, her own books were a symptom of bourgeois society's
attempt to encode what women should or should not do for the
new order. Here she voices the emerging definition of femininity.
It was women's vocation - a vocation not in terms of chosen work
but rather women's natural destiny. The process of presenting
femininity as natural continued, even while the feminine ideal
changed. However, Sarah Ell is inadvertently reveals that far from
147
Femininity as Feeling
coming naturally, achieving the Victorian feminine ideal was

demanding, debilitating and demoralising.
Women's 'morbid restlessness' was observed not only by con
servative writers like Sarah Ellis, but by progressives like Florence
Nightingale, who rightly identified the family as the locus of
women's oppression within bourgeois society : 'If it wants some
one to sit in the drawing room, that someone is supplied by the
family, though that member may be destined for science, or for
education or for active superintendence by God, i.e. by the gifts
within. This system dooms some minds to incurable infancy,
others to silent misery. ' '
The contradictions and constraints engendered b y the ideal of
genteel domestic femininity were a manifestation of the dark side
of Victorian optimism. Walter Houghten in The Victorian Frame
of Mind, 1957, argues that
Expanding business, scientific development, the growth of

democracy, and the decline of Christianity were sources of
distress as well as satisfaction. But since the optimism was
expressed more often than anxiety (partly because it was more
widely felt, and partly because any pessimistic attitude tOward
the human situation W:!S considered weak or unmanly), we are
still unaware of the degree to which the VictOrian conscious
ness - and especially subconscious - was haunted by fear and
worry, guilt and frustration and loneliness .·�
That unawareness ends in listening to what the women hadto say.

Expressions of distress and melancholy denied to men were
expected from women. Women were to 'learn to suffer' while it
was nevertheless their duty to 'cultivate cheerful conversation'.5
In among the complex determinants of women's lives and the

curious contradictions they faced, one thing remained constant
women of all classes embroidered. Embroidery, therefore, was
viewed by some as the major cause of women's unhappiness,
while others insisted that it was their sole solace. Mary Lamb was
one of the first of the nineteenth-century writers to accuse
embroidery, in a bitter attack on the art published in The British
Lady's Magazine, 1815, - a regular purveyor of embroidery
patterns. Her declared aims were to 'lighten the heavy burthen
which many ladies impose upon themselves' and to draw
148
attention to the plight of professional embroiderers, 'the indus

trious sisterhood to which I once belonged' . The article, 'On
Needlework', is a curious amalgam of extreme sincerity and
dismissive sarcasm, a style which embroidery too often calls forth
in writers. Arguing that needlework was a drawback to every
family's comfort she asks the editor of the magazine:
Is it too bold an attempt to persuade your readers that it would

prove an incalculable addition to the general happiness, and the
domestic comfort of both sexes, if needlework were never
practised but for a remuneration in money? As nearly, how
ever, as this desirable thing can be effected, so much more
nearly will women be upon an equality with men, as far as
respects the mere enjoyment of life. Real business and real
leisure make up the portions of men's time - two sources of
happiness which we certainly partake of in a very inferior
degree . �>
Mary Lamb claims that amateur embro:dery created intellectual

starvation in upper-class women, as the art was 'naturally in a
state of warfare with intellectual development', and material
starvation for working-class women, because amateurs were
throwing them out of work, denying them that 'great staple
commodity which is alone appropriated to the self-supporting
part of our sex'. She summarily dismisses the usual argument that
amateur embroidery contributed to the family economy: 'a
penny saved in that way bears about a true proportion to a
farthing earned . . . At all events , let us not confuse the motives of
economy with those of a simple pastime.'7
Charlotte Bronte took up Lamb's theme that embroidery
limited women's intellectual life . In Shirley, 1849, twelve-year
old Rose Yorke complains that a life devoted to domestic tasks is a
waste of a woman's talents and almost a living death because she
feels 'monotony and death to be almost the same'. Her mother
reprimands her saying,
'Rose did you bring your sampler with you, as I told you?'
'Yes, mother.'
'Sit down, and do a line of marking.'
Rose sat down promptly, and wrought according tO orders.
After a busy pause of ten minutes, her mother asked-
149
'Do you think yourself oppressed now? A victim ?'

'No mother .'
'Yet as far as I understood your tirade, it was a protest
against all womanly and domestic employment.'
'You misunderstood it, mother, I should be sorry not to
learn to sew; you do right to teach me, and to make me work.'
'Where is the use of ranting and spouting about it then?'

'Am I to do nothing but that? I will do that, and then I will
do more.'8
Charlotte Bronte's own memories of sampler stitching speak

through the lines she gives to the servant Sarah in Shirley.
Observing that Caroline Helstone seems sad, she says, 'How low
you seem Miss! But it's all because your cousin keeps you so close
to your work. It's a shame . . . You're fit to cry just this minute,
for nothing else but because you've sat so still the whole day. It
would make a kitten dull to be mewed up so. '9
Ten years after the publication of Shirley, with the increasing
popularity of embroidery, critics of the art became brusquer and
less sympathetic. The magazine, The Young Englishwoman,
commented sarcastically, 'If the upper and middle ranks of life
fritter away their time on worsted work . . . we are not aware that
anyone demands it of them . Rather than crying "I am a-weary,
weary in this dreary do-nothingness" they should go into their
father's study and select books or if they have not sufficient brains
for this, take a saw and plane and hammer and manufacture a
chair, a table, or box. '1" On a more serious note, Millicent Garrett
Fawcett observed that embroidery was a means of appearing to
fulfil the vocation of femininity: 'At about eighteen, when a boy
is just beginning his university career, a girl is supposed to have
"completed her education". She is too often practically debarred
from further intellectual progress . . . and it being her supposed
duty to be what is called domesticated, she devotes her life to
fancy needlework . . . • 1 1
For every writer who condemned embroidery thtre was one
who considered it a comfort for a nameless sorrow. Dinah M.
Craik claimed the needle was 'a wonderful brightener and
consoler; our weapon of defence against slothfulness, weariness
and sad thoughts. ' • l Carmen Silva, introducing a book on tatting,
wrote, ' I have often pitied men - in the first place because they
150
can't know motherhood, in the second, because they are bereft of

our greatest comfort - needlework. Our needlework is so much
better than their smoking ; it is so unobtrusive. ' She goes on to
praise embroidery as a true friend, a safe companion and a
comfort 'as it occupies the hands when we feel restless'. t.'
Detractors and defenders of embroidery were equally correct.
It was both a cause of confinement and a comfort. The two faces
of embroidery can best be seen in samplers which instructed a girl
in docility and accustOmed her to long hours sitting still with
downcast gaze. Sampler verses themselves were prayers for
spiritual support in a battle against restlessness and loneliness:
Give me a bible in my hand

A heart to read and understand
And faith tO trust the lord
And sit alone from day to day
And urge no company to stay
Nor wish to roam abroad
Sarah Marchant 1834
However, amongst critics and advocates of the art no one quite
understood .the significance of embroidery in women's lives or
why it had gained a new importance in the nineteenth century. It
was neither a manifestation of masochism as The Young English
woman suggested nor the art therapy which 'Carmen Silva
described. Rather, it occupied a key place in the exploration of
what it meant to be a woman in the middle class, when industrial
capitalism was increasingly disrupting the established economic
and social structure.
Newly wealthy groups meant greater numbers of women were
sequestered in the home where the regulation of life became
strictly structured. 14 The distinction between the public and
private sphere had changed since the mid-eighteenth century.
Then, men had escaped from the social, public domain into the
privacy of the family. The Victorian gentleman, on the other
hand, escaped from the family to the impersonal privacy of club
and cafe , because the family had become a social and emotional
centre. ' ' Women presided over drawing-room society, but were
not permitted the respite of the impersonal public domain. A lady
alone in public risked her reputation. She was to be the guardian
of the sphere that was now endowed with critical social signifi
cance. She was the symbol of it, the cause of it and its prisoner.
151
The rash of etiquette books that appeared from the 1830s onwards
attest tO the enormous importance of women's social role at home
- and the increasing uncertainty as tO how they should behave.
The act of embroidering came to be seen as correct drawing
room behaviour, and the content was expected to convey the
special social and psychological attributes required of a lady. On a
broad level it was an index of gentility. Injane Eyre, 1847, for
example, Charlotte Bronte gently mocks the class connotations
of the art. The servant Bessie questions Jane about her accom
plishments. On learning that Jane can play the piano, draw and
speak French she asks, 'And can you work on muslin and canvas?'
When Jane acknowledges she embroiders, Bessie has all the proof
she needs and exclaims, 'Oh, you are quite a lady MissJane.'•�
The early nineteenth-century arbiters of feminine behaviour
nevertheless had doubts about embroidery . It provided too easy
an access to gentility. The writer Maria Edgeworth, noting the
spread of ladylike accomplishments, mocks the scramble to
acquire the attributes of the aristocracy. Music, drawing and
embroidery, she writes, are only practised by 'high life' until they
descend to the inferior class of society: 'They are then so common
that they cannot be considered as the distinguishing character
istics of even a gentlewoman's education.' 1 7 A letter in The Ladies
Magazine of July 1810 supports M:M:ia Edgeworth's view. While
appearing to criticise the lightweight nature of girls' education,
covertly the writer is protesting about the social mobility implied
by the spread of accomplishments :
Many of your readers, sir, have doubtless noticed the great

increase of schools within these last few years . . . and we not
infrequently see the pompous inscription 'Ladies Seminary' in
a country village; the governess of which is usually as ignorant
as those she undertakes to teach. To these places are the
children of farmers, mechanics, and traders sent; where, at an
enormous annual expense, they are taught dancing, music, and
what are called fancy works. 1'
Yet there was a profound contradiction in embroidery as a

status-affirming art - one that had already bedevilled
embroiderers in the late eighteenth century: embroidery's very
association with the aristocracy made it suspect for the middle
class. While women were expected to prove their family's
152
gentility they had to display a pleasing modesty: giving oneself

airs was a cardinal sin. Writers of domestic manuals grappled
successfully with the problem by estabishing
l the right spirit in
which women should embroider. Sarah Ellis and Elizabeth
Sandford made it clear what was the wrong spirit. Both inherited
to a large extent the attitudes of the Evangelicals of the 1790s
typified bv Hannah More whose feminine ideal was a pious,
devoted wife and mother. Believers in the Puritan work ethic,
Sarah Ellis and Elizabeth Sandford castigated idleness in ladies.
Indeed, women's greatest error was 'that of calling themselves
ladies, when it ought to be their ambition to be women- women
who fill a place, occupy a post.' 1� Elizabeth Sandford commented
scathingly of ladies that 'The only effort they make in the way of
duty is, to order dinner, - and, in the way of occupation, to work
a flower.'�11 If, however, working a flower was performed as a
service for others, rather than in the service of personal social
aspirations, it became an admirable activity of women. Sarah Ellis
solved the uneasy problem of when embroidery embodied
desirable bourgeois qualities by suggesting that there was a
natural, God-given link between women's hand work and their
moral influence over society. She wrote that 'the feminine qualifi
cation of being able to use the hand willingly and well, has a great
deal to do with the moral influence of women.'�1 And she
described how embroidery could create the ideal early Victorian
bourgeois feminine characteristics:
Time was when the women of England were accustomed,

almost from childhood, to the constant employment of their
hands. It might be sometimes in elaborate works of fancy, now
ridiculed for want of taste . . . I cannot speak with unqualified
praise of all the objects on which they bestowed their attention,
but, if it were possible, I would write in characters of gold the
indisputable fact that habtts of industry and personal exertion
thus acquired, gave them a strength and dignity of character, a
power of usefulness and a capability of doing good which the
higher theories of modern education fail to impart. : :
A comparison between the eighteenth-century ideology of

embroidery and that of the nineteenth century preached by Sarah
Ellis reveals the tragic aspect of attitudes which might otherwise
seem simply laughable. The eighteenth century asserted
153
femininity was natural and that embroidery was the natural

expression of femininity, but at least allowed that women
achieved some satisfaction in embroidery. It was spoken of, even
if mockingly, as a source of creative pleasure. In the nineteenth
century, unless embroidery was performed as a moral duty, in the
spirit of selfless industry, it was regarded as sinful laziness -
redolent of aristocratic decadence.
The economic and social climate which produced this punitive
moralism is evident in Sarah Ellis' further justification for the
practice of embroidery. Having established it as potentially
industrious and useful, she provides a further reason for teaching
young girls fine stitchery. Far from endowing a girl with the
elegance necessary for coming up in the world, it would prepare
her for sliding down the social scale. Addressing 'women of the
trade and manufacturing class' she reminds them that their place
amongst the privileged was insecure to say the least : ' . . . it is no
uncommon thing to see individuals who lately ranked amongst
the aristocracy, suddenly driven by failure of some bank or some
mercantile speculation, into the lowest walks of life. . . ' Women
accustomed to working with their hands would be able to 'sink
gracefully and without murmuring against providence. '1·1 All
women embroider, but only once a woman shifts on the social
scale is her 'work' recognised as work. In the hands of middle
class women, embroidery is a 'duty and their resource', as Lydia
Segourney put it in Letters to Young Ladies, 1837. It was in fact a
resource for fulfilling an impossible role - answering the demands
of nineteenth-century femininity. How were middle--class
women to be industrious and useful in an industrial capitalist
society which scorned idleness and glorified work as the supreme
virtue? They had their 'work'. And because they did not 'work'
for money it could be seen entirely in the light of their primary
duty - to love their husbands.
Love could not be expressed sexually or passionately, but
through the providing of comfort. Comfort becomes the leitmotif
of embroidery. Every stitch was directed towards domestic com
fort. In Treasures of Needlework, 1855, one of the early
embroidery instruction books, the authors Mrs Warren and Mrs
Pullan declared that needlework 'brings daily blessings to every
home, unnoticed, perhaps, because of its hourly silent appli
cation; for in a household each stitch i s one for comfort to some
person or other and without its ever watchful care home would be
154
a scene of discomfort indeed.' !•

Behind the anxious insistence on comfort lay profound distress
and insecurity. Sarah Ell is warned, 'Never yet was the affection of
man fully and lastingly engaged by women, without some means
being adopted to increase and preserve his happiness .'!5 She
reveals one major source of anxiety which embroidery was
intended tO still. By making a man's home comfortable with her
woolwork chairs and carpets, portieres and 'whatnots', a woman
was in truth embroidering to gain love.
Middle-class women were increasingly dependent on their
husband for economic security, for social status and for love. The
ideology of VictOrian marriage held love to be a main ingredient
so much so that its absence was remarked with consternation. In
1854 G.R. Drysdale wrote,
A great proportion of the marriages we see around us, did not

take place from love at all, but from some interested motive,
such as wealth, social position, or some other advantages : in
fact it is rare to see a marriage in which true love has been the
predominating feeling on both sides. !h
Women expected to be loved by their husbands and were

informed that it was their duty to love. Yet at the same time the
gap between the sexes was widening, provoked by the increas
ingly patriarchal nature of the nineteenth-century family. 'The
sexes drew further and further apart. No open conversation was
tolerated. Evasions and concealments were sedulously practised
on both sides', wrote Virginia Wool£ of the Victorian age. !7
Purveyors of embroidery patterns assured their customers that
embroidery made for domestic happiness, providing the comfort
that would win a husband's love and prove a wife's devotion.
Magazines invented patterns for an incredible selection of male
attire: German Plaid Comforter, Darned necktie, Nepaulese
smoking cap, Cornucopia smoking cap, shaving-book, Shield
design Cigar case. The Ladies Newspaper, 1860, in their regular
column 'The Worktable conducted by Mile Roche', offered A
Braided Lounging cap for 'the comfort it bestows on those
gentlemen who are compelled to wear a hat the greater portion of
the day'; The Hanging Whatnot which 'well deserves admission
into the drawing room, not only for the sake of its ornamental
character but the usefullness'; The Watchhanger 'now a necessary
155
appendage in every sleeping apartment'; A Footmuff 'One of

those useful comforts it is necessary to prepare in anticipation'; A
Lapp Cap which was 'A pleasant sort of economy'.
The endless assurances that embroidered objects were neces
sary and useful were prompted perhaps by the guilt women felt
that they found pleasure in embroidery ; but also in response to
critics of the art such as the anonymous author of Girls, Wives
and Mothers; A Word to the Middle Classes, 1884, who wrote
that:
The woman not over- but mis-educated is becoming an alarm

ingly fruitful cause of the downward tendencies of much of our
middle-class society . . . She cannot sew to any purpose. If she
deign to use a needle at all, it is to embroider a smoking-cap for
a lover or a pair of slippers for Papa. To sew on a button, or cut
out and unite the plainest piece of male or female clothing, is
not always within her powers , or at least her inclinations.!�
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on the other hand, saw clearly the

self defeating desperation that fuelled mid-century needlework.
-
In Aurora Leigh, 1857, she writes :
By the way,
The works of women are symbolic.
We sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you're weary - or a stool
To stumble over and vex you . . . 'curse that
stool!'
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas !
Thus hurts most, this- that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.
It was feminists like Elizabeth Barrett Browning who regarded

embroidery with compassion, whereas the proponents of
femininity were suspicious of the very behaviour they fostered.
The insistence that it was a woman's duty to embroider for love
aroused the old association of embroidery with seduction. A
women's magazine of the 1 850s listed the things a well-behaved
156
young woman does not do: 'She does not read novels in bed . . .
She is not perpetually embroidering mysterious braces . . . or

having a Turkish slipper on hand for a mysterious foot in the
guards. She does not keep her mother waiting . . . She does not
take long walks.' �9
Clearly the motives behind embroidery were many and mixed.
Some stitched to elicit love, some to manifest the love they
believed they ought to feel, and others embroidered to declare
their love in as decorous a way as possible.
In embroidery itself is inscribed the sense of inadequacy and
insecurity which prompted the work. A sampler verse of 1840
reads:
I ask not for a kinder tone, for thou wen ever kind.
I ask not for less frugal fare, my fare I do not mind.
I ask not for attire more gay, if such as I have got
Suffice to make me fair to thee, for more I murmur not.
But I would ask some share of hours that you on clubs bestow
Of knowledge which you prize so much, might I not
something know.
Subtract from meetings amongst men, each even an hour for
me.
Make me companion of your soul as I may safely be,
If you will read I'll sit and work, then think when you're away
Less tedious I shall find the time, dear Robert, of your stay.
A meet companion soon I'll be for e'en your studious hours
And teacher of those little ones you call your cottage flowers
And if we be not rich or great, we may be wise and kind
And as my heart can warm your hean, so may my mind, your
mind.·w
The sentiments the sampler verse illustrates, the desire for com
panionship, love, and closeness in the home, suggest that in
reality the embroiderer experienced a profound lack of intimacy
and intellectual deprivation. The need to believe in the domestic
dream co-existed with a sharp awareness of its absence. Women
blamed themselves, shouldered the entire responsibility for
domestic discomfort - it was, after all, their social sphere. Mrs
Ellis often warned that a wife could drive her husband from his
home by the 'leaden weight of her uncompanionable society'.
Obviously not every embroiderer was familiar with Sarah Ellis'
15 7
strictures. Her historical importance lies in the fact that she

voiced the Victorian ideology of domestic femininity. She also
gave form to the fears arising from the Victorian marriage,
encouraging women's tendency to blame themselves if all in the
domestic sphere failed to fulfil the fantasies created by the mytho
logy of femininity. In Sarah Ellis' words we can see where the
ideal came into conflict with lived social relations -and worked to
paper over the cracks.
Embroidery as an effort to create domestic 'comfort' was
prompted not only by women's particular circumstances within
the home; it was a symptom of a wider sense of insecurity
amongst the middle class. Leonore Davidoff, Jean L'Esperance,
and Howard Newby·" argue that this shaped the physical
character of the house. lt was designed to create a sense of security
as well as preserving inmates from rank pollution by inferiors.
They point to the house's carefully guarded entrances with
drives, gate and hedge, its attended portals and elaborate rituals of
entrance. Inside, soft, warm, brightly coloured Berlin woolwork
spread over everything: over curtains, portieres , pianos, anti
macassars, mantelpieces , tables, chairs , stools, screens, books,
etc, providing a padding against the world outside, and
emphasising how different were conditions inside where the lady
of the house possessed all the virtues of domestic femininity.
Virginia Wool£ in her novel Orlando suggests that during the
nineteenth century it was as if the whole of the British Isles were
overhung by a great cloud, so that damp made its way into every
house and accordingly 'Rugs appeared, beards were grown,
trousers fastened tight under the insteps. The chill which he felt in
his legs the country gentleman soon transferred to his house,
furniture was muffled; walls and tables covered ; nothing was
left bare. '.'l
It was not enough for women to cover every available surface of
the home with embroidered evidence of their presence, it was
important that it be done with taste.
The concept of taste had shifted since the eighteenth century.
For women it now connoted morality and spirituality, as much as
class standing. Good taste was to be a 'regulating' factor in a
woman's life; everything about her must convey the 'beauty of
fitness'. Taste was demonstrated in the subjects she chose for her
pictorial embroidery. The royal family was a popular subject
which 1emonstrated the embroiderer's loyalty and patriotism,
158
while associating her own home with the domestic virtues the
royal family represented. Critics of upholstery stitched with
portraits of royalty attacked the embroidery on moral, and
aesthetic, grounds : 'The prince is subjected to the indignity of
being trodden under foot', wrote Mrs Merrifield in tht> Art
Journal, objecting to a footstool embroidered with the Prince of
Wale<; A painting by Sir Edwin Landseer of The Macaw,
Lovebirds, Terrier and Spaniel Puppies belonging to Her Majesty
was often embroidered. Animals were generally a popular subject
and they, too, came under attack from Mrs Merrifield. 'The head
of a dog or a fox is made to cover the front of a slipper, yet how
absurd, not to say startling, is the effect produced by the head of
one of these animals protruding from beneath the trousers of a
sportsman !'-'·1
However, no Victorian embroidery was simply gratuitous
excess - every footstool and screen and pair of slippers made a
statement about the family's social aspirations. Femininity was a
sign of social status. The family's position was ensured and pro
tected through the constant exercise and reinforcement of
femininity embodied in embroidery. The content of embroidery,
moreover, was as important as the act. The whole significance of
the foxy slippers was that the wearer was most likely not to be a
sportsman. Along with the rural scenes stitched apd framed upon
the wall, the fox evoked an idealised country life style. The
businessman who returned in the evening to his urban home,
slipped on the symbol of the country gentleman - he became a
squire in a settled community in which everyone accepted their
place. Embroidery represented the bourgeois family's ideal
identity drawn from the modes of the gentry and the aristocracy.
During the nineteenth century it was taken for granted that real
communities could only be found in the English countryside -
there a 'natural order' persisted in the imagination of the town
dweller, a stable hierarchy, virtuous, static, settled and paternal
istic. The following verse, attached to an embroidered landscape,
encapsulates this attitude and indicates how the young
embroiderer had internalised a view of herself as the protector and
preserver of Old English values:
Will my dearest papa accept from my hand,

A trifling estate and freehold, the land
The buildings I raised; I planted the trees
159
The waters I formed for convenience and ease:

The castle looks well, and will stand many years
A pleasant retreat for you and your heirs,
When with business fatigued, or sick of the town,
The boat may attend to waft you safe down
The servants are humble, neat, cleanly, and still,
No impertinent answers disputing your will.
With pleasure I offer this picture to you.
If received with kindness, repaid is the care
Of your truly affectionate daughter
M. Eyre'�
What appears to us as saccharine sentimentality was for the

nineteenth-century middle-class embroiderer a manifestation of a
crucial feminine quality, feeling. Taste was nothing without feel
ing. 'To be useful a woman must have feeling' wrote Elizabeth
Sandford. ·'5 Her definition of feeling was 'forgetting oneself and
sympathising with others'. That a woman's work should show
feeling prompted numbers of embroidered pictures which hinged
on the suffering of others. Very popular historical scenes included
'The Earl of Leicester's Last Interview with Amy Robsart', 'The
Last Appeal', 'Mary Queen of Scots Mourning over the Dying
Douglas at the Battle of Langside', 'Charles I Bidding Farewell to
his Family'. All were repeatedly embroidered.
As ever with embroidery it is m
i portant to establish how far the
choice of subject matter was determined by the general social,
political and artistic developments of the time and how far
women's specific experience and the history of embroidery
dictated the needlewoman's choice. The suffering of humanity
was a central subject of all the arts. Waiter Houghton writes that:
The cult of benevolence took a new direction in the nineteenth

century when the misery of the industrial workers became
sufficiently apparent to demand redress - and all the more so
because it constituted a threat to the social order. If one
solution proposed . . . was a more earnest sense of social duty,
another lay in quickening the moral sensibility to an acute
sympathy for suffering humanity.·'�>
Though scenes of suffering were common in literature and the

visual arts, the expectation that embroidery would manifest
160
feminine virtues determined the particular form of sufferin g

which women selected to stitch. Enforced separation of men and
women was a dominant theme in their work. Perhaps the satis
faction attained from stitching scenes of suffering was that they
suffused male/female relationships with warm sentiment, in the
face of the chilly reality of a patriarchal marriage. Or perhaps the
presentation of death and irrevocable parting evoked, if not the
love it was their duty to feel, at least pity for the distant authori
tarian male.
Another required attribute of femininity was piety - and,
predictably, piety was expressed in embroidery. While it was
countenanced for men to experience religious doubts prompted
by Darwinism and the new sciences, a woman's faith in the
scriptures had to be unquestioning. The writers on femininity
made no bones about it. It was their duty to accept the authority
of the word: 'It is easy to attend a few scientific lectures and return
home talking of gasses . . . but it requires a totally different
process of mind to bow before the conviction that all must have
been created by a divine hand. '·"
Obedience in every aspect of their lives was demanded of
women from their first sampler to their last embroidered foot
stool but, in addition, they were expected to be a repository of
traditional values in an uncertain world - thus the importance of
their religious obedience. Piety was also represented to women as
a source of power. 'The influence of a religious woman may
extend far beyond her home,' wrote Elizabeth Sandford.1�
Bible stories once again became the subject matter of
embroidery. They had of course never been entirely abandoned,
but throughout the eighteenth century pastoral and mythological
scenes had dominated pictorial work. In nineteenth-century
Berlin woolwork the most frequently repeated scenes were
stories which turned on the paternal power of God (and man).
'The Sacrifice of Isaac' was traditionally popular with
embroiderers but 'The Prodigal Son' and 'Joseph Presenting his
Father to Pharoah' were new to the art. Paternal power and filial
obedience were dominant themes of sampler verses :
Be grateful to thy father for he

gave thee life and to thy father for he
sustained thee. Hear the words of his mouth
for they are spoken for thy good. Give ear
161
to their admonition for it proceeds

from love. Let the bands of affection
Unite thee with thy mother and sister
that peace and happiness may dwell in
thy father's house. To be good is
to be happy
Elizabeth Haydn. Born 1828
Another popular subject for embroidered pictures was 'Christ

and The Woman of Samaria'. Jesus chose to convince the
Samaritans that he was the Messiah through the agency of a
woman he met at Jacob's well. It was a story guaranteed to appeal
to embroiderers , so materially powerless, yet led to believe that
piety would powerfully extend their influence beyond the home. 39
At a more material level women employed needlework for
pious ends by embroidering in aid of charity bazaars. Countless
pincushions, caps, braces and mats were made to sell for good
causes. Charlotte Bronte described an institution known as the
'Jews Basket', or 'Missionary Basket':
Willow-repositories, of the capacity of a good-sized family

clothes-basket, dedicated to the purpose of conveying from
house to house a monster collection of pin-cushions, needle
books, card-racks, work-bags, articles of infant wear, etc,
made by the willing or reluctant hands of the Christian ladies of
the parish, and sold perforce to the heathenish gentlemen
thereof, at prices unblushingly exorbitant. The proceeds of
such compulsory sales are applied to the conversion of the
Jews, the seeking up of the ten missing tribes, or to the regener
ation of the interesting coloured population of the globe. Each
lady-contributor takes it in her turn to keep the basket a
month, to sew for it, and to foist off its contents on a shrinking
male public. 4"
George Eliot was similarly scornful of sewing for bazaars, the

usual mode of selling fancy work for charity. In The Mill on The
Floss she describes how Lucy Deane and Maggie Tulliver prepare
for a bazaar. 'Worsted flowers were growing under Lucy's
fingers. ' Lucy was the fair representative of femininity, while
dark-haired Maggie, the representative of womanhood, is
occupied with 'plain sewing' . Stephen Guest watches them work,
162
and George Eliot observes that 'if Maggie had been the queen of
coquettes she could hardly have invented a means of giving
greater piquancy to her beauty in Stephen's eyes : I am not sure
that the quiet admission of plain sewing would have done alone,
but assisted by beauty, they made Maggie more unlike other
women even than she had seemed at first.'•1 The bazaar itself
represented the triumph of plain sewing and womanliness over
fancy work and femininity. Maggie begs to be allowed to sell
functional articles rather than 'bead mats and other elaborate
products of which she had but dim understanding', and her stall
was besieged by gentlemen.
But though George Eliot had no sympathy for the creations of
femininity, she understood what drove women to embroider for
bazaars. She conveys her attitude and analysis through Stephen
Guest's words :
Here is another of the moral results of this idiotic bazaar . . .

taking young ladies from the duties of the domestic hearth into
scenes of dissipation among urn-rugs and embroidered reti
cules. I should like to know what is the proper function of
women if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home
and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out. If this goes on
much longer the bonds of society will be dissolved. •1
Skilfully George Eliot conveys the attraction of bazaars. They

permitted women to cross the threshold into public life, to be
mobile themselves instead of acting as anchors for others.
But there were other more material motivations behind
bazaars. They were part of the Season's social calendar and could
provide nouveaux riches families with an opportunity for mixing
with a higher social stratum. .l.l Aware that bazaars were not quite
the pious, elevated events they purported to be, Lady Charlotte
Neville Grenville feared that they would turn her nieces into shop
women: 'I declare I do not know which I should dislike most,' she
said, 'to hear of you waltzing or you selling, those who practise
one would shine at the other. ' • •
Another public, pious outlet for embroidery was provided by
the religious revival discussed in Chapter One. Charlotte Yonge
explained why femininity made women pre-eminently suited to
embroidering for the church : 'There are things . . . that can only
be properly done by loving hands that spend much taste and time
163
over them. Such are church embroideries . ' In The Family Secret, a
novel serialised in The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, one
of the ladies' spiritual awakening is sardonically described: 'Little
feeble touches of it she had experienced like other people, as when
she brought wool and silk for that altarcloth . '45
Sampler verses reflected the religious changes of the times.
Adherents of millenarist movements stitched samplers with
words from The Second Advent Harbinger by the American
adventist William Miller: 'Prepare to meet your God I that
Heaven may be your home'. 4" Femininity was to be lived through
pious, loving management of a home, and the reward for the
attainment of perfect femininity was to be a heavenly home.
Within Judaism women traditionally presented their
embroidery to the synagogue.47 From the seventeenth century
onwards it was received on the Sabbath with the following bless
ing: ' . . . the One who blessed our mothers, Sarah, Rebecca,
Rachel, and Leah, may He give His blessings to every daughter of
Israel who makes a mantle or cloth for the honour of the Torah,
may the Lord reward and remunerate her and let us say amen.' As
Jews gained access to the sampler-making classes, their tradition
of religious embroidery was translated into sampler making:
Hebrew characters were added to the Roman lettering and Jewish
religious symbols replaced Christian iconography. The public
function of women's work was privatised.-��
Embroidery was on the one hand expected to be the place where

women manifested supposedly natural feminine characteristics:
piety, feeling, taste, and domestic devotion; and on the other it
was the instrument which enabled a woman to obliterate aspects
of herself which did not conform to femininity. A passage in
Madam, 1885, a novel by Mrs Oliphant , illustrates embroidery in
its role as an instrument of repression in the production of
femininity:
Her hands were like ice, her slight fiigure shivering with cold,
yet her heart beating so that she could! scarcely draw her breath.
All this must disappear before the gentlemen came in . . . She
felt sure that her misery, her anguish of suspense, her appalling
doubts and terrors, must be written on her face; but it was not
so. The emergency brought back a rush of warm blood tingling
164
7 8 Flortnct N1ghtmgalrand htrsimr ParthmofJt.
William White, National Pomait Gallery,
London. c 1836.
Florence Nightingale considered that embroidery
was symptomatic ofthe restraints imposed on
women by the feminine ideal. In CaJsandra she
wrote, 'but suppose we were able to see a number
of men in the morning sicring round a table in
the drawing room, looking at prints, Joing
worsrc:d work, and reading little books, how we
should laugh.·
79 Sampler, Jane Bailey, Victoria and Alberr

Museum, London.
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.., �.,,,n el!lul appli•t-1• nl ...W uo1.,;11 <n&b,. chl-WIJ: K"-. t:hla.l Of
\'1:(')' I'U'f� O'lldety. A bot<oj lliU 1811ill $ilk, Swah. <l«h. c:rttofiM., 'fti•'C'l,
IIo
O�rc is a
80 Advenisemenc in Needlecraft: Artistic and Practical, Butterick, New York, 1889 .

The appearance of an advertisement for a guide eo etiquette in a book on
embroidery indicates the extent to wbich the art was involved in the effort by the
middle class tO establish what was appropriate feminine drawing-room behaviour,
as rhe home assumed a new role as a social cencre.
81 Parcern for mantel drapery.

Purveyors of embroidery patterns emphasised their caste and elegance. They
assured their customers that embroidery enhanced domestic happiness, providing
rhe comfort that would win a husband's love and prove a wife's devotion.
83 Sampler, Bek Berta, Jewish Museum , New York. Mid-ninereenth century.
Given the long, rich history of embroidery in Jewish culture, it is not surprising eo
find the mu.litaon translated in eo sampler-making during the nineteenth century.
The existence ofJewash samplers andacaces the pervasiveness of nouons of ideal
femaninity conveyed through embroadery even when influenced by specific
cultural contexts.
82 (left) Embroidered picture, Chnsties, London. c 1825. Silk and chenille , 41 X ) 1 cm.
The embroiderer has depicted an ideal representation of family life. The father is
absent - in his sphere, the world of work and public business. The mother
embroaders in a natural but perfectly ordered, fenced offCor fenced in?) environment.
The children occup} themselves in ways considered appropriate to their sex.
81 Slippers, unfimshed. Castle Mustum,
Notnngh.•m. MiJ-nineteench ctntury. Berlin
woolwork . .1 8 . 5 X 27.9 cm.
HS Tbr Pnnc<- ofW'alt:J. Victoria and Alberc

Museum, London c 1845. Berlin woolwork.
Every p:ur of slipptrs, firescreen or footstool
made a statement about the family's social
aspirations. Rural motifs identified the urban
home w1th an idealised image of country life; the
Pnnce ut' Wales asS<x•ated the home with the
Jomcsnc virtues represented by the royal family;
while the presence of embroidery in abundance
assem:d the femininity of the lady of the house
in atsclf a sign of soc1al status .
to her fingers ' ends . . . Then Rosalind took up the delicate

work that lay on the table and when the gentlemen entered,
was seated on a low seat within the circle of a shaded lamp,
warm in the glow of the genial fireside, her pretty head bent a
little over her pretty industry, her hands busy. She who had
been the image of anxiety and unrest a moment before, was
now the culminating point of all the soft domestic tranquility,
luxury, boundless content and peace, of which this silent room
was the home.�<�
Embroidery in Victorian novels is a signifier of femininity

which is revealed as a mode of behaviour demanded by mascu
linity. Even while promoting and supporting 'pretty industry',
Mrs Oliphant acknowledges that it is an artificial construct, an
extraordinary act of self-repression motivated by fear. Charlotte
Bronte presents the issue more critically . She deliberately reveals
the curious contradictions in femininity through embroidery. In
her work embroidery, and thus femininity, emerge as both self
denial and self defence, as a means of establishing an inviolate
'
female space and announcing female subservience and avail
ability. Shirley Keeldar as the active, non-sexual, indepen.dent
woman has little time for embroidery. 'She takes her sewing
occasionally; but, by some fatality, she is doomed never to sit
steadily at it for above five minutes at a time: her thimble is
scarcely fitted on, her needle scarcely threaded when a sudden
thought calls her upstairs . . . After tea Shirley reads, and she is
just about as tenacious of her book as she is lax with her needle. '50
Once Shirley becomes aware of her love for Louis Moore all
this changes. She takes up her work, 'the creation of a wreath of
parma violets', and hides coyly behind it during an interview with
her lover:
She suspended her work a moment . . . Mr Moore looked as if

he had at last gained some footing in this difficult task . . . Mr
Moore leaned back in his chair, and folded his arms across his
chest; Miss Keeldar resumed her square of silk canvas, and
continued the creation of parma violets . . . She smiled. She
pursued her embroidery carefully and quickly ; but her eyelash
twinkled, and then it glittered . . .
Recalling the encounter later in his diary, Louis Moore writes
165
'I was near enough to count the stitches of her work, and to
discern the eye of her needle. '51
Charlotte Bronte makes it plain that Shirley masks her own
temperament, denies herself in order to appeal to Moore, protect
ing his masculinity and preventing him from feeling threatened by
her economic power. Bronte apportions no blame and indicates
that Shirley had no choice but to conform to the ideology of
femininity; however she takes pleasure in demonstrating its
failure. Louis Moore, far from being encouraged, is reduced tO
silence by the passive Shirley:
The door unclosed; Miss Keeldar came in. The message it

appeared had found her at her needle: she brought her work in
her hand . . . This was no Thalastris from the fields, but a quiet
domestic character from the fireside. Mr Moore had her at
advantage: he should have addressed her at once in solemn
accents [instead I . . . The tutor stood silent. 51
In women's novels the crucial interview between lovers is

invariably marked by the moment when the woman drops her
work -with her embroidery inevitably goes her self-containment
and she surrenders to her lover. Dinah M. Craik in Agatha's
Husband allows her heroine no interval between dropping
modest, maidenly femininity and adopting soothing, wifely
femininity: 'She went on with her work, and he sat quietly
looking at her for some little time more . . . She looked at him
saw how earnest he was, and put down her work. The softness of
her manner soothed him.'"
Embroidery was intended tO signify absolute innocence and
subservience, but both Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell
suggest it became an instrument of self defence for the subjugated
sex. Charlotte Bronte described the defensive stance of femininity:
Men rarely like such of their fellows to read their inward nature
too clearly and truly. It is good for women especially, to be
endowed with a soft blindness: to have mild, dim eyes, that
never penetrate below the surface of things - that take all for
what it seems: thousands, knowing this, keep their eyelids
drooped on system; but the most downcast glance has its
loophole, through which it can, on occasion, take its sentinel
survey of life.'�
166
In Wives and Daughters, 1866, Elizabeth Gaskell shows con

trasting modes of using embroidery as a 'loophole' - for women
to speak what they were unable to say openly. When Mrs Gibson
has an unwelcome caller she demonstrates her displeasure through
her worsted work: 'Mrs Gibson was at her everlasting worsted
work frame when he entered; but somehow in rising to receive
him, she threw down her basket of crewels, and, declining
Molly's oifer to help her, she would pick up all the reels herself,
before she asked her visitor to sit down.' She successfully domin
ated her environment through the very medium that was expected
to still and silence women. She counted her stitches 'aloud with
great distinctness and vigour', she continually interrupted people
'with remarks about the pattern of her worsted work'. Above all
she controlled the children in her care by setting them 'at piece
after piece; knights kneeling to ladies; i mpossible flowers '. 55
Her daughter Cynthia represents the effects of an education in
femininity through embroidery. Mrs Gibson employed
embroidery as a weapon; it both demonstrated her implacable
domesticity and respectability and allowed her to control her
immediate environment. Cynthia recapitulates her mother's be
haviour but with a significant difference. Receiving the full force
of her mother 's aggression she fights back and the two are locked
into subtle combat. Instead of refusing to embroider - a time
honoured gesture of defiance - Cynthia becomes overskilled at
the art of embroidery. She cynically and brilliantly uses
embroidery as a weapon, not in her mother's field of domestic
femininity but in terms of sexual allure. While apparently pre
senting the picture of the innocent embroiderer, she projects an
air of mystery and unobtainability : 'Cynthia, in obedience to her
mother's summons, came into the room, and took up her work.
No one could have been quieter- she hardly uttered a word; but
Osborne seemed fall under her power at once.' '" Elizabeth
to
Gaskell sympathises with Cynthia, acknowledging that her tactics

are those of the powerless, but is nevertheless critical of the brand
of femininity Cynthia so skilfully displays and deploys. Using
embroidery as a signifier of femininity she contrasts Cynthia with
her step-sister Molly who has none of Cynthia's skill with the
needle. Molly's attitude tpwards embroidery represents uncor
rupt, unselfconscious femininity. When she visits her friends the
Hamleys, she takes her 'company worsted work' with her. Mrs
Hamley remarks, 'Ah, you've got your sewing, like a good girl
167
. . . Now I don't sew much, I live alone a great deal, you" see, both
my boys are at Cambridge and the squire is out of doors all day
long- so I have almost forgotten how tO sew, I read a great deal.'
She reads aloud tO Molly who, 'As she became interested in the
poem dropped her work, and listened in a manner that was after
Mrs Hamley's own heart. '57
Although the Bronte sisters and Elizabeth Gaskell were highly
critical of embroidery and its role in the creation of femininity,
they nevertheless relied upon their readers' familiarity with the
art, going so far as to date their stories by the kind of work the
women were doing. In the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 1848, Ann
Bronte informs the reader that the action took place before the
advent of Berlin woolwork embroidery. And Elizabeth Gaskell
places Wives and Daughters firmly in the past by observing that
'people did worsted work in those days'.
Not only were books dated by the type of needlework then
popular, but the days were described in terms of mornings or
afternoons devoted to embroidery. In the regulation of social life
in private homes embroidery played an ordering role. Even rela
tions between women were ideally to be mediated through
embroidery. Giving instructions on preparing a room for a friend,
Sarah Ellis informed her reader that she must 'with her own hand
place upon a table the favourite toilet-cushion, worked by a
friend who was alike dear to herself and her guest. ':�" The habit of
communicating their care for another through embroidery started
early amongst women with friendship samplers :
DearDebby
I love you sincerely
My heart retains a grateful sense of your past kindness
When will the hours of our
Separation be at an end?
Preserve in your bosom the remembrance
of your affectionate
Deborah Jane Berkin
When women called on one another they invariably worked

together. Catherine Hutton, reminiscing about her early
Victorian girlhood, recalls how awkward she felt when she called
on two women friends empty handed: 'Miss Greves and Miss
Boothby worked at their netting and embroidery, while I was an
168
idle spectator, as I had brought no work with me.' It was a rare

moment for Catherine Hutton to have no work. I n her eighty
ninth year she drew up a list of her needlework:
I have made furniture for beds, with window curtains, and

chair and sofa covers; these included a complete drawing room
set. I have quilted counterpanes and chest covers in fine white
linen, in various patterns of my own invention. I have made
patchwork beyond calculation, from seven years old to eighty
five . . . I worked embroidery on muslin, satin, and canvas,
and netted upwards of 100 wallet purses, in combined colours,
and in patterns of my own invention. 59
Catherine Hutton emphasised with pride that her patterns

were of her own invention, partly because of the unprecedented
boom in mass-produced embroidery patterns in the early nine
teenth century. Magazines, printers, and craft suppliers exploited
the place of embroidery in the creation of femininity and pro
moted particularly lucrative styles of embroidery; lucrative in the
sense that they demanded lavish materials and patterns. The first
magazine to include embroidery patterns was the Ladies Magazine
or entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex. The launching edi
torial in 1 770 announced that the magazine intended to 'present the
Sex with the most elegant patterns for the tambour, embroidery,
or every kind of needlework . . . They will find in the Magazine,
price only sixpence, among variety of other Copper-plates a
pattern that would cost them double the money at the Haber
dasher.'�" So successful was the sales gimmick that other
magazines followed suit. Patterns in magazines proliferated in the
nineteenth century as women's magazines became increasingly
directed towards domestic concerns.
Art equipment shops, known as repositories, began to produce
their own magazines to help sales. Thus Ackerman's The
Repository of the Arts wrote articles encouraging the embroidery
that demanded the most equipment, available, of course, from
Ackerman's. Writers for their magazine poured scorn on one
branch of embroidery, employing all the arguments used by
opponents of the art, in order to clear the reputation of another
style of embroidery. In March 1810 an article condemned sampler
making in favour of mixed media embroidery known as fancy
work:
169
It is not long since needlework was considered, in our schools

for young ladies, as one of the greatest accomplishments; and if
a girl had gone home for the half yearly holidays without either
an alphabet, a map, a flower or some wretched figure, the
parents would have looked upon the system of the school as
extremely deficient . . . Exclusive of the injurious effects of
this branch of education on the health of children when kept
for hours together stooping over one object during the whole
of six, and, in a larger piece, perhaps twelve months, how was
it possible that, with the vivacity of that tender age, they could
be other wise than disgusted with continually looking at the
same thing over and over again. Consequently nothing but
force and threat on the one hand and promises of going home
for the holidays on the other,.could prevail upon them to apply
to each tedious occupation. It is impossible to congratulate our
fair country women too warmly on the revolution which has of
late years taken place, when drawing and fancy work of endless
variety have [replaced I that heavy, unhealthy, and stupefying
occupation, needlework. " 1
Praise and ridicule are skilfully employed t o encourage
embroiderers to purchase the vast array of materials needed for
fancy work: ribbons, spangles, silk, metal cords, feathers, beetle
wings, fish scales and aerophane (brightly-coloured silk gauze).
Ackerman's was not alone in worrying about the effects of
embroidery on children's health, but fancy work was no less
laborious than sampler making. The writer was exploiting the
ideology of 'ease' that was becoming an integral part of gentility.
On the one hand embroidery was praised for the m i mense
patience and labour it revealed - important in a culture which
scorned idleness - and on the other, it was vital that an
embroiderer not be seen to labour. 'Ease is the distinction of true
breeding'''2 pronounced Elizabeth Sandford. Pattern publishers
always stressed the 'easiness' of the pattern, assuring their
customers that the 'executive part will be far from difficult'. In
Treasures of Needlework, 1885, Mrs Warren and Mrs Pullan
observed that 'To toil for those we love can never be a dull or
painful task to a woman, even if the toil be great. But when it is
merely the light and elegant occupation !of embroideryj . . .'"·'
Berlin woolwork was the century's most successful
commercial embroidery venture for embroidery suppliers. The
patterns were promoted as 'tasteful' and the embroidery as 'easy'.
170
Patterns printed on squares with each small square representing a

stitch were developed in Germany and popularised by a Berlin
printer. In 1810 Frau Wittich 'perceived the great extension of
which this branch of trade was capable' and encouraged her
husband's printing firm to begin producing patterns. The tech
nique was facilitated by the invention of machine-made double
thread canvas and the new softer wools. The pattern was printed
on paper with squares the same size as the canvas to be
embroidered. British embroidery suppliers were quick to seize
the possibilities of Berlin patterns. By 1840, 14,000 different
patterns had been imported into England. One of the leading
London repositories employed up to 1,200 young women to
colour the patterns, paying them as little as six pence to eight
pence a day and selling the early designs for £30 to £40 each .�>-�
Different kinds of canvas were available; English canvas varied
from very fine, which allowed exact reproductions of painting, to
coarse large-meshed canvas for simple designs. German woollen
canvas came in shades of claret, black, white and primrose, cotton
canvas had a bright yellow thread after every tenth square to help
count stitches . French canvas had flattened threads. Wools were
available in all thicknesses and colours. Silks, chenille thread and
beads were sold for highlighting.
Berlin woolwork was both heavily promoted and constantly
ridiculed. Comparing embroidery to the craze for collecting ferns
- a great feature of the early 1850s - Charles Kingsley wrote that
women
find an enjoyment in it, and are more active, more cheerful,

more self-forgetful over it, than they would have been over
novels and gossip, crochet and Berlin-wool. At least you will
confess that the abomination of 'Fancy work', that standing
cloak for dreamy idleness (not to mention the injury which it
does to poor starving needlewomen), has all but vanished from
your drawing-room since the 'Lady Ferns' and 'Venus' hair'
appeared; and that you could not help yourself looking now
and then at the said 'Venus' hair', and agreeing that nature's
real beauties were somewhat superior to the ghastly woollen
caricatures which they had superseded.05
In a similar patronising and jocular vein a poem titled The

Husband's Lament includes the following verses :
171
I hate the name of German wool, in all its colours bright,

Of chairs and stools in fancy work, I hate the very sight;
The shawls and slippers that I've seen, the ottomans and bags
Sooner than wear a stitch on me, I'd walk the streets in rags
The other day when I went home no dinner was for me,
I asked my wife the reason; she answered 'One, two, three'
I told her I was hungry and stamped upon the floor
She never even looked at me, but murmured 'One green more'
If any lady comes to tea, her bag is first surveyed,

And if the pattern pleases her, a copy there is made.
She stares too at the gentleman, and when I ask her why,
'Tis 'Oh my love, the pattern of his waistcoat struck my eye'
Besides the things she makes are such touch-me-not affairs

I dare not even use a screen - a stool - and as for chairs !
'Twas only yesterday I put my youngest boy on one
And until then I never knew my wife had such a tongueM
Unerringly, male wits from the seventeenth century onwards

needled embroiderers where it most hurt in mocking the feminine
characteristics embroidery was intended to manifest. During the
eighteenth century they lampooned the embroiderer's association
with nature, writing derisively of ladies 'transplanting all the
Beauties of Nature into their own Dress, or raising a new
Creation in their closets'. In the nineteenth century, when
embroidery was intended as evidence of a woman's self-denying,
loving, giving, effortless yet never idle femininity, this 'poet'
represented embroidery as selfish and obsessional, leading a wife
to neglect her cardinal duty: that of providing for her husband's
comfort.
Another mode of mockery was to belittle embroidery itself. In
the eighteenth century men sneered at the fact that embroidery
was considered a creative activity by women: 'Sir, she's an Artist
with her needle . . . ' Could anything be more laughable than a
woman claiming artistic status for her sewing? In the nineteenth
century, when women had learned not to claim creative merit for
embroidery but to assert that it was labour for love, men mocked
it as a mere pastime, just one of many trivial occupations which
filled a woman's day. In The Husband's Lament the wife offers
172
her own 'defence' against the husband's accusation that all she
does is embroider: 'you seem to think worsted work is all the
ladies do' she says, and goes on to describe her 'full' day paying
bills, hemming a duster, feeding the canary, 'practising that con
certo thing, you thought so fine', writing notes to ask friends to
dine, filling vases with fresh flowers, and
After that- I will confess- I sorted out my wool.
Besides to tell the truth, all the worsted work I do,

My bag, my cushion, and my chairs are in compliment to you!
I made a set of night shirts, and did you not declare
That the rending of the calicoe was more than you could bear
I knit some lamb's wool stockings, and you kicked up such a

rout
And asked how soon my Iadyship was going to have the gout!
Enough of banter; yet believe one word before we part -
The rest perhaps was fable; but this is from the heart, -:
The loving wife, right cheerfully obeys her husband still
And will ever lay aside her frame to meet his lordly will67
Mocking, prescriptive, sentimental, The Husband's Lament

marks a low point amongst the many laughs society has had at the
expense of femininity.
Once embroidery had become an accepted tool for inculcating

and manifesting femininity in the privileged classes, with mission
ary zeal it was taken to the working class. Teaching embroidery to
the poor became an aspect of Victorian philanthropy. Writers of
embroidery manuals for the middle class, Mrs Warren and Mrs
Pullan, hoped that 'The work may grace the Boudoir of the
Peeress, and also penetrate into the cottage of the Peasant; that
while it can become a source of useful recreation to the rich, it
may also prove a reliable aid to the industrious effort of the
poor. 'nx The Factory Act of 1833 required employers to provide
two hours' schooling a day for child workers. In girls' schools an
hour and three quarters were devoted to needlework. In The Art of
Needlework , 1840, Elizabeth Stone had nothing but praise for
this allocation of time:
173
Any of our readers who have been accustomed, as we have, to

see the domestic hearths and homes of those who, brought up
from infancy in factories, have married young, borne large
families and perhaps descended to the grave without ever
having learned how to make a petticoat for themselves, or even
a cap for their children - any who know the reality of this
picture, and have seen the misery consequent on it, will join us
cordially in expressing the earnest and heartfelt hope that the
extension of mental tuition amongst the lower classes may not
supersede, in the smallest iota, that instruction and practice in
sewing which next to knowledge of their catechism, is of vital
importance to the future well-doing of girls in the lower
stations of life. 69
But while embroidery was associated with goodness, meekness

and obedience and thus eminently suitable in Victorian eyes for
working-class girls and women, it was nevertheless dangerously
suggestive of class aspirations. Differences were maintained in
embroidery practised by each class, dictated both by material
restrictions and by ideologies about what was appropriate or
possible in the hands of working-class women. Samplers pro
duced in institutions, orphanages or village schools were far less
colourful than those of middle- or upper-class girls. Some do
include improving verses and border patterns but most were
simply numbers and alphabets. The symbols of privilege - the
basket of flowers, the mansions, lily pots and peacocks - had no
place in working-class samplers.
By 1821, government regulations ensured, for example, that
functional stitchery - darning samplers - dominated the working
class child's education: 'The child to perform the work in two
colours, yellow and blue, on linen that it may appear more
distinctly. When a child has completed one of these darns she may
practise on a small piece of muslin in which a hole has
been torn. '70
Once a girl had become skilled in fine sti�chery she might still
have found work as a professional hand embroiderer during the
first half of the nineteenth century. Initially industrialisation
encouraged hand embroidery. The newly wealthy industrialists
stimulated the market for luxury goods - when the social struc
ture is in flux embroidery is invariably in demand as a status
symbol. Not only did the market for embroidery expand, but the
174
mechanical production of muslin and net created new and plenti

ful material as a base for whitework embroidery.
A series of styles and techniques of whitework was developed
during the nineteenth century in response to the new machine
made nets and muslins. The new techniques could be practised
without a frame, and embroiderers were thus able to work at
home. Thousands of women were employed to embroider, par
ticularly in Scotland, Ireland and in the vicinity of Nottingham,
Derby and Leicester. The first whitework to supersede
tamboured muslin (see Chapter Six) was called Ayrshire work.
More durable than tambour work, it was initiated by Mrs
Jameson of Ayrshire c. 1814, and applied until c. 1870 to a wide
variety of garments from christening robes to riding habits.
Ayrshire work is characterised by firmly padded satin stitch, stem
stitch and beading, lightened by cut-out spaces filled with
needlepoint lace.
The material with the design printed upon it was distributed to
women in their homes. By 1857 it was estimated that 80,000
women in Scotland were homeworking muslin and some 400,000
in Ireland. 7 1 Children as young as three years old were employed
as 'drawers•. With a needle they would draw out the thread which
joined single widths of machine-made net. Aged nine or ten they
became 'menders', tying the short broken threads in the net, or
'runners', embroidering the patterns of fine curling foliage. A
group of women and children would usually work in the home of
one of their number- parents had their own children work with
other adults whom they believed would extract more labour from
them.
The Factory Commission of 1833 and the Children's Employ
ment Commission of 1843 reported on conditions amongst the
lace runners. Not only was the work badly paid but it was
physically damaging. Many embroiderers were blind by the time
they were twenty, or too weakened for any other occupation. A
Nottingham doctor reported that he personally had treated
10,000 cases of injured eyes in fourteen years. A lace embroiderer
described her day to the 1843 commission : 'We are reckoned to
begin at six; sometimes later. We keep on to ten generally. Take
two hours for meals. These are longer hours than in the factory. It
is not so very tiring as we sit down all day; instead of standing all
day. It is a very bad trade for the eyes . Where I sit I can't see the
hands and figures on the clock face a bit. '7l
175
Embroiderers would splash whisky on their eyes to sharpen

their vision momentarily; their bodies would become painfully
misshapen, their lungs constricted from bending over the work,
yet they were reported to prefer it to factory work: 'I like it better
than the factory, though we can't get so much. We have our own
liberty at home, and get our meals comfortable, such as they
are.''·' However, they attempted to organise tO change their
conditions. They considered that a major cause of their
exploitation was the system of distributing material to
embroiderers. Warehouses gave out the net or muslin to
mistresses or agents who not only employed embroiderers but
gave out material to other mistresses. So sometimes there was a
hierarchy of two or three mistresses taking a percentage of the
profits, and often covering their take by lying to the embroiderers
about the price offered by the warehouses.
In 1 840 a group of Nottingham lace embroiderers issued a
circular against the distribution system. Addressing other
embroiderers, they asked: 'Sisters . . . are you to be robbed of
your hard-earned pittance to maintain those cormorants in idle
ness, a'nd many of their husbands in drunkenness and profligacy
no wonder that misery enters our dwellings - that we are in the
depth of poverty, that our children are crying for bread, while
there is a swarm of locusts hovering between us and the manu
facturers ready to devour one half of our hire, it is not enough that
we have to compete with machines which in many cases, super
sede needle-work; but we are also robbed in the manner
described . . .'7�
The committee of five women who drafted the circular con
cluded by calling upon embroiderers to strike and for men to
support them 'as it is the cause of the poor working man as much
as females'. The committee requested that manufacturers stamp
the price of each piece of embroidery on the material to prevent
the middlewomen from cheating them: 'It would effectively put
an end to the system of which we complain. The average earning
of the single woman employed in embroidery of lace does not
amount to more than two shillings and six pence per week!
Comment is useless, we appeal to your humanity.'75
The strike was a failure ; the mistresses intimidated the younger
women from joining it and the net manufacturers were entirely
unmoved by the women's appeal to their humanity. Public
concern about the lace embroiderers came only when it appeared
176
that the conditions were threatening their behaviour as wives and

mothers: 'One of the most appalling features connected with the
extreme reduction that has taken place in the wages of lace
runners, and the consequent long hours of labour, is that married
women, having no time to attend to their families, or even to
suckle their offspring, freely administer opium in some form or
other to their infants.'76 And the young women 'almost ali.
become prostitutes'. These claims made by the Factory
Commission, 1833, and the Children's Employment Com
mission, 1843, were dramatised by Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna in
her novel about Kate Clark, a lace runner's apprentice, Wrongs of
Women, 1844. A country girl accustomed to open air and an
active life, Kate's first day as a 'drawer' is undiluted agony: 'All
the livelong day to sit over a trumpery fine thing, and not to go
out, not to move, not to look up, not to speak! My feet are as cold
as stone, just with sitting still; and my eyes are as good as poked
with part of one day's picking of those good for nothing threads . '
Looking round at the other children and women working in the
dark cottage she observes 'how white they are - how thin - how
crooked they look'. Slowly Kate's resistance to the conditions
eb_bs away: she develops a chronic sore throat, aching limbs,
becomes subject to fits of hysteria and, worst of all, her 'eyes
smart and burn, and are, even in the deepest darkness, constantly
oppressed by the pressure of balls and sparkles of light when she
tries to sleep'. The drama of the novel lies in the conflict between
the embroiderers' natural femininity - instinctive motherliness,
kindness and sexlessness - and the evil unfeminine behaviour
forced upon them by their struggle for survival. This innate
femininity is proved by their ability to produce embroidery,
white and pure in the gloom and dirt of the cottage. It is the
system which inexorably degrades them. When Kate's employer
has a baby the mother resorts to drugging it so that she can keep
working. Slowly the baby starves to death. Taking Kate with her,
the mother approaches the warehouseman for an advance on her
embroidery to pay for the baby's coffin. He suggests that instead
they exploit Kate's charms. Finally, wrecked and unfit for any
other employment, Kate does indeed turn to prostitution.
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna had no doubt where the blame
belonged:
The paper covering is removed from the delicate lace on which
177
she is tracing an intricate and elaborate pattern. Some blooming

bride will probably shade her face with that costly veil, amid
the sumptuous preparations for a wedding, in the prospect of
luxuries the means of providing which may possibly be traced
to some successful speculation on the productiveness of pauper
industry. 77
By the 1880s machines which embroidered had been perfected,

and embroidery ceased to be widely manufactured by hand .
Cleared of its associations with the suffering lace runners, hand
embroidery could be prized and sentimentalised for its evocation
of home, hearth and heart.
Professional rural hand embroidery was fostered by the Arts
and Crafts Movement. 78 At one level the number of philanthropic
rural craft projects was an expression of the Victorian idealisation
of country life. They also provided the satisfaction of controlling
small, manageable local communities in the face of the 'uncon
trollable' urban growth which characterised the nineteenth
century. In addition, during the 1880s rural depopulation was
increasing and the idea of revitalising the countryside and con
solidating the rural economy 'carried a powerful humanitarian
and patriotic appeal'. 79
For middle-class women, organising rural embroidery projects
was in line with the vocation of femininity. Elizabeth Gaskell
observed sardonically in Wives and Daughters that '. . . it was
always supposed that no strangers had seen Hollingford
properly, unless they had been taken to the countess' school and
been duly impressed by the neat little pupils, and the still neater
needlework there to be inspected . 'Mo
The overt reason for fostering rural craft industries was the
economic hardship of peasant women whose husband's wage
could not support a family, but a mixture of moralism and
practicality informed the work: a contemporary writer described
a worker in a rural industry as 'one of those to whom the industry
has been a real blessing, enabling her to keep her tiny home
together without becoming a burden to anyone. ' K 1
Embroidery was expected to improve the moral quality of the
workers : craft work 'brought comfort and orderliness into many
a home, whose mistress is now to be found busily engaged by her
own firesi<ile, instead of gossiping beside her neighbours. 'M1 There
178
86 The Charit)' Bazaar, Strangers Hall Museum, Norwich.
Bazaars played an important role in the Victorian social structure. The sewn and
stuffed model of a bazaar stall shows two ladies presiding over an assortment of
knitted, crocheted, embroidered and fancy work objects.
. i Hr"'
- --
, .
. I'� .
'··
87 lllusrration from the Penny Magazine, 1843. Photo: Laurie Sparham.

The drawing shows lace runners, as the women who embroidered machine-made
net in whitework were known, at work in a cottage.
88 Ayrshire work, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photo: Laurie Sparham
Ayrshire work was initiated by Mrs Jameson of Ayrshire in 1814, and continued eo
be used on clothing until c 1870. The work was distributed ro women in their
homes, and by the 1850s thousands ofwomen in Scotland were employed
embroidering muslin. Whirework embroiderers invariably had seriously impaired
sight by the age of rwemy if they scarred work as small children.
89 Pattern for Ayrshire work, Castle Museum, Nottingham. Mid-nineteenth
century. 26.7 X 35.5 cm.
90 The Showroom at the Royal School of Art Needlework. Photo: Anthea Callen.
The l�te nineteenth-century middle class emulated seventeenth-century crewel
embroidery. The uniformity of style was a result of the school's credo that 'each
must copy humbly and faithfully the design which should always be before her'
a mode of working in line with a feminine ideal of humility and docility.
91 Unfinished embroidery, May Morris, designed by William Morris, Victoria
and Albert Museum, London.
From 1880 WiUiam Morris placed his firm's embroidery workshop in his daughter
May Morris' hands. She was a skilled needleworker and designer, wrote extensively
on embroidery and caught the subject at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in
London.
was of course a difference maintained between the effects of

embroidering in a middle-class woman's and a working-class
woman's home. When a middle- or upper-class woman
embroidered, it was her 'taste' which shed a moral, spiritual light;
when a working-class woman embroidered the change to her
surroundings came not from the woman herself but from the
embroidery.
When cottage mothers are engaged in the production of beauti

ful fabrics the whole family must benefit thereby, learning
unconsciously to appreciate beautiful things, and also receiving
a much needed training in conscientious work, no mean
advantage in these days of scamping. Beauty has always a
refining influence and the power of producing it markedly
increases the self-respect of the maker. �3
This was the ideology of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Its
proponents believed that good design and beautiful objects would
raise the moral tone of society. Good craft work and middle-class
women were, in their different ways, both considered sources of
moral purity and spirituality. In the midst of the social upheaval
of the Industrial Revolution the angel in the house was to lead her
husband's thought to higher states of existence and, in the face of
an increasing division of labour, good craft work was to preserve
an ideal of the dignity of bbour.
The movement, which was well underway by the early 1890s,
involved a range of craft workers and artists who believed that
mechanisation, far from easing drudgery, meant longer hours,
heavier work and the production of shoddy, ugly goods. Like its
most famous member, William Morris, many members of the
movement were socialists who wanted to make art available to
everyone, and to unite artists, designers and craft workers.
Accordingly the movement promoted the development of small
workshops and countrywide organisations which taught craft
skills, exhibited and marketed craft work. William Morris even
envisaged a time when the sexual division within the domestic arts
would vanish for ever. He anticipated the day when 'the domestic
arts; the arrangement of the house in all its details, marketing,
cleaning, cooking, baking and so on' would be in the hands of
everyone and 'whoever was incapable of taking an interest and a
share of some parts of such work would have to be considered
179
diseased, and the existence of many diseased persons would tend

to the enslavement of the weaker sex.·�...
However, the democratic ideals of the movement soon
foundered. One of the leading members, Charles Ashbee, com
plained, 'We have made of a great social movement a narrow and
tiresome little aristocracy working for the very rich. 'Ks
But what of the effects of the Arts and Crafts Movement on
embroidery and its association with femininity? In itself the
movement would have changed the relationship hardly at all. But
it coincided with the emergence of a powerful Suffrage Move
ment, with campaigns in favour of wider professional and
educational opportunities for women, and a growing body of
feminist literature criticising the restrictions imposed in the name
of femininity. Once women began to push out the boundaries of
Victorian femininity, the encouragement given to embroidery by
the Arts and Crafts Movement was historically responsible for
profound changes within the practice of embroidery. Initially,
however, all the movement did was to promote a new style of
needlework.
William Morris is credited with changing the face of Victorian
embroidery single-handedly. In the 1850s he did make a personal
gesture towards breaking down the art's sexual division of labour.
Jane Morris described how she and her husband 'studied old
pieces [of crewel embroidery] and by unpicking and etc we
learned much - it was uphill work, fascinating but only carried
through by enormous hard work and perseverance. '86 The impli
cation that the Morrises alone had re-discovered the lost art of
crewel embroidery is somewhat misleading. Miss Lambert's
Handbook of Needlework, 1 842, had referred to the process.
Moreover, once Morris had mastered the needle, he left it to the
women of his household. Anthea Callen has described the extent
to which the mode of production in Morris, Marshal! and
Faulkner - and right across the Arts and Crafts Movement -
maintained an entirely traditional sexual division of labour.
Women staffed the embroidery workshop, which from 1880
William Morris placed in the hands of his daughter, May
Morris.�;
As commercial pattern producers, Morris, Marshall and
Faulkner hardly deviated from established nineteenth-century
traditions. The production of patterns for amateur needlewomen
was the firm's most successful venture. The articles available from
180
the firm, either as finished goods or ready traced as transfers,

were the same as those offered in contemporary women's maga
zines: portieres, billiard-table covers, wall-panels, firescreens,
cushion covers, book covers, blotters, photograph frames, work
bags, sachets, doilies and tea cosies. The instructions Morris
issued to embroiderers to 'have nothing in your house that you do
not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful'88 echoed the way
the magazines had for decades advertised their patterns as 'uniting
use and beauty'. The designs provided for amateur needlewomen
did however mark a move away from Berlin wool patterns. They
were far more arduous. Printed on silk or linen, with a supply of
specially dyed thread, a corner of the pattern was already worked
as an instruction to the embroiderer. Barbara Morris in her excel
lent history, Victorian Embroidery, 1962, expressed surprise that
Morris 'with his insistence on the joy of creative labour should
consider that repeated patterns were suitable for embroidery'. 89
He simply transposed his designs for chintzes and wallpapers,
with their repeating sinuous shapes, to embroidery patterns.
Historically William Morris was the link between the
embroidery revival that began during the 1840s under the
influence of mediaevalism, and the so-called 'Art Needlework'
that flourished in the 1880s. In his criticism of aniline dyes, and
his emphasis on the importance of carefully selecting and respect
ing materials, he was repeating what the proponents of
mediaevalism had long preached. Morris himself had worked in
the office of the architect G.E. Street who was closely associated
with one of the major practitioners of the revival of mediaeval
embroidered prototypes, Agnes Blencowe. Morris' involvement
with mediaevalism can be seen in his early figurative embroidery
designs. He designed a set of hangings based on Chaucer's
Illustrious Women, for the Red House in Walthamstow, reviving
the subject matter of heroic women so popular in the seventeenth
century, and so subtly oppressive to women. Jane Morris and
Elizabeth Burden stitched the illustrious women. Another vast
embroidery project was conceived by Morris, in partnership with
Edward Burne-Jones, for Lady Margaret Bell and her daughter
Florence Johnson to stitch. Together they spent eight years
embroidering the freeze from Chaucer's Romance of the Rose.
These two projects suggest what lay behind the apparent incon
sistencies in Morris' attitude towards craft work as a whole and
embroidery in particular. He believed that in the middle ages
181
designer and executor had been one, and that there had been no
division between anist and craftworker. He insisted that 'The
handicraftsman, left behind by the anist when the arts sundered,
must come up with him, must work side by side with him. '90 But
when it came to embroidery, the ideatised mediaeval image that
dominated his thinking was not the collective craft workshop but
the solitary stitching damsel. In Chapter One I described the
particular ideological reading of the history of mediaeval
embroidery provided by the Victorians. Morris was no more
immune than anyone else to that image. Indeed, the Pre
Raphaelite Brotherhood, with whom he was associated,
contributed to the creation of an ideal of romantic 'mediaeval'
femininity.
It was the image of the mediaeval embroiderer - aristocratic,
timeless, willowy, patient, natural, naive and unobtainable - that
shaped Morris' advice to contemporary needlewomen. In Some
Hints for Pattern Designing, 1881, he warns that the technical
possibilities of embroidery are 'apt to lead people into a cheap
naturalism'. He goes on to say that the needs of 'our material' and
the nature of the craft in general demand that 'our rose and the
like, however unmistakable roses, shall be quaint and naive to the
last degree.' He urges embroiderers to think of their work as
'gardening with silk and gold thread' and concludes with a
warni ng that because embroidery is 'an an which may be accused
by ill-natured persons of being a superfluity of life, we must be
specially careful that it shall be beautiful and not spare labour to
make it sedulously elegant of form and every pan of it refined in
line and colour.'91 Women and embroidery seem again to be elided ;
the embroiderer must be on guard to produce 'sedulously elegant' ,
refined, natural, naive and quaint work.
Given William Morris' failure to challenge the contradictory
notions of femininity associated with embroidery and expected of
an embroiderer, the terms his biographer E.P. Thompson uses to
criticise his poetry are poetic justi ce indeed. He writes 'This verse
is less like music than embroidery with its repeated decorative
motifs, its leisurely movement, its moody, imprecise vocabulary.
Just for a moment the languorous movement of the rhythm is
broken . . .'9� Leisurely, moody, imprecise, languorous - the
twentieth-century view of embroidery, or of she who embroiders?
182
The ideas that William Morris promoted - an admiration for

seventeenth-century crewel embroidery, an emphasis on quality
materials - were given form in' Art Needlework' promoted by the
Royal School of Art Needlework, founded in 1872 by Helen
W elby and Lady Marion Alford. In her compendious work
Needlework as Art, 1886, Lady Marion acknowledged the
school's debt to Morris but firmly distinguished thetr work from
his.
Only the sobriety and tenderness of his colouring, she writes,
'reconciles us to his repetitions of large vegetable forms which
remind us sometimes of a kitchen-garden in tornado. For
domestic decoration we should, as far as possible, adhere tO
reposing forms and colours. Our flowers should lie in their

allotted spaces, quiet and undisturbed by elemental struggles,
which have no business in our windowed and glass-protected
rooms.'93
Lady Marion Alford stresses the domestic, feminine nature of
the school's work and workers, partially to offset the school's
commercial character. The Royal School provided employment
and training for impoverished gentlewomen who, ideally
destined only for marriage, had to support themselves. Though
professional embroidery had long been one of the few respectable
ways for such women to earn their keep, it was Still vital for the
school to stress that their embroidery was ladylike and their
labour genteel.
The need for an organisation along the lines of the Royal School
was demonstrated by the number of others that soon appeared.
Some guaranteed a reassuring anonymity: 'Ten shillings and six
pence per annum will entitle any lady to exhibit twelve articles at a
time on sale at the Crystal Palace Stall. Proceeds are forwarded
monthly, and strictest confidence is observed with regard to the
names and addresses of the members. '94 The Ladies Work Society
obtained commissions for needlework to be stitched by members
in their own homes. The society announced that it intended to
'temper the taste' of the designs offered in order tO 'provide work
of a useful, artistic and elevating character for ladies dependent on
their own exertions. '95 The patronising tone was prompted by the
fact that it was subtly•assumed to be a lady's fault if she was
dependent on her own exertions: somewhere she must have
strayed from the ways of virtuous femininity.
The Royal School of Needlework managed to present its work
183
not as work, but as simply the fulfilment of the vocation of

femininity, by subscribing to the Arts and Crafts Movement's
belief in the morally elevating effect of good design. They des
cribed their aims in terms of a crusade 'to please our public and to
educate its taste. We wish to adorn and improve. '9�>
The fear of failing to be feminine even affected the mode of
working at the School. It was emphasised that independence and
initiative were outside the sphere of the embroiderer: 'I would
impress on all , workers and superintendents too, that nothing
should be left to the imagination of the stitcher, that each must
copy humbly and faithfully the design which should be always
placed before her. '97
A number of artists supplied the schools with designs,
including Williarn Morris, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Frederick
Leighton and E.J. Pointer. Designers, artists and architects con
stantly reiterated that embroiderers were not artists. It is true that
embroidery and painting are very different arts but rather than
analysing the difference, theorists either aimed to keep
embroiderers n
i their place, or to maintain embroidery as a
signifier of femininity and social status. Thus Lewis F. Day,
designer, wrote, 'Let her, unless she is inwardly compelled tO
invent, remain content to do good needlework. That is her art. '98
The architect H.M. Baillie Scott stated,
If it is necessary to compete with the painter, what can we

achieve with the needle that cannot be achieved with the brush?
There are many things. The sheen of silk, the glitter of jewels,
the gleam of pearls are not the least among them . . . the
essential feature is the display of the qualities of the materials. 99
That an art work should express the character of the materials

used was a tenet of art theorists opposed to art nouveau which
gave the illusion of soft forms out of hard materials. But basically
Baillie Scott is making a plea that embroidery be an object of
luxury and display rather than one of aesthetic interest.
The reason why these men were so keen to keep embroiderers
(and embroidery) in their place was quite simply that they were
edging out of it. Fifty-odd years of campaigning by women for
the recognition of needlework as art was taking effect. And
whatever criticism can be levelled at the Arts and Crafts
Movement in terms of sexism and elitism, it was instrumental in
184
raising the standard of hand embroidery and allowing women to

recognise the value of their work, not as mere evidence of the
femininity which would enable them to attain male financial
support, but as something which actually earned them money.
The Young Ladies journal attempted to express the profound
changes that had occurred in embroidery: 'It is about seven years
since embroidery once again became the favourite work of
English ladies; for many years previous to that time, only the
professional embroiderers dared to venture upon any work which
was by most women regarded as extremely difficult.'100
'Art Needlework' could have done nothing more than produce
a style of embroidery which evoked an ever more refined
femininity. Based on seventeenth-century crewel embroidery
and influenced by the aesthetic movement, irises, daffodils and
cranes replaced the roses and parrots of Berlin woolwork. Pre
dictably the embroidery soon became an object for snide ridicule:
'And what is our idea of ornament? Counterfeited down to its
thorns and filmy petals, the wild rose is displayed in woolly
crewels or fraying soft silks upon a piece of linen.'101 But the
development of Art Needlework coincided with the feminist
challenge to the constraints of femininity. The climate was
changing, it was possible for women to resist the taunts, to refuse
to drop the mocked style in favour of a more 'convincing' show of
femininity.
In 1894 a group of students at the Glasgow School of Art,
headed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, mounted an exhibition of
furniture, metal work and embroidery - all in a very particular
style. Organic forms characteristic of the style known as art
nouveau were disposed on a geometric grid within a colour
scheme of pearly-greys, silver and lilac set off by black and white.
Embroidery had a place as one of a number of media contributing
to the overall scheme. The woman responsible for embroidery at
the Glasgow School of Art was Jessie R. Newbery, who started a
needlework class in 1894 and taught there until 1908. She set forth
her design principles in the Studio of 1898:
I believe in education consisting of seeing the best that has been

done. Then, having this high standard before us, in doing what
we like to do; that for our fathers, this for us.
I believe that nothing is common or unclean ; that the design
or decoration of a pepper pot is as important, in its degree, as
185
the conception of a cathedral.

I believe that material, space, and consequent use discover
their own exigencies and as such have to be considered well.
. . . I like the opposition of straight lines to curved; of
horizontal to vertical; of purple to green, of green to blue . . . I
specially aim at beautifully shaped spaces and try to make them
as important as the patterns .
I try to make most appearance with least effort but insist that
what work is ventured on is as perfect as maybe. 102
Anthea Callen calls this statement Newbery's artistic creed.

The moral fervour of 'virtuous femininity' does indeed ring in her
words, through the language and theory of her art school training.
But aspects of her 'creed' completely transgress the confines of
femininity . She speaks the language of desire, not that of duty,
says firmly what she likes and what she wants. She believes that
nothing is common or unclean. She renounces obedience and
announces her independence of 'our fathers'. Not only does she
reject the self-denying stance of femininity, but she views
embroidery in a new light, not as something springing spon
taneously from an embroiderer's natural femininity, but as an art
with a history which determines but need not limit its practice.
Previous theorists had seen embroidery in terms of a past that
should be rejected, just as past forms of femininity were rejected
as old-fashioned and 'wrong' or conversely rigidly advocated as
'right' in the face of an immoral present. And whereas other
theorists wanted work to be 'perfect' in order to improve the
embroiderer, Jessie Newbery wanted work 'as perfect as maybe'
for the sake ofthe design.
Initially her class had provided an extra subject for students at
the school, or for young women from Glasgow most of whom
wished to become professional embroiderers. However, around
1900 the Scottish Education Department issued regulations for
the further training of teachers. Embroidery was designated an
important part ofthe normal school curriculum, and the Glasgow
classes were opened to women teachers from the city and
throughout the West of Scotland. Ann Macbeth who had studied
at the Royal School of Needlework was put in charge of classes.
She developed a way of teaching the art which still forms the basis
of contemporary embroidery instruction.
If Jessie Newbery loosened the hold of femininity on
186
embroidery, Ann Macbeth could be said to have undermined its

class connections. The silks and satins of Art Needlework were
abandoned in favour of cheaper fabrics. Her basic principle was
that the design should arise out of the technique employed.
Students were encouraged to invent their own designs rather than
obediently following patterns. Specimens of the embroidery
demonstrating the technique were sent to schools throughout
Britain, and women from Glasgow lectured widely on their
methods. Women's Co-operative Guilds organised classes run in
association with the Glasgow Art School. The face of embroidery
in schools was transformed and its place in art schools far more
assured.
While in no way underestimating the transformation achieved
by the embroiderers at the Glasgow School of Art, their work
needs to be viewed in the context of the history of women. Their
innovations in embroidery coincided with women gaining access
to wider areas of public ife.
l But each new gain for women was
accompanied by a new dividing line between male and female
territory. While Newbery and Macbeth loosened the hold of
femininity on embroidery, treating it as an art form rather than an
extension of the embroiderer, simultaneously needlework in
schools became institutionalised as the province of female staff
and girls. The School Board for London Final Report, 1902,
observed that 'The boys in the infants school were at one time
taught Needlework with the girls ; but this was altered in 1890, the
boys now generally taking Drawing, while the girls take
Needlework.' 103
The needlework class was self-supporting; girls were expected
to buy the articles they made. Items varied from practical gar
ments - chemises, drawers, aprons, dusters - to fancy needle
work including dolls' hats, pin cushions and reins. Education for
girls was still a training in femininity through needlework, to the
extent that boys were given books for prizes while girls were
rewarded by being permitted to take home their needlework
without first paying for it. 104
School records reveal that girls did not always acquiesce to the
dominance of needlework in their school lives . A Lambeth
School log book entry reads: 'Commenced work this afternoon
with a large attendance in consequence of having told the girls that
we were going to have lessons instead of needlework .' 1 0 5
In girls' public secondary schools, started in the late nineteenth
187
century, teachers themselves rejected embroidery. Following a

feminist tradition they supported plain sewing instead. A pupil of
The North London Collegiate wrote:
Whether Miss Buss, like my mother, had been so overdosed

with it herself that she did not care to inflict it on the young, or
whether she considered it a feminine and feeble pursuit, easily
picked up at home, the result was joyful enough for me . . .
Turning her back on the frivolities of embroidery Miss Buss
encouraged plain sewing . . . 106
However, school inspectors were vociferous in their criticism of

the scant time devoted to needlework in these schools . By the
turn of the century, 'accusations of unwomanliness' and 'over
pressure' led the schools, often very reluctantly, to start
�tructured classes in needlework and embroidery. 107
After the Education Act of 1902, the curriculum for all girls in
secondary education included needlework. In state secondary
schools boys did woodwork while girls did needlework. The class
division which has always characterised needlework changed; for
working-class girls, needlework was connected to domestic work
in preparation for their future as wives, mothers or domestic
servants; for middle-class girls needlework was increasingly
taught as an art, following the principles established by the
women at the Glasgow School of Art.
Embroidery and femininity were being transformed, but not
separated.
188
8 : A Naturally
Revolutionary Art ?
As we have seen, the Victorians presented the link between

embroidery and women as entirely natural, thus concealing the
complex social, political and economic factors that had connected
the two since the middle ages. The twentieth century, receiving
the full weight of Victorian literature on the subject, accepted
embroidery as evidence of the naturalness of femininity. In this
chapter I shall look at the legacy of nineteenth-century attitudes
towards the art and women.
The range of twentieth-century embroidery is enormous. It is
practised professionally by artists, dressmakers, embroiderers,
teachers, and by millions of women as a 'leisure art'. Rather than
attempting to encompass it all, I shall concentrate on specific
instances in which embroidery became part of a move to
transform the relationship of art to society, and the place of
women within society. Previous chapters traced the evolution of
the link between embroidery and femininity, largely through the
history of British embroidery, though I have tried to show that
these connections were not limited to Britain. The scope of this
chapter necessarily widens, to include Western European,
American and Russian radical movements.
189
A Naturally Revolutionary Art?
Amedee Ozenfant in Foundations ofModem Art, 1931, noted

the changing relationship between the so-called fine arts and
applied arts, between artists and craftworkers.
If we go on allowing the minor arts to think themselves the

equal of great art, we shall soon be hail fellow to all sorts of
domestic furniture, each to his place! The decorators to the big
shops, the artists on the next floor up, several floors up, as high
as possible, on the pinnacles, even higher. For the time being,
however, they sometimes do meet on the landings, the decor
ators having mounted at their heels, and numerous artists
having come down on their bunkers. 1
Ozenfant's comments on the effects of the breakdown of the

art hierarchy reveals a prime reason for its existence. The artist's
heights of inspiration are only impressive if they can be measured
against the depths of domestic furniture . Ozenfant predicts a
demoralising democratisation of the arts if 'artists' and 'decor
ators' meet too freely on the landings. Yet that is precisely what
some avant-garde art movements wanted.
The artists involved in Dada, Surrealism and Russian Con
structivism believed that an end to distinctions between the fine
and applied arts would create an art relevant to the lives of the
masses of the people - and infinitely richer in itself. Although all
three movements manifestly failed to achieve their ideals, for
differenJ; historical reasons, they opened up a space for women
artists. Women's particular skills and traditional areas of activity
in the domestic sphere, previously thought to be beneath the
concern of the fme artist, were accorded a new importance.
Not all feminist critics consider that the opportunities thus
provided for women were necessarily in their best interests.
Linda Nochlin voices the ambiguity:
On the one hand for a woman artist to 'return' as it were to her

traditional role in the minor arts, generally less conducive to
fame and fortune than a career in painting or sculpture, can be
viewed as a retrograde step. Yet from another vantage point,
we can say that advanced women artists involved in the decor
ative arts in the early twentieth century were contributing to
the most revolutionary directions - both social and aesthetic
of their time. 1
190
To call their 'return' a 'retrograde step' is to confirm, and con

form to, conventional distinctions between media expressed in
the term 'minor arts'. Nevertheless, the effort to overthrow the
hegemony of the fine arts by merging them with the applied arts
tended to benefit painting rather than embroidery; to modify
masculinity rather than to transform femininity. Embroidery was
employed as a fine art medium because of its association with
femininity and nature. It was to be a disruptive influence on the
male dominated fine arts, but this vns to be a one-way process.
The character of embroidery was assumed to be fixed and un
changing, eternally feminine.
Take the case of the Dada movement. The movement started in
Zurich during 1915. Committed to combat materialism and over
intellectualisation, the artists involved rejected oil painting for all
it connoted. Sophie Tauber, a member of the group, was then
teaching at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich. She introduced
the painter Jean Arp to embroidery. He later wrote about their
work together:
The Renaissance taught men to arrogantly exalt their reason.

Modern times with their sciences and technologies have
consecrated men to megalomania. The chaos of our eras is the
result of that over-estimating of reason. We sought an
anonymous and collective art. In 1915 Sophie Tauber and I
embroidered and did collages. 3
Jean Arp's contribution to the first issue of the magazine Dada in

July 1 9 1 7 was an embroidery, but a poem Arp wrote reveals that
he valued embroidery not for its qualities as an artistic medium
but for its stereotypical associations with intuition, feeling and
above all with nature. The long poem called The Spider
Embroiders ends with these lines:
Embroidery is more natural than oil painting, the swaLlows are

embroidering the sky for thousands of centuries, there is no
such thing as applied art. 4
In other words, embroidery is seen to be timeless, mindless and

�
simply available to be incorporated into the fine arts. With
embroidery Jean Arp and Sophie Tauber believed that they had
found 'new material unburdened by tradition', but it was
191
embroidery's particular burdensome tradition, the way it was

characterised as 'outside culture' and as an accomplishment, 'not
work', that made it so appropriate for their intentions.
Hannah Hoch, an artist working with the Berlin Dada, did,
however, evoke the particular histOrically determined qualities of
embroidery and lace in such a way as not simply to appropriate
the medium, but tO highlight its gender associations. During
1922, she produced collages called 'domestic mottos'. In
Bewacht, 1924, she disturbingly collages tagether a huge Chinese
embroidered rose with an image of a tiny male martial figure. 5
Embroidery has played a part in the ideological and formal
concerns of twentieth-century art. It has been suggested that it
was Sop hie Tauber's background in applied ans that led her
towards abstraction in art. 6 Similarly, the artist Sonia Terk
Delaunay's work with embroidery was also, in part, responsible
for her decision tO work non-figuratively with colour. Her
designs of tapestries and an embroidery of 1909 suggest that
textile art prompted her move away from conventional use of
colour and perspective, towards the development of the 'abstract'
painting known as Orphism, which she initiated with her
husband, Robert Delaunay, in Paris during 1913.7
Soon after the birth of her son in 1 9 1 1 , she made a patchwork
blanket like those stitched by Russian peasant women. In Russia,
where she was born, there had been a revival of interest in peasant
needlework from the late nineteenth century. Throughout her
career she continued to work simultaneously in the applied and
fine arts. Committed to bringing art to a wider public and into
everyday ife,
l she designed caskets, lampshades, book covers,
scarves, dresses, ballet costumes, embroidered waistcoats and
embroidered coats. It has, however, been argued that, far from
bringing art to a wider public, Delaunay's work was simply
appropriated by the world of Parisian haute couture.
Of all the attempts tO transform the relations of art to society,
none was so far reaching as that which accompanied the Russian
Revolution. From the October Revolution in 1917, and through
the 1920s, artists and designers joined forces to 'wrench' the
applied arts from the middle-class drawing rooms 'whither the
old artistic culture had consigned it'. 8 A large number of women
were active in the Russian avant garde, and embroidery was given
a place in their innovative work.
The two factors-the number of women artists and the presence
192
92 Embroidery designed by Jessie Newbery, worked by Edith Rowac (her mother),
Glasgow School of Arc, Glasgow. 1897. 66 X 259.8 cm. Photo: Anrhea Callen.
Jessae Newbery founded the embroadery department anhe Glasgow School of Arc,
and from being a minor subject in the arc school curriculum it soon became the
most imporranr 'craft' taught there. Whereas earlier theorists wanted embroidery
tO be 'perfect' in order to amprove the embroaderer, Jessie Newbery wanted work
'as perfect as may be' for the sake ofthe design.
93 Conway School, London, 1907. Greater London Council Photo Library.

Education for girls in the early years ofthe twentieth century still included a
training in femininity through needlework. Boys were given books as school
prizes, while girls were rewarded by being permitted to take home their
needlework without first paying for it.
9 1 '/"p111mr 1-willaxr. Soma Tcrk Delauno.�y, Mus(t· Nationalc d'Arr Modernc,
Pans 1909.
95 (ri�ht) Bw.�tbt. Hanmth li<x.h CGtrman, b IHH9), pri\atc collcnion,

Germany . 1 9 2 ') . Collage. Ernbroidcry was an arr used borh figumnvc:ly and 1 n
abstraCt work. Sonia D<:laun:1y's movc:: towards ah\tractiOil was pc:rhaps facilitated
by her IJmili,lflt} "ith t:mbro,du} and J>.t tch"ork. Hannah Hoch m her collage
Bw'tlthl .1ppe<�rs more (oncc::rnc::d w1th crnbroid<:rl's connoratwns than wirh rhc
arr's formal qualitics: the juxtaposition ol shapes "nd ohjc::t rs conjurcs up the <:lass
and SCXUJI aS\IX.IatiOih of the <lrr
96 Embroidered bookcover, Liubov Popova
(Russian, 1889-l924), c l923-24. Silk thread
on grosgrain. 45.2 X 3 1 . 5 cm. George Costakis
collection.
In Russia, embroidery had a long history as a
peasant art, hence during the Revolution a
number of artists, including Liubov Popova and
Olga Rozanova, worked with embroidery as part
of their attempt to transform the relation of arc to
society.
97 Suffrage banner, Museum ofLondon, London. c 1 9 1 1 . Paint, embroidery and applique.

98 Suffrage handkerchief, Janie Terreno,
Museum ofLondon, London. 1912.
Embroidered signatures as gestures ofsolidarity
and protest combined the political tradition of
petition with the social tradition ofembroidered
signatures as mementoes to mark special
occasions.
99 Suffrage banner, Museum of London,

London. c 1 9 1 1 . Applique and embroidery.
Banners were an established feature of political
demonstrations in Britain, but whereas trades
union banners were largely produced by a
11 0
professional banner-making firm, the women of
the Suffrage movement employed their
considerable personal skills previous!y reserved
'#OTE
for such objects as portieres and mantel draperies.
Within the Suffrage movement there was an arts
and crafts society called the Suffrage Atelier.
NO
TAX
lOO Table cloth, Sweden, 1945. Photo: Nappe
There is a long tradition of embrmdery as commemoration of the dead, and
as testament of survival and resistance in the face of political persecution
and racial opp ression. In 1945 women who had survived Nazi concentration
camps embroidered a table cloth for Count Folke Bernadotte the Swedish
,
diplomat who had enabled them to reach refuge in Sweden. Cornflowers,

poppies and daisies are worked in the centre and surrounded by the names
of all the women who worked on the cloth.
In 1987 a project started which underlines the subversive potential of
embroidery; its potential both as a collective and individual art and its
paradoxical capacity to chaUenge rigid gender divisions. The International
Names Project was begun by the lesbian and gay communities in the USA.
By the 1990s the Project had branches in 1 9 countries producing the AIDS
Memorial Qu ilt Each of the thousands of 3' by 6' panels is designed and
.
created by friends, lovers and families to commemo rate an individual who

has died of AIDS. The Quilt functions on many levels. It is a testimony
to those who have died. It provides a means of working through mourning
for those who survive. It challenges ignorance by revealing the names and
lives behind the statistics. And it highlights the need for resources in
combating the illness.
of embroidery - are explicable in terms of the recent history of

women and the history of art in Russia. In the latter half of the
nineteenth century women had been active n
i the intelligentsia
and radical groups, setting a precedent for twentieth-century
women to participate fully in the artistic avant garde. The promi
nence of embroidery in the work of avant-garde artists was due to
the theories of the late nineteenth-century art movements in
Russia. Artists in the 1870s had repudiated 'art for art's sake',
wanting to make art 'useful' to society.9 In their desire to revivify
the fine arts and to create a new national culture they had turned
to Russian peasant art, including embroidery. Thus, embroidery
and carpentry workshops had been established as part of what is
known as the Russian Nee-Nationalist movement.
Prior to the first world war, artists looked to peasant art as a
means by which indigenous cultural modes could be reinforced in
opposition to the dominant place given to foreign culture. The
painter Nat.alia Goncharova wrote, 'I turn away from the West
. . . for me the East means the creation of new forms, an extend
ing and deepening of the problems of colour. ' 10
She incorporated her knowledge of peasant costume and
embroidery into both painting and embroidery. Her claim that
embroidery extended and deepened 'problems of colour' indi
cates that, as in the West, embroidery was seen as an essentially
universal or intuitive medium. In 1912 Goncharova exhibited
work 'in Chinese, Byzantine and Futurist styles, in the style of
Russian embroidery, woodcuts and traditional tray designs' . 1 1
The romantic, nationalistic use of embroidery was transformed
by the Revolution of 1917. For avant-garde artists the Revolution
announced the advent of a communal way of life in which the
artist would be an ntegrated
i member, bringing her or his skills to
industrial design and production. Declaring that easel painting
was redundant, artists turned to peasant art and embroidery in
their search for an art compatible with socialism and collective
pracuce.
The Department of Fine Am (IZO) was created in 1918 under
the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment (NARKOMPROS). It
organised the arts for the new Soviet Government. In the four
years from 1917, artists in IZO re-organised art schools and
museums all over the country. Olga Rosanova, an artist with a
training in both the fine and applied arts, created the applied arts
sub-section and became its head. Believing chat the cultivation of
193
a new applied art culture should grow not out of the destruction
of previously existing traditions, but out of their modernisation,
she organised workshops in the old centres of Russian applied
arts.
Before the revolution Rosanova had been working with
embroidery. For the magazine of the Suprematist artists, she
prepared a design for an embroidery in three colours, declaring
her determination to widen the definition of art beyond easel
painting. She incorporated her embroidery designs into dress.
Large patches of embroidery were placed on the dresses to
accentuate the geometrical outline of the design, and to provide a
sense of dynamism and rhythm.
At a State Exhibition of the Applied Arts Workshop in
Moscow, 1919, peasant embroideries were exhibited after designs
by Rosanova and Nadezhda Udaltsova, Kazimir Malevich and
K.L. Boguslavskaya-Puni. The women peasants from Verbovka
in Kiev embroidered for such objects as handbags, blotting pads,
wall pockets for letters and papers, pillows, skirts and scarves.
'The embroideries were indeed amazing, shining with their
coloured silk' observed Udaltsova. 1 2 The socialist artists appeared
to accept the contradictions in designing work for the peasant
women to stitch.
Embroidery gained a particular significance with the move
ment to develop a new Russian costume. Artists and designers
collaborated in the attempt to design clothes intended for indus
trial mass production. At the time of the first all-Russian
conference on artistic industry in 1919, however, the economic
situation made i t impossible for their ideas to be put into
production. At the conference the dress designer Nadezhda
Lamenova declared:
Art has penetrated to all spheres of our living environment,

stimulating the artistic taste and sensitiveness of the masses.
Dress is one of the most appropriate guidelines. Artists in the
field of dress must take the initiative into their own hands,
working to create from the simplest materials the simplest but
beautiful types of dress, suited to the new tenor of life among
the workers. u
Lamenova was a leading figure in the drive to design costume

for the workers, to be based not on signs of social position but on
194
the conditions of life and the requirements of health and comfort.

She organised the Workshop of Contemporary Costume and the
Atelier of Fashion in 1923, which produced its own magazine.
The editorial elaborated their aims :
In designing new styles one must try to achieve a blending of

the existing trend in European fashion with the characteristic
ally national features of Russian Art.
Articles included Alexander Exter, the painter, on 'Constructivist

Costume' and Yevjenia Prebelskaya on 'Embroidery on Present
Day Production' . 14
Embroidery was given a place in the new costume for its beauty
and for its association with peasant national costume. Yet the
women artists and designers felt forced to justify its presence.
Embroidery still carried overtones of bourgeois decadence. In
1918, in Letter to the Futurists, the artist V.E. Tatlin wrote, 'The
Futurists have been too preoccupied with cafes and various
embroideries for emperors and ladies. I explain this by the fact
that our artistic vision has lost three-fifths of its clarity.' 1 5
Prebelskaya repeatedly defended her use of embroidery:
Work on the Constructivist phase in women's clothes has

impelled the designers to take a fresh look at embroidery in
relation to women's clothes, and to see it not as a separate
feature or mere embellishment but as being to a certain degree a
constructive and crowning element.
European clothes are not without decorative features that serve
no constructive purpose but a purely visual one. They are not
sufficiently clear in their relationship to the garment's con
struction. 1 6
The argument that embroidery was a 'constructive' aspect of the

dress design rather than an embellishment was thin indeed.
Nevertheless, Lamenova adopted a similar line of defence for her
use of the art :
What used to be called trimmings has significance for the whole

garment: it can strengthen the rhythms of planes, intensify the
style. . . Our New Costume will match the new quality of life
195
characterised by industry, dynamism and awareness of its

power.17
Behind the women's arguments lay a more general conflict
within the post-revolutionary debates on the applied arts. Some
called for 'the whole decorative and embellishment aspect of
costume (to be) annihilated' while others insisted that 'there is
nothing inappropriate to the P�oletariat in a certain degree of
smartness and attractiveness.'1� At a practical level, however,
embroidery was simply not appropriate for the mass production
which was the ultimate aim of the designers of the New Costume.
Tacit recognition that embroidery was unsuitable for the New
Costume always existed in the organisation of the Atelier of
Fashion - the 'laboratory' for revolutionary clothing. It had
started in 1923, two years after the introduction of the New
Economic Policy which opened up a market for consumer goods.
Two types of clothing designs were produced : one for mass
production and one for individual orders. Although Lamenova
included embroidery in her syllabus for 'Studies in the industrial
production of artistically designed clothings ', by 1924 embroid
ery was concentrated on clothing designed for internal and
external exhibition. Lamenova was put in charge of the Work
shop for Folk Crafts, and in collaboration with Vera Mukhina, a
sculptor, she won a prize at the Paris World Exhibition for
costume based on folk an. The two incorporated Russian folk
embroidery and Mukhina produced her own designs for
embroidery.
Today, in Europe, Russian Constructivist clothing is greatly
admired for its modernity, and the artist designers are praised for
their energy and idealism:
True daughters of the Revolution, they decided to drop art for

an's sake, give up painting, and concentrate on industrial
production for the masses . . . They might perhaps have been
the forerunners of those gutsy, talented, young people of the
Sixties who made London of the Sixties swing. 19
Such a comparison denies the specific historical conditions which

both permitted and finally frustrated their work. And it ignores
the crucial fact that the artist designers were not dispensing with
artistic concerns in their work. Their use of embroidery - an art
form they considered appropriate for their socialist practice -
196
testifies to the way they were attempting to transform and fuse art
and design. Later commentators, however, regard their embroid
ery as a shameful but natural feminine weakness which the
women had tried in vain to suppress. Of the painter-designer
Alexandra Exter, Meriel McCooey writes : 'Though she seldom
incorporated any of these ideas into her styles for the masses, she
had a secret predilection for creating extravagant fantasy dresses,
richly embroidered . '20
Criticised by their contemporaries, misunderstood today, the
revolutionary artists who advocated hand embroidery under
estimated the historically determined character of the medium.
Its ties with bourgois femininity were not transcended by its
peasant connections. Neither could a medium which is funda
mentally a unique' art form be employed for mass production.
'
For the Constructivist artists, embroidery's assoc1at1on with

femininity was a hindrance, producing accusations of bourgeois
decadence that they felt called upon to refute. For the British
Women's Suffrage Movement it was a connection they believed
they could use to advantage In their hands, embroide
. ry was
employed not to transform the place and function of art, but to
change ideas about women and femininity. Far from desiring to
disentangle embroidery and femininity, they wanted embroidery
to evoke femininity - but femininity represented as a source of
strength, not as evidence of women's weakness. The movement
left behind numbers of embroidered marching banners: some
identifying local groups, others representing ndividual
i cam
paigns and professions, and a series celebrating great women of
the past and present.
The tradition of banner-carrying demonstrations had grown
up with the Trades Union Movement from the 1830s. Union
banners were an obvious source of inspiration for the feminists .
They adopted the same format of pictorial message combined
with a slogan. But whereas two thirds of trades union banners,
since 1837, had come from the same source - George Tuthill's
banner-making business - feminist banners appear to have been
varied and individual creations. Trades union banners were
silken, painted, highly polished works . Suffrage banners daringly
combined embroidery, paint, collage and raised work in original
and equally well finished products. Their effective use of mixed
197
media was perhap$ a result of the middle-class women's lack of

professionalism - a positive outcome of 'accomplishment'.
Decades of skill developed for ecclesiastical banners, altarcloths,
drawing-room drapery and smoking caps lie behind the banners.
Demonstrations were an important aspect of the Suffrage
protest in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1906 Lady
Frances Balfour described a demonstration organised by the
WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union) to march on the
House of Commons : 'A huge concourse of working women . . .
met under the Labour Party with their own flags and carrying
their own babies.'21 The demonstration was small, however,
compared with the great marches of 1908. In June of that year
13,000 non-militant Suffragists marched from the Embankment
to the Albert Hall. Each trade marched under its own banner :
there were actresses, artists� shop assistants, factory workers,
home makers and many more. Women carried banners celebrat
ing the achievements of well known women from Boadicea to
Marie Curie. At the head of the procession a huge banner flou
rished the word RECTITUDE. Slogans were uniformly well
designed and direct with simple, strong, instantly legible
lettering. AsK WITH COURAGE; ALLIANCE AND DEFIANCE;
LEARN AND liVE; DARE TO BE FREE; COURAGE,
CONSISTENCY, SUCCESS.
Ten days later a demonstration organised by the militant
Suffragettes was of a size never seen before or since. The Times
estimated that a crowd of about half a million converged on Hyde
Park.
Not only banners but parasols too were embroidered in the
Suffrage colours of green, purple and white with the initials
WSPU, and carried on the marches. The parasol was such a
quintessentially feminine object that, taken in conjunction with
embroidery, it suggests that the use of the art by the movement
was tactical, to counter anti-suffrage propaganda that constantly
depicted feminists as 'large-handed, big-footed, flat-chested and
thin-lipped'. 22 The representation of the Suffragettes as lacking in
femininity might have frightened other women away from
identifying with the movement; and discredited the campaign as
motivated not by politics but by the personal grievances of women
who had failed to achieve the supposed fruits of femininity.
There was nothing naive in the Suffrage use of embroidery.
They were familiar with methods and materials of pictorial
198
embroidery. They understood the symbolic content of materials.

In a banner depicting St George, the saint's wings are silk, his face
satin, and the dragon appliqueed in linen, reminiscent of stump
'work from the seventeenth century.
Their excellent stitchery in the Art Needlework style (see
Chapter Seven) was, to their contemporaries, evidence both of an
education in the feminine virtues of selflessness and service, and
of a natural feminine capacity. Their claim to femininity could,
however, equally have been used against their demand for the
vote, so the form and content of the banners depicted femininity
not as frailty but as strength, and embroidery was presented not
as women's only appropriate medium but co-existing with paint.
The banner from the Hammersmith group, for example, con
sists of three panels. A painted and raised depiction of hammer
and horse-shoes is flanked by embroidered irises in Suffrage
colours. Irises were at this time among the most popular flowers
in Art Needlework, as Needlework Monthly observed in 1907:
'The pretty iris design is the favourite work of the season, for table
covers, duchesse sets, all in unbleached linen with the design
already painted, to be worked in silks. '23
For the Suffrage banner the irises are expertly embroidered in
crewel work, the stitch taught by the Royal School of Art Needle
work. The banner is reversible; backing the crewel-work irises,
the same design is displayed in applique velvet. Paint and
embroidery, and masculine and feminine symbols, share the same
space and make a political point - the demand for equality, not
androgyny.
The content of most of the embroidery aimed to present the
Suffrage Movement as supporting equal rights - as reformist not
revolutionary. Thus the Women's Tax Resistance League, created
in 1909, depicted Britannia on their banner above the slogan, 'NO
VOTE NO TAX', implying that, given the vote, women would
work for the same ends as men. The embroidered Britannia also
points to the irony in an allegorical female figure representing a
nation which denied women the vote.
Similarly, amongst the banners commemorating female
heroines was one dedicated to 'Queen Victoria, Queen and
Mother'. The inclusion oLthe Queen with such women as Marie
Curie, Boadicea and Elizabeth Barrett Browning demonstrated
the movement's patriotism and their political astuteness. As seen
in Chapter Seven, the Queen was used as a powerful affirmation
199
of the importance of family life by embroiderers in the nineteenth

century. Here, the campaigners harnessed the Queen's
popularity to their cause. Acclaiming her as Queen and Mother
countered anti-suffrage propaganda that God had ordained
women to raise children, not to take part in political life.
The heroines selected for the banners and their attributes
generally assert the breadth of women's capacities. The Marie
Curie banner has embroidered panels radiating from the word
RADIUM. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry is signified by
green velvet and pink silk roses and purple fleur-de-lys.
The set of heroine banners reflectS the organisational ideology
of the Suffrage movement, which, unlike present-day feminism
with its insistence on a collective structure, set up its leaders as
sources of inspiration and devotion. Thus a banner commemorat
ing members of the WSPU who were forcibly fed in prison is
embroidered with the names of Mrs Pethick Lawrence, Christabel
Pankhurst, Mrs Pankhurst and Annie Kenny in art nouveau
lettering. Below are appliqueed signatures of their followers n
i
purple and green thread. Each woman appears to have embroid
ered her own name. Some were highly skilled embroiderers,
others able only clumsily to follow the ines
l of their handwriting.
This banner transformed a prison gesture of solidarity into a
public statement.
Imprisoned and on hunger strike, the women embroidered
handkerchiefs with their signatures, bringing together the tra
dition of political petition and protest with a female social
tradition by which guestS would embroider their signatures for
their hostess to commemorate a visit. The London Museum owns
two suffrage handkerchiefs: one embroidered by Janie Terreno
marks the hunger strike of 1911. It bears a photograph of Mrs
Pankhurst and Christabel, the signatures of those forcibly fed and
some tiny embroidered violetS.
Janie Terreno was a musician from Essex who took part in the
mass shop-window smashing protest in March 1912. She was
arrested for throwing a stone through the window of an engineer
ing firm, Stedalls, in Oxford Street. Imprisoned in Holloway and
force-fed, her letters to her husband illuminate the feelings for the
PankhurstS that motivated her adulatory embroidery. The Suffra
gettes were forbidden to talk to their leader in Holloway, and
Janie Terreno described their response: 'We fought for her and
won . . . we were put into our cells by force and then broke our
200
A Natu rally Revolutionary Art?
cell windows and everything we could . . . we only took our meal

on Sunday evening after receiving her instructions that we were to
eat. . . We obey her absolutely. '24
Elsewhere she exclaimed, 'I cannot tell you the joy it is to have
our leaders with us . . . the sight of their dear faces has cheered
everyone. '25
The other handkerchief in the London Museum is dedic.ated to
Janie Terreno herself, and commemorates prison sentences
delivered in Newcastle in 1910 and in London during 1910 and
1911.
The delicate embroidery declared that the supposed weaker sex
was being subjugated to the torture of force-feeding - and resist
ing. They signed their names in the very medium which was
considered proof of their frailty, and justification for their
subjugation .
The Suffrage demand for equal rights and opportunities, and

the ideology of the Arts and Crafts Movement with its insistence
on the importance of creative work, combined to make consider
able impact on the teaching of embroidery.
At the Glasgow School of Art, Ann Macbeth and her colleagues
transformed methods of embroidery instruction, insisting that
the design should arise out of the technique employed, and
encouraging students to invent their own designs rather than
follow patterns (see Chapter Seven).
Numbers of teachers, following those at the Glasgow School,
emphasised design, colour and experiment, rather than the con
centrated development of technical excellence.
Ann Macbeth encoded her ideas i n Educational Needlework,
1913, written in collaboration with Margaret Swanson, a teacher
at the Pupil Teachers Centre, Ayr, from 1899 to 1908. They
believed that needlework would assist in
the development of intelligence and formation of character,

. . . the imagination of the child is stirred and curiosity plays
freely . . . without curiosity, no conjecture is possible-a point
to be noted from the start in all experimental work. The boy or
girl who uses material and needle freely in independent design
ranks on a plane with the scientist who makes a hypothesis,
with the artist who makes an experiment.1"
201
The authors reveal the influence of feminism in that they assume

both boys and girls are to develop character and curiosity, and
that both can use the needle to advantage. The progressive ideas
they propagated within education were still in evidence in 1928
when the National Union of Women Teachers debated a resolu
tion at their annual conference:
The time has come for a more equal form of education for
future home ife,
l as between boys and girls, by the giving of
instruction to boys in the simple elements of domestic subjects
such as needlework and cookery and the girls instruction in
light woodwork. 27
However, such attempts were continually undermined by the

absolute identification of embroidery with femininity. Curricu
lum projects and teacher training continued to designate
embroidery a girls' activity. An expanding leisure industry
utilised the feminine ideal in its attempt to encourage embroidery,
assisted by women's magazines.
Magazines managed to present each change in the social and
political climate in terms of its implications for embroidery. Thus
they represent embroidery as the means, during the economic
crisis of the thirties, to manifest the feminine qualities of sensible
thriftiness, and to keep up appearances. They urged their readers
to create 'beauty with utility', employing embroidery techniques
like cross stitch and smocking that would wash and wear. �K
At the same time a new shift occurred in the feminine ideal.
Embroidery was increasingly advocated as a means, not overtly
to femininity, but to individuality. However, the concept of
individuality in relation to embroiderers became subtly sex
stereotyped. The forward to Rebecca Crompton's Modern
Design and Embroidery, 1936, suggests that embroidery 'even in
its simplest form may become the expression of personal thought
and feeling', as it is 'work which mirrors [a woman's] own
thought and personality . '29
With the end of the second world war, peace - for women's
magazines - meant plentiful embroidery materials . The editorial
of Embroidery declared :
And what a feeling of prosperity it gives to realise that once

again silks, wools, fabrics and all embroidery equipment are
202
available in all abundance. These things can never be taken for

granted again after the lean war years, when one felt guilty
plying the needle for any purpose but 'make do and mend' and
wools and silks were impossible to get. . . Now that every
variety of material is easily and quite inexpensively available it
is most encouraging to attempt any form of hitherto untried
work. 30
But the abundance of embroidery equipment was not sufficient

encouragement in itself. The idea that embroidery fostered
individuality was increasingly emphasised. Catherine Christopher
in The Complete Book of Embroidery and Embroidery Stitches,
1944, observed that
few pursuits can rival embroidery for the opportunity it offers

to impress her creative ability upon her surroundings and
personal belongings. The things thus created may be few and
far between, but they are an expression of yourself so indi
vidual and personal that they will always be cherished. 3 '
In Creative Embroidery, 1967, Christine Risley described

embroidery as 'making a personal statement'.32 The twentieth
century writers have partially dispensed with the Victorian
ideology of embroidery as selfless work for the comfort of others .
Instead, embroidery has become a manifestation of the self. But
the expression of personality is limited tO personal thoughts and
feelings. Nineteenth-century notions that to fulfil the feminine
ideal an embroiderer had to manifest sensibility in her work has
simply been updated - rephrased for a Freudian and post
Freudian society.
The claim that embroidery conveys the individuality and
personality of the embroiderer was repeated so insistently
because writers on needlework wanted embroidery accorded the
status of art. In the twentieth century the personality of the artist
has become all important: creativity is considered to reside in the
person of the artist, not in what she or he makes. We speak of 'a
David Hockney', 'a Gwen John'. Indeed, in certain art practices
it is necessary for an artist only to designate an object as art for it
to become so. Thus, if embroidery is to win recognition as art, it
has to be stamped not with a pre-drawn pattern, but with a
particular personality. But whereas the personality of a painter is
203
expected to be eccentric and egocentric, for women embroiderers

the notion of personality is still constrained by the feminine ideal.
Macbeth and Swanson's conviction that embroidery allowed for
the free play of the imagination, intelligence and curiosity was
subsumed into a twentieth-century feminine ideal: 'Even the least
skilled attempts at creating beauty reveal and help develop
vitality, warmth and other desirable personality traits. '33
It is this categorisation of embroidery as the art of personal life
outside male-dominated institutions and the world of work, that
has given it a special place in counter-cultures and radical
movements.
In the 1960s embroidery suddenly gained a new face.

Embroidered suns rose over hip pockets, dragons curled round
denim thighs, rainbows arched over backs . For the hippy era
embroidery symbolised love, peace, colour, personal life and
rejection of materialism. Everything in fact that embroidery and
femininity had connoted since the nineteenth century. A woman
reminiscing about her life in London in 1970 commented:
In my hippy phase when I was living in a commune we all

embroidered. It had various meanings : pleasure, self
indulgence with colours, a determination to make your clothes
beautiful. It also functioned to establish you as a member of a
tribe because all of us with our embroidered jeans knew that we
were libertarians. For the men who embroidered, and wore
embroidery, it signified the taking up of femininity and
enjoying it. 34
For men, long hair and embroidered clothing constituted a

rebellious gesture against a hierarchical, puritanical, masculine
establishment. However, this was less a subversion of sex roles
than a longing for the freedom of an idealised m
i age of childhood
- mother-loved, anarchic and untouched by daddy's world.
Interestingly, one of the scenes most frequently embroidered
on jeans was that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the
scene that from the sixteenth century had been so popular with
embroiderers. However, as Peter Beagle in American Denim,
1975, points out: 'The emphasis in all the Adams and Eves is never
on original sin, or even on temptation, but on the beauty of the
primal couple and on a kind of wistful, original innocence in
204
101 Embroidered runner, Beryl Weaver,
reproduced in Spare Rih, 1978. Taking
traditional embroidery motifs, Beryl Weaver
reveals the way they prescribe the feminine ideal.
102 Sampler, Kare Walker, The Gal, London.

1978.
This was one ofthe art works in Femi11iJ1o, th�:
posral an event i n which a group of women in
Britain exchanged art works through the post,
creating a dialogue about their experience as
women, artists and mothers working at home.
I 03 Boadicea place setting from The Dinner
Party, Judy Chicago. 1979. Photo: Mary
McNally.
In usang embroidery feminists tread a difficult
path. On the one hand they pay tribute to
women's historic and creative relationship to the
art, on the other they wish to expos(O the
oppressive aspects of the construction of
femininity which have been so closely linked
with embroidery.
I 04 Embroidered denim jeans, private

collccnon, London. 1970. The hippy use of
embro1dered jeans asserted individuality,
crtativicy and non-conformity, but for women
the ideology rtplaced one feminine ideal with
another. Embroidery now connoted not gentility
but fecundity.
'
lI
II
'!
�
105 Sampler, John Nichols Hacklecon, Chrisries, London. 1858.

D<:spite the art's role in the construction of femininity since the Renaissance, there
have always been a few men and boys who practised the art for the pleasure tt
provtdes and the arttstic possibtlities it offers.
106 . .in <I Iin. Catherine Riley, Crafts Council, London. 1978. Photo: Ed
Buziak.
Catherine Riley was trained as a textile artist but became interested in what
embroidery connoted. Here she conjures up the art's association with the
repression and containment of women's sexuality in the name of feminine purity.
The ride hints at the other s1de of the high premium placed on women's purity
the idea of women's bodies as commodities.
which even the serpent is a brother.'35 But what 'freedom' for

women is in this? While the man appropriated the naturalness and
innocence of femininity, he referred to the woman as 'my old
lady', as she sat silently stitching- an eanh mother for the pre-fali
Adam in his floral denim. In other words, while hippv
embroidery signified loosening the constraints of masculinity for
men, for women it simply replaced one feminine ideal with
another. Embroidery now connoted not gentility but fecundity.
The Women's Liberation Movement in the 1970s inherited

particular facets of the counter-culture: the rejection of establish
ment values, the refusal of rigid sex roles, and a recognition of the
central importance of personal life - but all with a crucial differ
ence. FeministS viewed these issues within a political perspective;
it was an appositional, not an alternative movement. The organis
ation of personal life with a strict division between the public and
private, the domestic and professional, the emotional and intel
lectual, the masculine and the feminine, were analysed as the
means by which 0ne group maintained power over another.
The hippy love of embroidery as a gesture of defiance - one in
the eye for a grey masculine world - lived on in the Women's
Liberation Movement. But whereas hippies had simply celebrated
the emotional and individualistic associations of embroidery,
feminists in their embroidery showed that the personal was the
political - that personal and domestic life is as much the product
of the institutions and ideologies of our society as is public life.
Some feminists took traditional embroidery motifs which con
note the domestic and feminine ideal, and revealed what the
pretty stitches conceal. Beryl Weaver embroidered bouquetS of
flowers, ladies in crinolines amongst the hollyhocks, rustic cot
tages. These images, originally derived from eighteenth-century
prototypes, became popular in the thirties when the rapid expan
sion of building in the suburbs of industrial towns had awakened
the Victorian idealisation of rural life (see Chapter Seven). Today
they have an added ingredient of saccharine nostalgia. Natural,
rural femininity is conjured up in opposition to the brutality and
artificiality of urban industrial society. Beryl Weaver subverted
these images: 'I was never encouraged to create disturbing images,
so my anger comes through in the pretty pictures I was brought
up with.'36
205
The picturesque cottage casement is embroidered with the

words 'shattered and shuttered' - Beryl Weaver's feelings about
the solitary confinement of a life dedicated to domestic feminin
ity and nothing else. She described herself as a 'housewife drown
ing in suburbia'. A crinoline lady amongst the flowers has a
double embroidered caption: one reads 'To women's work' in
recognition of women's heritage of embroidery, and in oppo
sition to the ideology of the embroidered convention that to be
feminine is to be seen not to work, and certainly not to participate
in waged labour. The second caption reads 'Two women's work',
drawing attention to the assumed solitary state of both embroid
erers and their embroidered lady, and to women's double burden.
Often Beryl Weaver called the images into question by a
judiciously placed feminist symbol. Thus, a traditional bunch of
flowers is carefully embroidered, and placed in a vase patterned
with women's symbols. She attacked 'the way we are always
compared to flowers: women and flowers - personal and warm
pretty but stultified. One man even went so far as to say he liked
women to be independent, so he could go from one to the other,
like a bee on spring flowers.'37
Kate Walker is an artist who employed embroidery in a fine art
and feminist context from the early 1970s. She described how an
exhibition of Polish art alerted her to the possibilities of textile
art:
They used all kinds of materials and forms which seemed to

express their upheavals and dissatisfactions. I saw events,
assemblages, street art using ropes, textiles and, most interest
ing to me, banners made of patchwork cloth in a mediaeval
style. This art seemed to convey a determined respect for their
own past culture, uniting it with their struggle for a better
future. 3 8
A year later, in 1974, she exhibited a n embroidery in the first

show at the Women's Arts Alliance in London called 'Sweet
Sixteen and Never Been Shown'. It was a mixed media show,
presenting a variety of events, performances and assemblages,
with audience participation. Looking back, Kate Walker said:
It was early in the development of the women's art movement

and there was no consciously worked out programme for
206
inststmg on equal inclusion of women's skills, but Carol

McNichol showed her vegetable-like ceramics and Rose
English some leather craft pieces. I sneaked in an old patch
work cushion I had made, alongside my paintings and assem
blage. We automatically erased the line between function and
aesthetics, between craft and art. We felt the most urgent need
t o be for intervention at all levels both within and without the
gallery system. ·19
Kate Walker's attitude is characteristicofcontemporaryfeminists'

determination not to reject femininity but to empty the term of its
negative connotations, to reclaim and refashion the category:
I have never worried that embroidery's association with

femininity, sweetness, passivity and obedience may subvert
my work's feminist intention. Femininity and sweetness are
part of women's strength. Passivity and obedience, moreover,
are the very opposites of the qualities necessary to make a
sustained effort in needlework. What's required are physical
and mental skills, fine aesthetic judgement in colour, texture
and composition; patience during long training; and assertive
individuality of design (and consequent disobedience of
aesthetic convention). Quiet strength need not be mistaken for
useless vulnerability. 40
She took the format of the sampler, but the stitched sayings are
defiant not compliant, most unladylike; 'Wife is a four-letter
word', 'This is a present to me', both declaring her rejection of
the self-repression and submission encouraged by traditional
sampler-making.
Other women have been prompted to view embroidery criti
cally and analytically through being trained in the art.
Catherine Riley trained as a textile artist. Her embroidery
evoked and subtly parodied the emotions associated with needle
work - purity and chastity. In an exhibition in 1980 all the pieces
on show were worked in shades of white, conjuring up and
cutting across the way whitework embroidery is intended to
confirm the image of women as sexless, spiritual and sensitive. In
one work the word 'sex' is spelled out in bone-silk and flowers,
and contained in a white sardine tin, beautifully mounted and
framed in pure white.
207
As we have seen, the notion that femininity, and embroidery

as the art of the feminine, come naturally to women has affected
women of all classes but in specifically different ways. It was the
relationship between embroidery and class that artist Margaret
Harrison explored in her work, attacking both the fine art/craft
division and class divisions. She assembled examples of tra
ditional needlecraft and contemporary doilies 'made in the fac
tory by working-class women and sold back to them'. Her
intention was to reveal the process of de-skilling working-class
women since the industrial revolution.
Embroidery also has a place in the feminist effort to transform
the conditions of art practice, the relationship of artist to audience
and the definitions of what constitutes art. Because embroidery is
an extremely popular hobby, and a skill taught in schools, it is
considered by many to be a more accessible medium, reaching a
wider audience, than painting. And as an art employing thread
and textiles, embroidery is used to question the primacy of paint
and canvas. The British feminist postal art project 'Feministo'
came into being partly in opposition to established, male
dominated modes of art practice.
During 1975, women began exchanging art works through the
post, setting up a visual dialogue about their lives as housewives
and mothers . They utilised whatever materials they had at hand
and whichever domestic skills they possessed, including
embroidery. Monica Ross, a participant, summed up the ways in
which 'Feministo' departed from the competitive individualism
fostered by the institutions associated with fine arts :
Our creativity derives from non-prestigious folk traditions . It

is diverse and integrated into our lives; it is cooked and eaten,
washed and worn. Contemporary standards either ignore our
creativity or rate it as second-class. W e communicate, we don't
compete. We share images and experiences. The posting of one
piece of work from one woman to another makes ownership
ambiguous. Our creativity is valid. 41
'Feministo', with its images drawn from domestic life and its craft
techniques, managed to convey a double message. Phil Goodall,
an artist in the group, observed: 'Within the postal event we both
celebrated the area of domestic creativity and "women's world"
and exposed it for its paucity.'41 They validated domestic an, yet
208
drew attention to the extent to which women's time and energy

has been absorbed by their massive contribution to the domestic
economy.
The art works were finally collected into an exhibition. Placing
the embroidered, knitted and crocheted work in an art gallery
was intended to challenge the value-laden division between
'home' and 'work', 'art' and 'craft'. Similarly, by bringing work
deemed to belong to personal life into a public gallery 'Feministo'
affirmed the central tenet of the late-twentieth century Women's
Liberation Movement, that the personal is political, that personal
life is determined by the wider political structure. The art gallery
is maintained as a special space by what is kept outside of it.
'Feministo' disrupted that structure.
Another feminist art project which carried so-called craft into
the heart of the art world is The Dinner Party, which was first
exhibited at the San Francisco Art Museum in 1979. Conceived
by feminist artist Judy Chicago, it was executed by more than 400
women and men. On an open triangular table are 39 place set
tings, each commemorating a particular goddess or woman in
Western history. The settings include a goblet, cutlery and a
china-painted plate, designed to evoke each individual woman
and her historical period. The plates rest upon embroidered
runners. The embroideries take the work beyond hagiography.
They place the women in context by being stitched in the style
and technique of the woman's time . Chicago writes :
We examined the history of needlework - as it is reflected in

textiles and costumes, sculptures, myths and legends and
archaeological evidence - from the point of view of what these
revealed about women, the quality of their lives and their
relationship to needlework ....�
A photographer, Susan Hill, became 'Head ofNeedlework', after

apprenticing herself to a group of traditional needleworkers.
Students of textiles under her direction amassed an embroidery
sampler book for Chicago to use when designing the runners: 'I
would study the book endlessly,' she says, 'trying to determine
how the marvellous visual qualities of these different types of
embroidery could best be utilised.' ....
The relationship between the plates and the runners is sym
bolic. For the place settings of the women of antiquity, the
209
embroidery is stitched on the periphery of the runners. Slowly,

over the centuries, it encroaches on the plates. In Chicago's
words this is
a metaphor for the increasing restrictions on women's power

that occurred in the development of Western history. There is
the same congruence between the plate and the runner that the
woman experienced between her aspirations and the prevailing
attitudes towards female achievement, and occasionally there
is an enormous visual tension between the plate and its runner
as a symbol of the woman's rebellion against the constraints of
the female role. 45
Nevertheless, given women's ambivalent relationship to

embroidery, using the art to place their lives i context inevitably
n
has its ironic moments . The plate representing seventeenth

century feminist Anna Maria von Schurman, declared enemy of
needlework, is placed upon a reproduction of a Dutch sampler.
The value of The Dinner Party is that embroidery is used
appreciatively but above all symbolically. There is no suggestion
that embroidery rather than painting is women's proper art form.
The piece simply states that women have and still do employ
stitchery, illustrating the varied history of women and the art.
The Women's Peace Movement employed embroidery for protest

purposes during the 1970s and early 1980s. Large, brightly col
oured embroidered and appliqued banners were carried on mar
ches and attached to the perimeter fence at Greenham Common
air base, where women camped in protest against the Cruise
missiles housed there.
The iconography of the banners combined Suffrage symbol
ism, traditional peace motifs and feminist symbols. For example,
the banner stitched by Thalia andJan Camp bell was in the Suffra
gette colours (purple, green and white); and included represen
tations of trees, doves, a woman's sign and the anti-nuclear
symbol, along with women linking hands in a circle. Groups
often included specific reference to their location; thus Hastings
women based their banner on the Bayeux Tapestry, and the Otley
Peace Action Group's banner depicted the town.
We have seen how deeply identified embroidery has become
210
A Natu rally Revolutionary Art?
with nature and the feminine. The peace movement women delib
erately evoked the meaning of embroidery to emphasise that they
were campaigning against the nuclear threat as women. Displayed
at Greenham, the banners declared the fence a boundary between
femininity and masculinity, between life and death, technology
and nature, Good and Bad. Never before had the use of embroid
ery so clearly demonstrated the place of the art in the splitting
that structures and controls our society.
It is crucially important to recognise how diversely women have

lived and resisted the specific forms of sexual oppression operat
ing in different cultures and classes. And embroidery continues
to illustrate to this day the heterogeneity of women's work. Two
comments from late-twentieth century embroiderers provide a
salutary reminder of how diverse approaches to the art have
become:
Starting to embroider in a fine-art context was a direct result

of my activities with the Women's Liberation Movement from
about 1970. At that time I had not found any application of my
feminist ideas to art, but felt a strong need to make feminism
literally visible. Embroidery was one technique among many
which could be combined in new ways to create forms of art
truer to our skills and experience.46
Kate Walker's utilisation of embroidery as a medium with a

heritage in women's hands, and thus as more appropriate than
male-associated paint for making feminist statements, co-exists
with an absolutely conventional embroidery practice expressed
by Lady Tavistock:
I am always doing tapestry . . . and make about seven or eight

things a year. I have completed a tremendous number of
cushions, some rugs, spectacle cases and five pairs of evening
slippers for my husband.47
Lady Tavistock could be speaking from the nineteenth century,

when embroiderers stitched for home, husband and peace of
mind.
In the 1980s, numerous factors combined to encourage a revival
211
of enthusiasm for embroidery as a 'home-craft': an economic

recession co-existed with adulation of the home, the home-made,
the hand-made and the natural. The production of canvas pat
terns became a thriving business. They sold and continue to sell
at high prices to affirm their artistic value and social status. They
are carefully designed to preserve the art's 'natural', genteel,
feminine connotations. A designer for a large needlecraft shop in
the United States told me that she was instructed never to include
buildings in the patterns she produced: only natural scenery was
permitted.
As well as the 'hobby' embroiderers there is an ever-expanding
number of embroiderers who practise it as a fine-art medium.
Art schools today have embroidery departments: amongst the
best known is Goldsmiths' College in London. Art-school
-
trained embroiderers consider that the medium offers 'textures
and colours that would not be possible in any other medium'.
Modern materials have widened the scope of the art:
Traditional techniques like quilting, padding, couching, and

the application of metal threads and glass beads are still
employed, but materials such as transparent acetate are now
used, and few artists produce work today that consists entirely
of embroidery in the conventional sense of the word. The
search for new forms and new techniques has led to a greater
use of embroidery mixed with collage, where flat pieces of
material are cut and sewn on to the picture surface.48
Following on from embroidery courses, embroiderers have

·formed huge numbers of small exhibition groups. Some have
grown and become established institutions, for example The 62
Group, The New Embroidery Group and the Practical Study
Group. Possibly embroidery's connection with the tradition of
craft co-operative work, rather than the fine arts which foster and
expect competitive individualism, has encouraged this tendency.
Older embroidery organisations - The Royal School of
Needlework and The Embroiderers' Guild - co-exist with the
new groups. The Guild provides instruction, organises exhi
bitions and maintains a library at their Hampton Court head
quarters. The approximately 77 branches in 1980 had risen by
1995 to 165. The Royal School of Needlework, established in
1872, continues to offer classes in all forms of embroidery, and a
212
three-year apprenticeship scheme which includes the restoration

of old or damaged embroideries.49
Despite the proliferation of professional groups and the recog
nition of embroidery as an art form, twentieth-century feminine
ideals still dominate attitudes towards the art to an amazing
extent. Embroidery is still seen as an emotional gesture rather
than creative work. A woman who has embroidered intermit
tently throughout her life, admits
I have always embroidered for other people, for people that I

was trying to woo. Initially it was my mother, and after that it
has been either women or men that I have been in love with or
wanting to gain favour with. I can remember quite clearly
going to this man's flat, stealing his jeans and covering them
with embroidery. I find it intensely pleasurable, but I have
got to have the emotional inspiration, there has got to be a
significant person I a m embroidering for. 5°
Embroidery can also provide a vehicle for dealing with highly

ambivalent, complex feelings provoked by a significant other.
'Embroidering a lover's clothes means that I am going to leave
him,'51 another woman told me. The construction of femininity
inhibits the direct expression of anger. She explains her embroid
ery as a placatory gesture towards the man she is 'deserting', but
acknowledges that the fury which fuels her departure is expressed
yet safely concealed in the stabbing satin stitches.
The extent to which embroidery becomes implicated in
relationships arises in part from the fact that embroidery still
plays a crucial role in many women's childhood. Embroiderers I
interviewed all admitted that embroidery had provided a means
of gaining affirmation and attention from the adult world: 'I was
the eldest of five, but a real loner. I was by myself all the time.
Throughout my primary school days embroidering was the one
thing I felt gave me kudos amongst adults.'52 To embroider
announced to adults that she was good and feminine, not naughty
and masculine. This path to adult approval and conformity
appealed because it provided a way of gaining needed love and
attention; but also because, quite simply, embroidery was
enjoyable:
Did I embroider as a child? Yellow daisies round the tea-tray
213
cloth whiled away holiday afternoons in rainy Scarborough

summers. I remember, before that even, the first sewing lessons
I ever had, using thick orange silks or brown coarse 'crash
cloth' were easy, a lovely feeling in the fingers, when I was five.
The teacher seemed so pleased with me, always a clever, neat,
teachable child. My father taught me to sew originally. He
loved to make things, still does. He praised my earliest efforts,
it made me want to try, it was from him I got the idea. The
nuns at school gave me the skills. My feminism and friends
gave me the necessityY
Most embroiderers talk of the lazy-daisy tea-tray cloth still

treasured by their parents: 'The Irish linen tablecloth with green
embroidered shamrocks and drawn threadwork is still on the
trolley at my parents' home.'54
However, for middle-class women embroidery usually ceases
when they leave home and family, and comes to a full stop if they
go to university: 'My parents were pleased with my embroidery,
quite proud of it, but I stopped for a while at university because
knitting, embroidery and crochet seemed like the kind of sub
urban things I had left behind.'55 But above all embroidery repre
sented the feminine, the emotional, the family, considered at odds
with intellectual life. For some embroiderers the split created a
deep sense of conflict:
I am a sociologist - I cringe - never say this - why? Because it

seems a lie. I care about my work, but it is not part of me as are
patchwork and embroidery. Should I try to make it so, is my
sewing a clinging to a dependent, passive childhood, a female
stereotype, or is it truly me?56
The psychic disjuncture she describes is confirmed by attitudes

she faces in the college where she works: 'I was doing a patchwork
cushion with embroidered details one day in the staffroom and
the Head of Department was entirely contemptuous. I soon
learned never to tell people I embroider.'57
The categorical separation of femininity/embroidery from

masculinity/professionalism is the outcome of the Victorian suc
cess in preserving embroidery as the demarcator of women's
214
sphere. A comparison between Victorian and twentieth-century

attitudes towards the art nevertheless reveals telling differences.
As long as Victorian women overtly fulfilled the feminine
ideal of sensitivity and service with their embroidery, stitching
selflessly for home and husband, they could expect their work to
be regarded with chivalrous deference. Only if they became
'selfishly' absorbed in their work did they encounter mockery.
The Victorians identified embroidery with femininity in the
context of rigidly defined sex roles. Embroidery is still identified
with femininity, but the framework has changed. Women have
challenged the constraints of femininity and entered previously
masculine preserves. On the whole women no longer embroider
as a gesture of wifely or domestic duty. But the aspect of embroid
ery as a bond between women has lived on. Books, exhibitions,
magazines and societies devoted to embroidery and dominated
by women constitute a curiously autonomous female area. It is
largely ignored by men. Chivalrous approval has given way to
silence, unless embroidery is carried across the borders into mas
culine territory. An embroiderer can become a sociologist but
does not bring her work out in staffroom, boardroom or pub.
The laughter provoked by embroidery practised 'out of place'
illustrates the strength of sexual divisions in society. In the history
of embroidery we can see both the negative and positive effects of
the art's position in relation to the social structuring of sex
difference and art practice. The role of embroidery in the con
struction of femininity has undoubtedly constricted the develop
ment of the art. What women depicted in thread became
determined by notions of femininity, and the resulting femininity
of embroidery defined and constructed its practitioners in its
own image. However, the vicious circle has never been complete.
Limited to practising art with needle and thread, women have
nevertheless sewn a subversive stitch - managed to make mean
ings of their own in the very medium intended to inculcate self
effacement.
For women today, the contradictory and complex history of
embroidery is important because it reveals that definitions
of sexual difference, and the definitions of art and artist so weigh
ted against women, are not fixed. They have shifted over the
centuries, and they can be transformed in the future.
215
Notes
Chapter One
John Ezard, 'Victorian Touch to Credit Cold Britain', The

Guardian, 6 December 1979.
1 Adrian Hopkins, 'Firm but Not Fixed in Their Ways', The
Guardian, 30 March 1979.
3 Simone de Beauvo1r. The Second Sex. London: Penguin Books,
1972, p 635.
4 Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism. L<mdon: Pen�uin
Books, 1974, p 363.
5 Ibid.
6 Gavle Rubin, 'The Traffic in Women: Notes on the "Political
Eco nomv of Sex" ', in Ravna R. Reiter, editor, Toward an
Anthropology of Women. New York: Monthly Review Press.
1975, p 196.
7 Millicent Fawcett, cited in Theodore Stanton, The Woman
Question in Europe. London: 1884, p 6.
8 Rozsib P;�rker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art
and Ideolo . London: Routled�e & Kegan Paul, 1 9 8 1 .
gy
9 Hden Black . Notable Authors ofthe Day. London: 1893. p 169.
10 !hid. p 27.
11 !hid. p 78.
12 May Sindair, The Helpmate. London: 1907, Ch X X I X .
13 !hid. C h XXXI.
216
Notes
14 Ed ith Wharton, The Age of Innocence. London: Pen�ui n Books,

1974, Ch V.
15 Ibid. Ch XXXI.
16 Co lette, Earthly Paradise, London: Seeker and Warbuq�. 1966,
p 205.
17 Ibid. p 2 1 4-216.
18 Ibid.
19 J ane Gardam, 'Dead Heat', Cosmopolitan, July, 198 1 .
20 Ju3cph Breuer and Si�mund Freud, Studies on Hysteria, in James
Strachev, editor, The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud.
London: The Hogarth Press, Vol 2, p 12.
21 Olive Schreiner, From Man to Man. London: V irago , 1982,
Ch XI.
22 Ibid. Ch IX.
23 Ibid. Ch VI.
24 !b id . Ch IX.
25 Ruth First and Ann Scott, Olive Schreiner. Londo n : And re
Deutsch, 1980, p 1 7 5 .
Chapter Tu·o
Mrs Hugo Reed, A Plea for Women. London: 1843, p200. Cited in
Patricia Hollis, Women in Public: The Women's Movement 1850-
/900. London: Georgl' Alien & Unwin, 1979, p 8.
2 El izabeth Barren Brownmg, Aurora Leigh and other poems,
introduced bv Cora Kaplan. London : The Women's Pres�. 1979, p 9.
3 A lice Chandler, A Dream of Order: The Mediaeval Ideal in
Nineteenth Century Literat1tre. Lo ndo n: Routled ge & Kegan
Paul, 1 97 1 , p 195.
4 See Kate Millett, 'The Deb;ne over Women', in Martha Vicinus,
edi tor , Sufler and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age.
Bloomin�ton: lndiana Universit�· Press, 1972, p 122.
5 T.H. l.ister. 'R igh ts l.11d Conditions of Women', Edinburgh
Re'L'U!'l.i.', IS41. Vol 73. Ctted in Patricia Hollis. o p . cit. p 8 .
6 A .\X'. Pugin . On the Present State o/ Ecclesiastical Architecture m
Britain. London: Charles Dolmon. 1 8·0. p !D.
7 C.E.M., Hints on Orr1c1mental Needle·u:ork as Applzed to
Ecclesiastical Purpos es. London: 1843. Cited tn B. Morri,,
Victorian Embroidery, 1 ondon: Hcrhert .Jenkins. 1962. r 88.
� A. \V. Pugin. op. cit p 85.
. •
� Sarah Ell is. Women o f En:.t.l.wd Iondon: I �09.

10 Miss l .ambt:rt. Church 1\',•edlc ,;:ork.
c l.(lndon 1:-IH. p 7.
11 Ibid.
12 Scl' .\'ecdle ,md Bobbin Club Bulletin, 1976. Number 59, tor an
. tide hY loan Fd w.1 rd � di,cussin� the .mribution ot Flizabt•th
u
Stone\ ho;lk w Visl oun te�s \
· '\'ilw�.
I\ \'iltnn. Art o.f 1\'<'ed/e-u.·m-k. London: IS40. p 3 .
Vi�l'lHtntess \
14 C. H . H.lrt�honK·. l::ngli>b .ltedi,w�·.d F.mbroul('n . L llndon : 184H.
p 21 .
I r:; Fr.mn·, .1nd Hu).:h \l.lr,h.lll. Old Fn��,li.•b Embroidery: Its Tech
nique .md Svmbol1sm. 1 ondon: l l\9-L p 2 1 .
217
Notes
16 C. H . Hartshorne, op. cit. p 3.

17 Grace Christie, English Mediaeval Embroidery. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1938, p 3 1 .
18 Timothy Hilton, The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Thames and
Hudson, 1979, p 65.
19 Christina Rossetti, in From the Antique, 28 June 1854.
20 Viscountess Wilton, op. cit. p 85.
21 Mrs Warren and Mrs Pullan, Treasures of Needlework. London:
1855, Introduction.
22 Miss Lambert, The Handbook of Needle'U.wk. New York: 1842,
p 8.
23 Norman Denny and Josephine Filmer Sanker, The Bayeux
Tapestry. London: Collins, 1970; also F. Stenton, editor, The
Bayeux Tapestry. London: Phaidon, 1957.
24 Arnold Hauser, The Social History ofArt. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 195 I. Volume I, p 1 7 .
25 Viscountess Wilton, op. cit., p 1 19-120.
26 Ibid. p 138.
27 Leonore Davidoff, The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette and The
Season. London: Croom Helm, 1973.
28 Viscountess \Vilton, op. cit., p 143.
29 Ibid., p 123
30 Eilcen Power, in M.M. Postan, editor, Mediaeval Women.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975, p 36.
31 Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadors. London: Paddington Press,
1976.
32 Viscountess Wilton, op. cit., p 120.
33 John Ruskin, 'Of Queen's Gardens', m Sesame and Lillies.
London: 1865.
34 Lady Marion Alford, Needlework as Art. London: Samp�on Low,
Marston, Searlc and Rivington, 1886, p 2 .
35 Ibid. p 10.
36 Ibid. p 343.
37 Meg Bogin, op. cit., p 144.
38 Gilbert Fn:nch, Practical Remarks on some of the Minor Accessories
to the Services of the Church ( 1844 ). Cited in B. Morri�. op. cit.
p 89.
39 Reverend T. Jamcs, Church Work for l.adies, a paper read to the
A rchitcctural Society of the Archdcaconrv of Northampton.
Published in The Ecclesioloy,lst , IX:>S, V(olumc 1 6, p 379. Cited in
B. Morris, op. cit. p 26.
40 l adie!t Ecclesiastical Embroidery Society . Cited in B. Morris,
op. cit., p !0.
41 Edmund Street, a paper read to the Durham Architectural Society,
in The Ecclesiologist, I g63, Volume 2 1 . Cited in B. Morris, op. rit.
p g7.
42 Mi�, l..1mbcrt, Church Needleu.•ork. London: 18-H, p 32.
43 Robert lhrnes, l.L1 mlcan L.c,·turc, The f.rtncet, ll\73. Ciled in
l.orna Duffin, 'The Con�picuous Comumpti\'l' \Voman .1\
Im .1lid', Sara Del.tmont and l.orna Dulfin, editor,, !he Nim•
teenth Ccnturl' Woman, Her Cultur<tl .md Ph)'SI(.d World.
·
London: Croon1 Helm. 197H, p 32.
218
Notes
H An ne Oaklev, 'Wi�ewoml'n and Medi cine Men: Chanl-:eS i n the

Managem ent of Childbirth', in Anne Oakle�· and Julic; Mitchell,
editors The Rights and Wrongs of Women. London: Penguin
,
Books, 1976, p 57.

45 St Bernard cited in Male, Emile. The Gothic Image. London: kon,
1972, p 2H.
46 Lorna Duffin, op. cit. p 3 1 .
47 Mav Morris, Burhngton Ma?,azine, Jui\'-Sept 1905, Volume / ,
p 302.
Chapter Three
Marthew Pari�. cited in Grace Christie, Engl1sh Mediae'L·al

Embroidery. Oxford : Oxford Univer�ity Press, 1938. p 2.
1 Mary S�·monds and Louisa Preecc, Needle'li.·ork Through the Ages,
London: Hodder and Stoughron, 1928, pp 2 10-2 1 1 .
3 A . r:. Kendrick, English Needlework. Lo n don : A . & C. BlaL-k.
1967, p 40.
4 Eileen Power, M ediaeva l English Nunneries. Cambridge :
Cambridge Universit� Pn.•ss, 1922, p 257.
'
5 Lina Eckenstein, Women under Monasticisrn. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Pres�. I 896.
6 The Premonstratensian Edict of 1 1 34 expelling women from the
order . Cited i n F. and .J. Gies, Women in the Middle Ages. New
York: Thomas Y. Crowcll, 1978, p 87.
7 Ibid. p 91 .
H Ancren Ri'li:le,
. cited 111 1:- ilec n Power, op. cit. p 258.
.
9 Manhew Paris, cited in l-. and J . Gies, op. cit. p 9 1 .

10 Ibid. p 93.
11 Ibid. p 93. See also Brcnda M Bolton 'Vitae Matrum: A htrther
Aspect of the Frauenfragc in Derek Baker, editor, Mediaeval
'
Women: Studies in Church History. Oxford: Blackwell, 1978,

Subsidia I .
12 The Book of BrotherJohn Stone, 1467, cited in G . Christie, op. cit.
p 37.
13 'Notes on Some Mediaeval Embroideries' i n Proceedings of the
Society ofAntiquanans, Second Series, 1907, Volume 12, p 389.
14 M ary Gostelow, Embroidery. London : Mills & Boon, 1977. p 86.
15 G. Christie,op. cit. p l l l.
16 A.F. Kendrick, English Needlework, p 2 . The catalogue intro
duction to an Arts Council Exhibition, Opus Anglicanum, 1 963, is
exceptional in acknowled�ing equal participation b.vboth sexes in
the workshops.
17 G . Ch risri e op. cit. p lil.
,
IS C. H . Hartshnrnc, English Mediaeval Embro1dery. I ondon: 1848,

p 20.
19 M. Fitch, 'London Makes of Opu� Anglicanum', Transaa10ns of the
London and Middlese.\ Archeological Society, 1976, Volume 27,
pp 2gX--2%.
20 R. K ent Llllc:tstcr, 'Artists, Suppliers and Clerk�: the Human
I·JL'tor in the An Patronage of King Henrv I l l', journal of the
219
Nott:S
Wm·burg and Courtauld Institute, Volume 35. pp X 1-107.

2I C.ll�ntbr <)f l ib�r:nc Rolls 2. 3 & ·l. cited in R. Kent Lan..:aster.
np. t:lt.
?7 S� hia Thrupp. 'Mcdial:val Industrv 1 000-1500', in C. Cippola.
·
editor, Fontana Economic Histor y of Europe. London: Fon tan a ,

1972.
23 l·. ilccn Powl'r, in M.M. Postan, editor, Mediaeval Women.
Cambridge: C:�mbridge Univcrsitv Pres s, 1975.
24 C:uhcri n� Hall . ' Hi�t "orv of the Housewife'. Spare Rib, Number
26, 197·L p 9.
25 M . uion K . Dale. Women in the Textile Industries and Trade of
Ftjteenth Century England. Unpublished MA thesis. Uni ver si t\·
ot London, 192!-l.
26 A . H . Thomas, editor, Calendar of Plea and Memorial Roll! 1364-
1381. Camb rid ge: 1929. Cited in G. Chr istie . op. c it . , p 36.
27 Plea ;lml Mcm ori :tl Rolb A 1 0 m 14, A 14 m Sd. Cited in M . K .
Dale. op. cit.
28 G. C h ri � tie. op. �:it. p 35.
29 M av Morris, 'Opus Angli�:anum at the Burlington hne Arts
Club', Burlington Magazine , July-Sept 1905, Volume 7, p 302.
30 Eile�n Power. in Mediaeval Women op. cit.
3I Closl' Rolls cited in R Kent Lancaster, op. �:it.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 !hid.
35 Susan Mosher Stuard, editor, Women m Mediaeval Society.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976, p 9.
36 R . W . So ut hern , Western Societv and the Church in the Middle
Ages. London: Hodder and Sro��hton, 1970, p 3 1 0 .
37 The Decretum, �:itcd in Julia O'bolain and Lauro Martines,
editors. Not in God's Image. New York: H arpe r & Row, 1973,
p 130.
38 The Apon�·phal Go\pels originated in the East during the early
davs of Chnstianitv. The Church officiallv condemn ed them in the
·
sixth ccnturv .
39 The standar(i collection of legend\ of Ch ris tian saints, The Golden
Legend, \va� prepared by Jacopus Vorag i ne in the 1260s.
40 Herreus cited in Emile Male, The Gothic Image. London: Icon,
1972, p 165.
41 Merlin Stone, The Paradise Papers. London: Virago, 1976. See also
Marv Dalv, The Church and the Second Sex. Bosron : Beacon
Books, 1 968.
42 A rnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, Volume I . Lone-ion:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1900.
43 The scene can be found on the Brunswick Cope of the twelfth
centurY, the Syon Cope, the Pienza Cope and the Vich Cope, all
from the first half of the fourteenth centurv.
44 Marina Warner, Alone ofAll Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the
Virgin Mary. London: Quarter Books, 1978, p 104.
45 Ib id . pp 276-277.
46 The Book ofjames and The Gospel According to St Thomas were
comb ined to form two apocryphal book s, The Gospel Accordin,� to
220
Notes
Pseudo Matthew and The Story of the Nativity of Mary

47 St J e rome Comm. i n Epist. ad Ephes. 5, cited in Mary Daly, op.
cit . , p 2 1 0.
48 Marina Warner, op. cit.
49 Emile Male, op. cir.
50 Kav Lacey, Mediaeval Women in England, Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Centuries: Images and Realities. U npu blished thesis,
U n ivers i ty College of North Wales, Bangor, 1977.
51 Ad ritnne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Institution and
Experience. London: Virag o, 1977, p 1 0 5 .
52 Emile Male, op. cit.
53 JacopusVoragine, The Golden Legend. London :J.M. Denr, 1900.
54 Proceedings from the St Gertrud Symposium 'Women in the
Middle Ages'. Birte Carle, Nanna Demsholt, Karen Glente et al,
editors , Aspects of Female Existence. Cope nhagen : Gyldendal,
1980.
55 Ibid.
56 Lina Eckenstein, op. cir. p 326.
57 Ibid. p 327.
58 St Thomas Aq uin as , cited in Julia O'Faolain and Lauro Martines ,
editors, op. cit. p 1 3 1 .
Chapter Four
W.R. Lethaby, introduction to Grace Christie. Embroidery and

Tapestry Weaving. London: John Hogg, 1 906.
2 For example, Ruth Kelso, Doctrmefor the Lady ofthe Renaissance.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956. Joan Kelly-Gadol, 'Did
Women Have a Renaissance?', in Renate Bridenthal and Cl audia
Koonz, Becoming Visible: Women in European History. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
3 Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman. Cambridge:
Cambridge Universitv Press, 1980.
4 Baldassare Casn�lione, The Book of the Co�trtier. Venice: 1528.
Translated, George Bull, Harmondsworth : Penguin Book� . 1967,
p 2 1 7.
5 Ibid . p 220.
6 Ibid. p 22 1 .
7 In the ancient phys iology still current in the middle ages the four
ca rdinal humours were blood, phlegm, choler and melanch oly ; the
variant mixtures of these humours in di ffe rent people determined
their 'comp lexions' or 'temperaments', their physical and mental
qu alities , their dispositi ons .
8 l.ln Maclean. op. ci t.
9 r rederigo l uigini, cited in Ruth Kcl�o. op. Clt p 1 2 1 .
••
10 LL•on Battista Albcrti. On the Family, cited i n Julia O'holam and

l ..1uro Martinc� . op. cit., p 187.
1 1 Ruth Kelsn. np. cit . . p 44.
12 lhldas�are ( ,.\<;{ i:_: lio ne. op. (it . . r 1 1 -1.
13 G. Cioni. �·ited in Ruth Kd,o, op. cir.. p -16.
14 :\l.1rin.l \\..uner. (lp. �·ir.. p 1S2.
221
Notes
15 Baldassare Castiglione, op. cit., p 2 1 9 .

16 Barbara Snook, English Historical Embroidery. London:
Batsford, 1960.
17 For further information see George Unwin, The Guilds and
Companies of London. London: Methuen, 1908; Francis Aiden
H ibb ert, The Influence and Development of English Guilds.
Cambridae University Press, 1897; Toulmin Smith and LT.
h
Smith, T e English Guilds (1870). Oxford University Press, !964;
Christopher Holford, A Chat About The Broderers' Company,
London: George Alien, 1910. K. Abram 'Women Traders in
Mediaeval London', in The Economic journal, Volume 26, June
1916.
18 1441, 6, p 496. Cited in Marion K. Dale,
Calendar of Patent Rolls
Women in the Textile Industries and Trade of Fifteenth Century
England . Unpublished MA thesis, University of London, 1928.
W .R. Lethaby, 'The Broderers of London and Opus Anglicanum',
Burlington Magazine, Volume XXIX, May, 1 9 1 6 .
19 Mary Gosrelow, A World of Embroidery, London: Mills and
Boon, 1975.
20 An exhibition of works of art belon�ing to the livery companies
was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1926.
21 Priory Church of Sr Peter, Dunstable, church guide book.
22 Cited in Kathleen Casey, 'The Cheshire Cat: Reconstructing the
Exp erience of Mediaeval Women', in Berenice A. Carroll, editor,
Lib erating Women's History. Urbana: University of Tllinois Press,
1 976.
23 Ibid. p 248.
24 Christine de Pisan, cited in Ruth Kelso, op. cit., p 261 .
25 Lu Emilv Pearson, Elizabethans at Home. Stamford : Stamford
Universi ty Press, 1957, p 8 1 .
26 Edmund Harrison, cited in Mary Eirwen Jones, A History of
Western Embroidery. London: Studio Vista, 1969, p 34.
27 Cited in A. F. Kendrick, English Needlework. London: A. and C.
Black, 1967, p 49.
28 Cited in George Wingfield Digby, Elizabethan Fmbroidery.
London: Faber and f'aber, 1963, p 62.
29 Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris, Women Artists 15 50-
1950. New York: County Museum of Art and Alfred A. Knopf,
1976, p l 7.
30 Geoq?;e Wingfield Digby, op. cit., p 24.
31 Cited in Thomasina B eck, Embroidered Gardens. London: Angus
and Robertson, 1979, p 2 1 .
32 Cited in Thomasina Beck, op. cir., p 2 8 .
33 Cited in Dorothy Gardiner, English Girlhood at School. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1929, p 192-3.
34 C .S . I . Davies, Peace, Print and Protestantism 1450-!558.
London: Paladin, 1977, p 327.
35 Baldassare Casti gli one , op. cit., p 2 1 7 .
36 Ralph Holinshed, William Harrison and mher�, The First and
Second Volumes of Chromcles, containmg the Descrzpt1on and
.
History off ngland, Ireland and Scotland ( !557-1581).
37 Christine de Pisan, Le Livre des Trois Vertus 1497 ( 1 505, 1536).
222
Note.r
3!:! Er:tsmus of Rottcrd:tm. Christiani Matrimonii lnstitutio, I 526.

Cited in Juli:t O'F:to!.iin .tnd l.:turo Martincs. op. t'it.. p 11!2.
39 l.ouisc L:tbc, J. A�·n:trd . editor,, Lcs Pni:tcs Lyomltlis Precurseurs
de la Pleiade. P:tris: 1924. p 157. Cited i n Juli.t 0'1-.tobin and
Lauro M:trtines. op. cit., p I llS.
40 Rosemarv Freeman. English fmblem Books. London: Ch.mo and
Windus. 194!\, p 4.
41 Marg:tret Swain, The Ncedh•7.i.·ork of Marv Queen u/ Scot�. Nc11
Yot k : Van Nostrand Rl·inhold. 1973. p 36.
42 Ibid. p 63.
43 Gcorge Wingticld Digbv. np. <:it., p 123.
44 Ibid.
45 See the Oxburgh H:tnging� and The Shepeard Buss :u the Victoria
and Albcrt M useum.
46 J . L. Ne\·inson. 'English Domestic Embroidcn· Patterns of the
Sixtct•nth and Seventeenth Centuries'. The Walpole Society ,
Volume .2X. 1938-40. p 5.
47 Cited in M. Jourdain, English Secular Embroidery. London:
Kegan P:tul. Trench. Trubncr :tnd Co 1 9 1 0 . p 56.
.•
48 Harrier Bridgcman and Eli7.abcth Drurv. editors. Needle'i.i.'Ork.

London and New York: Paddington Press. 197H, p 130-134.
49 Baldassare Castiglionc. op. cit.. p 70.
50 Ernst Lefeburc. Embroidery and Lace, translated and enlarged bv· .
Alan Colc. London: H. Gr�vcl and Co . . 11!88, p 7.
Chapter F1ve
Mary Wollstonecraft. The Vindication of th.e Rights of Women.

London: 1 792. Miriam Kramnick. editor, London: Penguin
Books. 197!:!, p 220-22 1 .
2 Philippe Aries, Centuries of Ch ildhood. London: Penguin Books.
!979.
3 Roger Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, !974.
4 M .Jourdain, English Secular Embroidery. London : Kegan Paul.
Trench, Trubner and Co., p 75.
5 Dorothy Gardiner. op. cit. p 2 1 3.
6 Ann, Lady bnshawe. The Memoirs of Ann. Lady Fanshawe.
London: John Lane, 1907, p 22.
7 Lucv Hmchinson, editor. Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson.
.
London: John C. Nimmo, !906. p 17.
8 Grace Sherrington. cited in Dorothy Gardiner, op. cit., p 192.
9 John Tavlor, The Nredle's Excellency. London: James Bolcr.
!624. Third edition bv 1634.
!0 William Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night's Dream. A<:t 3.
Scene ! .
11 .Joan Edwards, Crewel Embroidery in England. London: B.T.
Batsford, !975. p 40.
12 Christopher Hill, Reformation to /ntlumial Re'L·olution. London.
Penguin Books, 1967, p 40.
!3 Mary Tattlewell and Joan Hit-Him-Home, The Women's Sharpe
223
Notes
Revenge. Cited in Carol! Camden, The Elizabethan Woman 1540-

1640, p 269.
14 Hannah Smith, cited in A.F. Kendrick, English Needlework.
London: A. and C . Black, 1967, p 129.
IS Christopher Hill, op. cit., p 98.
16 Sheila Rowbotham, Hidden from History. London: Pluto Press,
1973, p 8-9.
17 Jasper Mayne, cited in Averil Colby, Samplers . London: B.T.
Batsford, 1964, p 58.
18 Thomas Milles, cited in Averi! Colby, op. cit., p 155.
19 Roberta Hamilton, The Liberation of Women. London : George
Alien and Unwin, 1978.
20 Ibid.
21 Martin Luther, Table Talk, 153 1 . C i ted in Julia O'Faolain and
Lauro Martines, op. cit. p 196.
22 Martin Luther, Table Talk, 1 5 3 1 . Cited in Sherrin Marshall
Wvntjes, 'Women in the Reformation Era', in Renate Bridenthal
and Claudia Koonz, editors, op. cit., p 174.
23 Hannah Wooley, cited in Ada Wallas, Before the Blue Stockings.
London: George Alien and Unwin, 1923, p 33.
24 Lady Marion Alford , op. cit.
25 Alexander Pope, cited in Thomasina Beck, op. cit., p 53.
26 John Evelyn, cited in Thomasina Bec k, op. cit., p 60.
27 Peter Heylin, cited in Alicc Clark, Working Women m the
Seventeenth Century. London: Cass, 1968, p 239.
28 Averi! Colb y, op. cit.
29 Nancy Graves Cabot, 'Pattern Sources of Scriptural Subjects in
Tudor and Stuart Embroideries', in New York Needle and Bobbin
Club Bulletin, Volume 30, Nos I & 2, 1946.
30 Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of
Gentlewomen, London, 1693.
31 Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, cited in Cora Kaplan,
introduction, Salt and Bitter and Good. London : Paddington
Press, 1975, p 62.
32 AI ice Clark, op. cit., p 25.
33 Sheila Rowbotham, Women, Resistance and Revolutton. London:
Alien Lane, 1972, p 20.
34 Alice Clark, op. cit.
35 Hie Mulier: Or the Man-Woman, cited in Caroll Camden, op.
cit., p 263.
36 John Chamberlain, cited in Caroll Camden, op. cit., p 263 .
37 Willi am Prynne, cited i n Caroll Cam den , op. cit., p 263.

38 Sheila Rowboth:�m, Hidden from History, p 3.
39 Cited in Doris Mary Stcnron, The English Woman in History.
London: George, Alien and Unwin , 1957, p 205.
40 Ibid. p 2 1 2-2 l 3.
41 Una Birch, Anna Maria von Schurman: Artist, Scholar, Saint.
London: Longman's Green & Co., 1909, p 7 1 .
42 Hannah Wooley, The Gentlewoman's Companion. London :
1675, p I .
43 Ibid.
224
Notes
44 Barhsua Makin, cited in Mahl and Koon, op. cit., p 130.
45 Barhsua Makin, cited in Dorothy Gardiner, op. cit., p 224.
46 Cited in Christopher Hill, op. cir., p 278.
47 Bathsua M ak in , op. cit., p 26.
48 Cora Kap lan , op. cit., p 14.
49 Ibid. p 29.
50 lbid. p 6 1 .
51 Chrisropher H i l l, op. cit., p 96.
52 Shcila Rowbotham, Hidden from History, p 3.
53 Cited in Therle H ugh es, English Domestic Needle'U,·ork, 1660-
1860. London: Lutterworrh Press, 1961, p 122.
54 Roger Th ompson , op. cit., p 204.
55 Cited in Alice Clark, op. cit., p 32.
56 Oavid Masson. Lzfe of Milton . London : Macmillan, Volume 6,
p 650.
57 Doris Mary Stemon , op. cit., p 1 10.
58 Alice Clark, op. ci t. , p 235.
59 Ibid.
60 Ch ris rop her Holford, A Char About rhe Broderers ' Company,
op ctt.
6 1 Ibid.
Chapter Six
Geoq�e Wingfield Oigb�·· 'Lady Julia Calverley Embroideress', in

The Connoisseur, Ma' 1960.
2 /
Christopher Hill, Re ormatzon to Industrial Revolution. London :
Pengui n Books, 1969, p 1 9 .
3 Ravmond W il liam � . The Counrrv and the Citv. London: Chano
· ·
and Windus, 1973. p 2 1 .

4 John Barrel!. The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in
English Paimin?, 1730-1840. C.1mbridge: C:tmbridge U ni ver si ty
Press, 1980, p 9.
5 Margarct Swain, Fzgures on Fabric, Embroidery Design Sources
and Their Applu:atzon London : A. :md C. Black, 1980.
6 John BarreiL op. cit. . p 12.
7 Ibid. p 15.
l{ George W ingfield Oigby, op. cit.
9 The Spectator, No. 606, 1716.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 The Specwor, No. h09, 1 7 \ o .
13 .i <)hn Barrel!. op. cit. r 52.
1-t Thorms in :-t Bel'k, op. cit.
I'i Sheib Ro\\·both.l m, 11idd£'n {rom History. Op. ...:it.. p 1 5 .
16 P.nril'i.l Bran�·a, \llom£'n in Europe Since 1750. Lond on : Croom
Hdm, 197R, p R9-9 1 .
17 l.ad y M.1n· \\'ortle' 1\\ont.l\!lll', l it� d in L>,)rodH C.mlinl'r, op.
· ·
cit.. p .\96.
I� S.1muel Rich.ud�nn. P,rmel.r . l nndon: Dl'nt Dunnn 1979, p 2H.
19 Georgl' P;lStun, Li ttle ,\fonoirs of the /:.'ightecntb Century, �ited in
225
Notes
M . Jourdain, English Secular Embroidery. London: Ke�an Paul,

Trench, Trubner and Co, 1910, p 3.
20 R . Parker and G. Pollock, Old Mistresses, Women, Art and
Ideology . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1 9 8 1 .
21 R . Walpol e , Anecdotes of Painting . London: 1762, Volume S.
22 Lady Llanover, editor, The Autobiography and Correspondence of
Mary Cranville, Mrs Pelany. London: 1 86"1, Volume 2, p 5 8 1 .
23 Heckell, cited in A . F . Kendrick, English Needlework. London:
A. and C. Black, 1967.
24 Cited in M . Jourdain, op. cit. p 107.
25 R. Walpole, cited in Ellen Clayton, English Female Artists.
London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876, Volume 2, p 140.
26 Ruth Hayden, Mrs De/any: Her Life and Her Flowers. London:
Colonnade Books, 1980, p 105.
27 Mary Delany's letters, cited in M. Jourdain, op. cit. p 105 .
28 Diary of Fanny Burney, 1 7 July 1768. Ten volumes (with letters),
Oxford Universitv Press, 1972-82.
29 Mary Delany's letters, cited in M. Jourdain, op. cit. p 103-104.
30 Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought.
London: Virago, 19HO.
31 Jean Jacques Rousscau, Emile. trans. W.H. Payne. London:
Edward Arnold, 1 �02, Book 5 , 'The Education of Warren' .
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Mary Wollstonecraft, op. cit. p 177.
36 Margaret Swain, Historzcal Needlework, A Study of Influences in
Scot'&.nd and Northern England. Lon don : Barrie and Jenkins,
1970.
37 Rev. John Bower, cited in Margaret Swain, The Flowerers: The
Origins and History of Ayrshire Needlework. Edinburgh: W . R .
Chambers, 1955, p 22. This book was my major source of
information on this subject.
38 Cited in Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial
Revolution 1750-1850. London : Virago, 198 1 , p 2 1 4-215.
39 Robert Campbell The London Tradesman, 1747.
,
40 Ibid. p 1 1 5.
41 Ibid. p 153.
42 Ibid.
43 Cited in E. A. Standen, Workmg for Love and Workin,� for Money:
Some Notes on Embroiderers and Embroidcreries of the Past. New
York: Metropoliran Muscum ofArt, 1966, pp 1 7 , 1 � .
44 Jeanjacques Rousscau, Emile, Book I .
45 William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, or a Treatise on the
Prevention and Care of Diseases by Regimen and Simple
Medicines, 1769.
46 Nancy Chodoro w , The ReproducTion of Motherinx: Psycho
analysis and the Sociolo!{y of Gender. lkrkclc�· : Univer,in oi
California Prc\\, 197X.
47 I hid.
48 The Di(m• of f·anny Burney, citt:d in M. Philip, .111 d \\' .S.
Tomkinson, English Women in Life and l.t'f/cr�. Oxford: (htord
226
NfJtes
University Press , 1926, p 22H.

49 lsaac Wam, Treatise on the Education of Children and Youth,
cited in Dorothy Gardiner, op. cit., p 374-375.
50 Averil Colby, Samplers. London: B.T. Batsford, 1964, p 1 7 1 .
51 Hu�h Honour, Neo-Classicism. London: Penguin Books 196!!, .
p 20.
52 Ibid . p 35.
53 Ibid. pp 35, 36.
54 Toni Flores Fratto, 'Samplers: One of the Lesser American Arts',
Feminist Art journal, Win ter , 1976-1977.
55 Correspondence between Martha :tJl(l Thomas Jefferson, cited in
Mild red J. Davis, Ear(v Amencan Embrordery Designs. ew
Jersey , Textile Book Service, 1969, p 25.
56 Cited in Mirra Bank, Anonymous Was a Woman. New York: St
Martin's Press, 1979. p 44.
57 Mary Woll stonecr aft, op. cit. p 57.
58 I b id . p 107.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid. p l 2 1 .
61 Ibid. p 170.
62 Ibid. p 1 7 1 .
63 William Buchan, op. cit. p 27.
64 Mary Wol lstonec raft, op. cit. p 171 .
65 Eliza H ev wood, cited in Marv R. Mahl and Helene Koon, editors,
The Female Spectator: English Women Writers Before 1800.
Bloom ington and London: Ind iana Univers i ty Press, 1977, p 234.
66 M a ry Wollstonecraft, op. cit., p 1 70.
67 Ibid. p 288.
68 lbid. p 170.
69 Ibid. p 147.
70 Hannah More, The Practical Use of Female Knowledge wzth a
Sketch of the Female Character and a Comparative View of the
Sexes, cited in M . R . Mahl and H. Koon, editors, op. cit.
71 Hannah More, Remarks on the Present Mode of Educating
Females, 1794, p 48.
72 Ibid.
73 Maria F.dgeworth, Essays of Practical Education, 1798. 1822
edition, p 375.
74 John Barrell, op. cit. p 85.
75 Cited in M. Jou rd ai n , op. cit. p 175.
Chapter Seven
Sarah Ellis, Women of England. London: Fisher, Son and Co.,

1939, pp 10, 12.
2 Ibid. p 13.
3 Florence N ighti nga le 'Cassandra', cited in Ray Strachey , The
,
l'ause. London: Virago, 1978, p 404.

4 Waiter Houghto n The Victorian Frame of Mind. Cambridge,
,
Mass. \nd London: Yale Universit�' Press, 1957, p 54.

,
5 Sarah Elli�. op. cir. p 1 4 1 .
227
Notes
6 M ary Lamb, 'On Needlework', Miscellaneous Prose 1798- !834.

London: Methuen and Co., 1903, p 1 76-180.
7 Ibid.
8 Charlotte Bronte, Shirley, first published 1849, Chapt�r 23.
9 Ibid. Chap ter 6.
I0 Cited in lrene Danciger, A World of Women: An Illustrated
History of Women's Magazines, London: Gill and Macmill an
!978, p 7 1 .
11 Millicent Garrett Fawcett, 'The Education of Women of Middle
and Upper Classes', Macmillan's Magazine, (no 17, 1865, p 5 1 1-
517) cited in Carol Bauer and Lawrence Ritt, edirors, Free and
Enabled: Source Readings in the Development of Victorian
Feminism. Oxford : Pergamon Press, 1979, p 120.
12 Dinah M Craik, A Woman's Thoughts About Woman. London:
1891' p 8 1 .
13 Elizabeth, Dowager Queen of Romania, cited in Lolo Markevich
and Heinz Kiewe, Victorian Fancywork: Nineteenth Century
Needlepoint Pattern and Design. London: Pitman, 1975, p 169.
14 Leonore Davidoff, op. cit.
1 5 Rich ard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man. Cambridge: Cambridge
Universitv Press, 1977.
1 6 Charlotte. Bronte,jane Eyre, rirst published 1847, Chapter t o .
1 7 Maria and R . L . Edgeworth, Essays on Practical Education.
London: 1822, Volume I , p 386.
1 8 Ladies Magazine, July, 1 8 1 0.
1 9 Sarah Ellis, op. cit. p 106.
2 0 Elizabeth Sandford , Woman in Her Social and Domestic
Character. London: 183 1 , p 136.
21 Sarah Ellis, op. cit., p 15-16.
22 Ibid. p 18.
23 Ibid. p 20.
24 Mrs Warren and Mrs Pullan, op . cir. Introduction.
25 Sarah Ellis, op. cit., p 218.
26 G.R. Drysdale. The Elements of Soclal Science. 1854, p 357.
Cited in Waiter Houghron, op. cit., p 3 8 1 .
27 Virginia Woolf, Orlando. London: Penguin Books, 1980, p 147.
28 'Girls, Wives and Mothers: A Word to the Middle Classes',
Chamber's Journal, 1884, Volume 73, cited in Carol Bauer and
Lawrence Ritt, op. cit., p 249.
29 Cited in Irene D ansiger op. cit., p 64.
,
30 Cited in Averil Colby, Samplers. London: Batsford, 1964,

p 254-255.
3 1 Leonore Davidoff, Jean L'Esperance and Howard Newby,
'Landscape with Figures: Home and Community in English
Society', in An ne Oakley and Juliet Mitchell, edirors, The Rights
and Wrongs of Women. London: Penguin Books, 1976, p 1 3 9-
175.
32 Viq!;inia Woolf, op. cir., p 142.
33 Mrs Merrifield, 'On Design as Applied to Lady's Work', The Art
./ournal, 1 8 5 1 .
34 Cited in Lila Hailstone, Illustrated Catalogue ofAncient Framed
Needlework Pictures. London: 1897.
228
Notes
35 Elizabeth Sandford, op. cit. p 4.

36 Waiter Houghton, op. cit., p 98.
38 Elizabeth Sandford, op. cit. p 98.
39 Book ofJohn, Chapter 4, verses 7-44.
40 Charlotte Bronte, Shirley, Chapte r 7.
41 George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss. First published 1860.
Volume 3, Chapter I .
42 IbiJ., Chapter 6 .
43 Leonore Davidoff, op. cit.
44 Ladv Charlotte Nevill Grenville, cited in Duncan Crow, The
Victorian Woman. London: George Alien and U nwin, 1971,
p 19.
45 'The Family Secret', in The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine,
1 8 6 1 , Volume 2, No. 12. p 295.
46 Jv1illenarial movements believed in the imminent arrival of Christ
on earth.
47 Cited in Anna Sebba, Samplers: Five Centuries ofa Gentle Craft.
London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p 127.
48 Ita Aber, The Art of judaic Needlework. London: Bell and
Hvman, 1979.
·
49 M rsOliphant, Madam, cited in Anne Oakley andj uliet Mitchell,
op. cit., p 224.
50 Charlotte Bronte, Shirley, Chapter 22.
51 Ibid., Ch 28.
52 Ibid.
53 Dinah M . Craik, Agatha's Husband. London: 1853, Ch 5.
54 Charlotte Bronte, Shtrley , Ch 19.
55 Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters. London: 1886. Volume 1
Chs 20; 28; Volume 2 Ch 26; Volume 3 Ch 14.
56 Ibid., Volume 1 , Ch 20.
57 Ibid Volume 1 , Ch 20.
. •

59 Mrs Catherine Hutton Beale, Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman
ofthe Last Century: Letters ofCatherine Hutton. London: 1897.
60 The Ladies Magazine, cited in Alison Adburgham, Women in
Print: Writing Women and Women's Magazines from the
Restoration to the Accession of Vidoria. London: George Alien
and Unwin, 1972, p 128.
61 Ackerman's Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce,
Manufactures, Fashions and PoLitics, March, 1810. 1 am �rateful
to Philippa Thistlethwaite for bringing this to mv attention.
62 Elizabeth Sandford, op. cit. p 2 1 5.
63 Mrs Warren and Mrs Pullan. op. cit.
64 Geoffre\· . Warren. A Stitch in Time. London: David and Charles ,
1976.
65 Charles Kingslcv. CL.wcus: or the Wonders o( the Shore.
Cambridge: i 85S, p 4-S. I am gr.udul to Lvnn Barber tor brin�
ing this to m\ .mention.
66 M.T. Morrall. ' A Ht,ton <lf Ncedlcmaking'. INS.:!. LitL·d in
Molh· Proi.'Wr. \'l(torr,tll C..m<-•,u Work. London: Batsford, 1972,
p 15i .
229
Notes
67 Ibid. p 1 52-3.
68 Mrs Warren and Mrs Pullan, op. cit., Introduction.
69 Viscountess Wilton, Art of Needlework. London: 1840, p 403.
70 Cited in Geoffrey Warren, op. cit . , p 128.
71 Margaret Swain, Historical Needlwork. London: Barrie and
Jenkins, 1970.
72 Ivy Pinchbeck, op. cit., p 236.
73 Ibid., p 237.
74 Ibid . , p 2 1 3 .
75 The Children's Employment Commission, 1843, cited in Ivy
Pinchbeck, op. cit., p 2 1 2.
76 Ibid.
77 Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, Wrongs of Women. London: 1844.
78 Anthea Callen, Angel in the Studio: Women in the Arts and Crafts
Movement 1870-1914. London: Astragal Books, 1979.
79 Geoff Spenceley, 'The Lace Associations', Victorian Studies,
Volume 78, 1973, p 434, 435. Cited in Anthea Callen, op. cit.,
p 3.
80 Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters. p 38.
81 Barbara Russell, 'The Langdale Linen Industry', Art journal,
1897, p 329-330, cited in Anthea Callen, op. cit., p 1 1 7.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 William Morris, cited in E.P. Thompson, William Morris:
Romantic to Revolutionary. London: Merlin Press, 1977, p 707.
85 Charles Ashbee, cited in Anthea Callan, op. cit., p 172.
86 Jane Morris, cited in Philip Henderson, William Morris: His Life,
Work and Friends. London: Thames and Hudson, 1967, p 36.
87 Anthea Callen, op. cit.
88 William Morris, 'The Beauty · of Life', in G.D.H. Cole, editor,
Prose, Lectures and Essays. London: Nonesuch Library, 1934,
p 561.
89 Barbara Morris, Victorian Embroidery. London: Herbert
Jenkins, 1962, p 1 12.
90 William Morris, 'The Lesser Arts', i n G.D.H. Cole, editor, op.
cit., p 504.
91 William Morris, cited in Barbara Morris, op. cit., p 109-1 10.
92 E.P. Thompson, op . ci t . , p 152.
93 Lady Marion Alford, op. cit., p 152.
94 Cited in Barbara Morris, op. cit., p 205.
95 Cited in Anthea Callen, op. cit., p 1 10-1 1 1 .
96 Cited in Santina Levey, Discovering Embroidery of the
Nineteenth Century. London: Shire Publications, 1971, p 58.
97 Ibid.
98 Lewis F. Day and Marv Buckle, Art In Needlework. London:
.
1900, p 234. .
99 H . M . Baillie Scott, 'Some Experiments in Embroiderv'. Studio,
1903.
100 The Young Ladies journal, 1885.
10 I Magazine of Art, 1 879, cited in Barbara Morris, op. cir . . p I -l l .
102 Jessie R Newerv, cited in Anrhea Callen, op. cir., p 124.
103 The School Board for London Final Report, 1902.
230
Notes
104 Annm arie Turnbull. unpuhlio;hed the., is . Pokte�:hnic of tht>

South Bank , London .
105 Ibid.
106 Ibid.
107 Ibid.
Chapter Eight
Amedee 07.cnfant. The Found,aions o/Modem Art, 193 1 . Cited i n

.
Heresies, Winter, 197H. p 4 1 .

1 Ann Sutherland H.lrri" an d Linda Noch lin Women Artists 1550-
.
/950. op . cir. r 6 1 .
3 M areel Jean. l'ditor. Joachim Neu�roschal. translator, jean(Hans)
Arp: Selected French Writings. London: Caldcr and Bm·ar�. 1974.
p 132.
4 Ibid., p 229.
5 Will Grohman 'Thl· l hda World of Hannah Hoch', Mar/borough
, -
Fine Arts, Januarv, 1966.

6 A nn Suth �rland f-larris and I.inda Nochlin, op. cit., p 6 1 .
7 Jacques Damase. Sonia Delaunay. London: Th ames and Hudson,
1972.
!l Tatvana Strizhenova, Geoffrcv . Turner, translator, The Histon• of ·
Soviet Costume. Liverpool Polv tech nic and Collets. 1972.

9 Cam illa Grav, The Russian Experiment in Art 1862-1922.
London: Thames and Hudson, 1962.
I0 Natalia Gontcharon, in her 1 9 1 3 exhibition catalo�ue, c ired bv
John Bowl t in Russian Women Artists of the Avant Garde /9/0-
!930. Colo�ne: G :tllerie Ernur7.�'nska, 1979, p 68.
1 1 Camilla Cray . op. cit., p 134.
12 N ad ezh da Udaltsova, diarv entrv, cited bv L.ari ssa A Zhad ora in
·
,
J ohn Bowlt, op. cit., p 68. · ·

13 Nade zh d a Lamenova, cited in TatyanaStrizhenova, op. cit., p 7.
14 Ibid . . p I S .
IS V . E . Tatlin, cited by L.A. Zhadova, in John Bowlt, op. cit . , p 7 1 .
16 Yev�en ia Prib el skaya cited in Tatyana S rrizh eno\'a op. cit. p 28-
, , ,
29.
17 Nad ezhd a Lamenova, cited in Tatyan a Strizhenova, op. cit., p 59.
18 Ibid . . pp 1 9 and 38.
19 Meriel McCooey, 'fashions the R uss ian s Reiecred'. Sunday
Times, l l Oct ober , 1 9!l l .
10 Ibid.
21 Lady Frances Balfour, cited in Ro�er Fulfo rd . Votes for Women.
London: Faber and fabcr, 1957, p 136.
11 Paula Harper 'Suffrage Pos ters ' , Spare Rib, Numbet -+ I , 1975.
.
23 Co nstan ce Howard, Twentieth-Century Embroidery in Great

Britain to 1939. London: B.T. Batsford, 1 98 1 , p 44.
24 Janie Terreno, cited in Ro�er Fulford, op. ci t p 250..,
25 Ibid.
26 Margaret Swanson and Ann Macbeth, Educational Needleu/ol·k.
London: Lon�m an s Green and Co., 1 9 1 3 , Introduction.
'
17 Cited i n Penelope Dalton, Issues in the Role and Status of Needle-
231
Noti!S
craft in Secondary Schools, unpublished MA thesis, University of

Su�sex .md Bri�hron
. Polvtechnic,
.
1980.
2X Ibid.
29 Rebecc.1 Crompwn, Modern Design in Embrozdery. London:
B.T. Batsford, 1936
30 Cited i n Pendopc Dalton, op. cit.
31 C.uhcrine Chris top her, The Complete Book of Embroidery and
Embroidery Stitches. Surrev: World's Work, 194 1 , p 5.
32 Christine Rislev, Creative Embroidery. London: Studio Vista,
1%9, p 7.
33 Catherinc Christopher, op. cit., p 5.
34 Michele Roberts, interview with the author, 1 9 8 1 .
35 Peter Bea�le, American Denim. ew York: Harry N . Abrams,
1975, p 134.
36 Annv Brackx, interview with Bervl Weaver, 'Subvertin� ' Sweet-
·
ness;, Spare Rib, Number 67, 1978 .
37 Ibid.
38 Kate Walker, interview ,·vith the author, 1 9 8 1 .
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Monica Ross, 'Portrait of the Postal Event', Mama, 1976.
42 Phi I Goodall, 'Growin� Points and Pains of reministo', Mama,
1976.
43 J udv Chica�o with Susan Hill, The Dinner Party NeedleU-·ork.
New York: Anchor Press Doubleday, 1980, p 24.
H Ibid., p 1 5 .
45 Ibid.
46 Kate Walker, interview with the author, 1 98 1 .
47 Interview with Ladv Tavistock bv Angela
'
Levin, 'A Room of mv
. ·
Own', Observer, l l April, 1980.

48 Embroidered Images exhibition catalogue, Woodlands Art
Gallery, London, August-September, 1973.
49 Winefride Jackson and Elizabeth Pettifer, The Royal School of
Needlework. Handbook, 198 1 .
50 Michele Roberrs, interview with the author. 1981.
5I Anonvmous, interview "'ith author, 1981.
52 Ann�arie Turnbull, interview with the author, 198 1 .
53 Kate Walker, interview with the author, 1 98 1 .
54 Michelene Wandor, interview with the author, 1981 .
55 Ibid.
56 Annmarie Turn bull, unpublished artic.:le, Patchu:orking, London,
1979.
57 Annmarie Turnbull, interview with the author, 1 98 1 .
232
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239
GLOSSARY
Illustrated diagrams of embroidery stitches can be found in the majority

of books on embroidery, and a comprehensive guide to contemporary
and historical terms and techniques is available: Pamela Clabburn, The
Needleworker's Dictionary, Morrow, New York, 1 976.
Ayrshire embroidery White embroidery on fine muslin introduced

into Scotland c. 1814 by Mrs Jameson, who copied the technique from a
French christening robe. I t is characterised by open needlepoint fillings
and a floral design in satin and beading stitch. It became a major home
industry in Scotland up until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Baudekyn Silk interwoven with threads of gold, it was used for
ecclesiastical robings and by royalty and the nobility during the middle
ages.
Beading stitch A line of small holes which are overcast.
Berlin woolwork Embroidery in wool on canvas, from patterns drawn

on squared paper with each square corresponding tO a square of the
canvas and a stitch of the pattern. The patterns and wool were intro
duced into England from Germany during the early decades of the
nineteenth century. The technique remained very popular until the
1880s.
Chain stitch As the name implies, it is formed of interlocking flat links.
Chenille A round fluffy thread, aptly termed chenille because it means

'caterpillar' in French. It was often used in embroidered pictures from
the late eighteenth century.
Cope An ecclesiastical outer garment resembling a cloak. It is cut as a
240
GLossary
semi-circle with a band known as an orphrey which runs along the

straight side.
Couched stitches A form of stitch in which threads are placed on the

ground fabric and secured by an extension of the same thread or others.
In Opus Anglicanum a method known as underside couching was
employed. The couching thread is beneath the surface and brought up
only to secure the gold thread at regular intervals to form a pattern.
Crewel work Any embroidery that is made with lightly twisted, two
ply worsted yarn.
Cross stitch Crosses are formed by counting the fabric thread, usually
worked diagonally from left to right.
Needle painting A method of imitating oil painting in embroidery

which began in the late eighteenth century.
Needlepoint Lace made with a needle. In the United States the term
refers to all canvas work.
Or nue A method of couching using coloured silks to create a shaded

pattern on gold thread. It was employed in Europe during the fifteenth
century and into the seventeenth century.
Satin stitch The thread is taken from one edge of the design to another
to create a smooth satin-like pad. There are many different varieties of
satin stitches.
Slips Individual floral motifs popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. Sometimes they were stitched separately and applied.
Split Stitch A way of working with a soft untwisted silk thread which is
split with the needle.
Stump work or raised work Embroidery is given a three-dimensional

effect by raising the ground with wooden moulds or pads of cotton
wool.
Tambouring A form of embroidery originally made on a frame which

resembled a drum. Popular for whitework between 1780 and 1850,
tambouring is done with a hook which creates a continuous chain stitch . .
Tester The section of a four-poster bed which stretched from behind the
head to the top of the posts. It can also refer tO the bed canopy, which is
hung from the ceiling by chains or suspended between the posts.
Whitework Any embroidery worked in white thread on a white

ground.
Worsted Fabric or yarn made from the long fibres of a sheep's tleece.
Worsted work This can refer tO any embroidery made with worsted
wools, and more precisely ro wool embroidery with a three-dimensional
effcCl achieved by a cut-pile surface.
241
Index
Academy schools, 1 2 0 pas coral, I 16--18

Addison, 1 14-15 rococo, 134
advertising and samplers, 2 transitional period see
,
Aelthelswitha's workshop, 2 5 Renaissance

aesthetic movement , 1 8 5 Arts and Crafts Movement, 7, 32,
Alberti, L . B . , 62, 80 35, 38, 178, 179, 180, l84
Alford, Lady Marion, 3 1 , 32, 93, 'Art Nc.-cdlcwork', 1 8 1 , 185, 187,
183 19-9
alphabet in samplerwork, 85 , 1 7 4 art no�tvea/1, 1 85
Amman , ] . , 97 Glasgow exhibition of, 1 8 5

applique work, 66, 94 Astell, M . , 104-5
apprentices, 67, 1 2 3 Aurifraigeria, A., 47
abuse of, 1 2 6 Ayrshire work, 1 7 5
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 58
Arcadian imagery, 1 1 6 bags, embroidered, 29-30
Aries, P . , 82 Barre 11 , ]. , I I 2, I -1.1
Arp, J . , 191-2 Basing, A. de., 45-6
art Bayeux TapeStr)', 2(r-8
and class division, 5 , 37, 72, 8 1 beading, 1 7 5
v . craft, 5-6, 3 6 , 1 2 0 , 209 Beardon, A . , I 08
divine madness of, 80 Beauvnir, S. de:, 2
and education, 120 Berlin work, 158, 1 6 1 , 170
and embroidery, 79, 80 Bicci, N. de: 79
,
as inrc:llc:c cual pursuit, 120 Black, H . , 6

neo-classical, I ."A-5 'black and whites', 145
in <:mbroidc:ry, I Yr-8 Blc:ncow, A . , .'>4, 1 8 1
242
Index
Boccaccio, 66 cr<:wd work, 104, 106--7, 1!:!5, 199

Bogin, M., )0 Crompcon's mu!<:, 1 2 5
Boileau, E . , .�0 Crompcon. R . , 202
Boston Common pictures, 1 1 !:!
Botticelli, 79 Dada, 190, 1 9 1
Branca, P., 1 18 darning, 174
Bridgeman, H . , 4H Oavidoff, L., 29
Broderers' Company, 68, 69, 108, Davies, C., 56, 7 3
109 Derret/1111 , 49, 50
Bronte, C., 149-50, 1 5 2 , 162, D<:lany, M . , l 2 1-2, 1.)6
165-6 Delaunay, S . , 192
Browning, E . , 156 Di!!by, W . , 1 1 3
Burford, R. de, 47 Dmner Party. The, 209
Burney, F., 1 3 1-2 domestic embroidery, 69. I I 0
burgher class, emergence of, 65 'doccing·. 125
Butler Bowden cope, 35 'drawers', 1 75
Drury, E . 48
.
Cabot, N . , 97
Calverley, Lady Julia, 1 10-14 East Anglian School , 58
canvas work, 17 I Edgeworch, M . , 142--3, 152
Carte, B . , 5 7 Ecclesiological Society, 34
casket making, 88, 1 0 1 Eliot, G., 162-3
Castiglione, B . , 6 1 , 74 Elizabeth I, 7 3 . 97
Catholicism, influence of, 9 5 Ell is, 2 1 , 147, 1 5 '1 , 1 5 5 , 157
Cenini, C . , 80 Embroidery
chain stitch, 7 3 , 1 2 5 as arc, 1 7
Chandler, A . , 19 and artists
chastity, Chapter .1 passim Burne )ones, 184
Chaucer, T., 4 1 Gainsborough, 144, 145
Chicago, J . , 209 10 Landseer, 159
childbirth, Chapter 3, 95, 96, 128 Leighcon, 184
in apocryphal imagery, 5 1 Moreland, 144
and Churching, 59, lOO Morris, 184
and fertility, 59 Pointer, 184
childcare, 65 Raphael, 1 4 5
chivalry, 19 Stubbs, 145
Chnstiamcy , 20 and the Bible, 97
and holy women, 57 ceremonial, 68
Christie, G., 44 and charity, 162-4
Chriscopher, C . , 203 Chinese, 106
church embroidery, 2 1 church, 2 0--2, 34
mediaeval, 32 mediaeval, 32, 40
nineteenth-century, 163-4 and class division
Church Extension Society, 3 5 in 18th century, 1 38
class division, Chapter 4 passim in 19th century, 1 5 2 , 174
Colene, 9-1 0 costume, 1 19
collage, paper 120-l and crusader influence, 5 l
conscruccivism, 190, 195-6 as decadence, 154
and femininity, 197 domestication of, Chapter 4 passim
copes, 50, 5 1 , 52-4 and domestic comfort, 1 3 4 , 158
couched gold, 66 and education of girls, 7 3 , 82,
courtly love, 28-31 105, 1 0 7 , 154, 173, 187-8,
craft industry, rural, 178-9 202
craft , mediaeval and femininity passi111, esp.
v. arc, 5-6 Chapter l
patron saint� of, 60 and figurative work, 3 5
and women, 46 as fine arc, 5, 1 9 1
243
Index
and gardening, 72, 94, 95 banners, 197-200

and gentility, 1 1 slogans, 198
'hippy', 204-5 workshops, 2 5 , 44, 1 25-6
Indian, 196 Russian, 191-6
and individuality, 81, 86, 20)� embroidered clothes, 41-2, 45-6,
Judaic, 164 68, 70, 93, 1 2 2 , 204
and leisure, 1 1 embroidered hangings and
aristocratic, 1 2 5 furnishings, 48-9, 68-9, 97,
twentieth-century, 202 l07, 159, 1 8 1
and love, 187 embroidered pictures, 92�
and marriage, 90-1, 104-5, Embroiderers
154-5 amateurs, 5 , 67, 69, 7 1 , 79, 8 1 ,
matenals 98, 1 2 1
damask, 66 anchorites, 58
for Berlin work, 70, 1 7 1 apprentices, 47
for fancy work, 1 7 6 children, 1 7 5 , 177
gold, 40 designers, 34-5, 79-80
human hair, 145 mediaeval men, 42�
jewels, 40 monks, 43�
linen, 40 nuns, 42-3, 58
metal thread, 40, 108-9 payment scales, 46-7
nineteenth-century, 170 professional men, 45-6, 6 7
sarcener, 14 5 professional women, 5 , 47, 67,
sevemeenth-<entury, 93 108, 1 2 1 , 127-8, 149
silk, 66 working-class, 174, 176
stencils, 1 3 7 Russian peasant, 194
twentieth-cenwry, 202-3 secular, 42, 44, 45, 60
velvet, 40, 66 Embroiderers' Guild, 46, 2 1 2
worsted wool, I 06 provision for widows, 47
mechanical, 178 reorganisation of, 67
mixed media, see fancy work restriction on women, 67
mediaeval, 1 7 , 28-33 Enlightenment, 123
exhibitions of, 38-9 Erasmus, 7 5
and motherhood, 128-9 Evangelical Movement, 2 1
ordinances governing, 67
patronage of, 40, 68 famines, effects of, 66
and piety, 161 fancy work, 169-70
and political protest, 200 Fanshaw, A . , 8 3
professional, 44, 67, 69, 7 1 Fawcett, M. , 4, 150
ridiculed, 88, 171-3, 185 feather work, 120, 1 2 1
rural projects, 178-80 femininity, 2-16,63
screens, 1 1 0-112 creation of, Chapter I
as seduction, 2, 186 defined, 2�
as solace, l l , 1 5 0 domestication of, 64
as social status, 63, 1 5 2 , 174, as feeling, Chapter 7
211 inculcation of, Chapter 5

and submission, 1 1 , 37, 166 in eighteenth century, 143
suppliers, 45-<5, 169 v. masculinity, 62-3
techniques, 84-5, 175 in nineteenth century, Chapter 7
three-dtmensional, 104 defined, 147
and thrift, 202 and seduction, 1 19-20
twentieth-century, Chapter 8 as vocation, 147
and unhappiness, 148-50 feminism, 3, 6--8
in USA, 1 3 6 nineteenth-century, 1 56--7
and Victorian mediaevalism, 1 7 and Renaissance, 60
and women's novels, 8-10 seventeenth-century, 102
and Women's Suffrage twentieth-century, 205-10
244
Index
'Feminisco', 208-9 Ladies Ecclesiastical Society, 34, 35

fertility, Chapter 3 Ladies Work Society, 183
Finch, A . , 99, 165 Lamb, M 148-9
. •
'Fishing Lady' pictures, 1 1 7 Lambert, Miss, 22, 26-7, 35

flowering, 1 1 9 Lefebure, E . , 8 1
France, M. de., 29 Lechaby, W . R . , 44, 60
Freeman, R . , 76 Linwood, M., 144-5
French, G., 34 Liscer, T., 1 9
Futurism, 195 livery companies, 67, 68
Luigini, F . , 62
Gaskell, Mrs., 167-8, 178 Luther, M . , 91-2
Glasgow School of Arc, 185, 201; see
also Macberh, A. Mabel of Bury Se Edmunds, 48-50
Goldwire Drawers· Company, 108 Macbeth, A . , 186-7, 201
Goncharova, N . , 193 Maken, B., 99, 103, 104
Gosrelow, M., 44 Male, E . , 56
Gothic revival, 2�1. 33, 34 Marshal, F. and H . , 24, 180
Grand, S . , 7 Mary, Queen of Scots, 76, 77-8, 79
Guild workshops, 17 mastercraftsmen, 67
patron saints of, 5 6 Mathilda, 26-7, see also Bayeux
restriction on women, 67 tapestry
mediaevalism, nineteenth-cenrury,
Hamilton, R., 90 Chapter 2, 1 8 1
Harris, A., 7 1 'menders', 175
Harrison, E . , 69, l08 metal thread workers, 108
Harrison, M . , 205 Millais, J . , 25
Harrshorne, C . , 23, 24, 45 Mitchel l , ) . , 3
Hauser, A., 28 More, H . , 141-2
heraldry, 42 Morris, M . , 38
Heywood, T., 97 and Central School of Art and
Hill, C . , 86, 106 Design, 39
Hill, S., 209 Morris, W . , 20, 3 1 , 32, 38, 179-83
Hilliard, N . , So-L Morris, Marshall and Fau1kner
Hoch, H., 192 Embroidery Workshop, 39
homeworkers, 175-6 Morrlake workshop, 98
humanism, 6 1 mothers and daughters, 8, 128-32
Hunon, C . , 168-9 changing relationship in 18th
cemury, 128
illusionism, 79 idealised in embroidery, L 29
individualism, 87 Mounshill, J . , 67-8
inventories, 41 mourning pictures, 13-14, 135-6
American, 136-7
James, Rev. T., 34 Mulcasrer, R . , 7 3
Jameson, Mrs., 36. 175 muslin, mechanical production of,
)ode, G. de., 97 175
)ones, M . , 48
journeymen, 67 naturalism, 7 1
nature, 1 2 1-3, see also pastoral art
Kaplan, C . , 18-19, 105 needle painting, 144-5
Kelso, R . , 63 exhibitions, 145
Kendrick, A . , 48 needlepoint, 85, 1 7 5
Nevinson , J . L . , 78
Labe, L . , 7 5 New Embroidery Movemenc, 212
lace 'runners', 1 7 5 Newbery, J . , 185-6
laceworkers, 176 Nighcmgale, Florence, 148
exploitation of, 177 Oakley, A., 37
strike, 176 ormd, 7 9
245
Index
Opus Anglicanum, 40-l, 44, 45, Royal School ofArc Needlework,

57, 59, 5 1 , 53, 54, 56, 59 1 8 .�-4, 199
Orphism, 192 Rubin, G . , 4
outworkers, 36 Ruffini, L., 125
Ovid, 66, 97 'runners', 175
Oxburgh Hangings, 77 Ruskin, J., 31
Oxford Movemenc, 2 1 Russia, 192
Ozenfant, A., 190 costume embroidery, 195
Department of Fine Arc, 193
Paris, M., 41, 43 Nee-Nationalist movement, 193
pastorals, 1 1 1 peasanc art, 193-6
and coumhip, 1 17-18, 143 Revolution, effects of, 192-3
pattern books, 86, 1 5 5
for Berlin work, 170-1 saints and martyrs
introduction of, 63 Anna, 38
mass production of, 1.69, 180 and the Visitation, 5 3
nature, 1 2 1 Catherine, 56, 58
pattern drawers, 125-6, 127 Cecilia, 5 8
pattern magazines, 15 5-6, 169 Elizabeth, 3 7 , 54-5
pattern sellers, 96-7, 128, 155 Joachim, 38
pattern sheets, 94, 96-7 John the Baptist, 68
perspective, 79 Juliana, 58
in stump work, 94, 1 1 1 Margaret, 3 5 , 36, 56-7
Perwich, S., 83 Monica, 65
pictures, embroidered, 92-4 patron, 56
plague, effects of, 66 Virgin, 38
Pollaiuolo, A., 86 of the Annunciation, 3 5
Pollock, G . , 4 of the assumption, 65--6
post-Renaissance art, 93 Salamon, B . , 97
Power, E., 30, 40-1, 43 sampler work, 12-13, andseeesp.
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 182 Chapter 5
Protestantism, influence of, 86, 88, band, 85
9 1 , 92 and death, 133-4
Puritanism and role of women, lOO and discipline, 88
Jewish, 164
Quentel, P., 63 memorial, 136, 137-8
and mother and daughter
Red Maids School, 107 relationship, 128-9
Reed, H . , 1 8 and obedience, 88-9, 128
Reformation, influence of, 86 signature and dates, introduction
Renaissance, 5 , 60, 79 of, 86
and chastity, 75 spot, 85
and humanism, 6 1 stitchery, 8 5
Restoration, 95, 1 0 5 and time, 88
and aristocratic life, 1 1 1 verses, 1 2 , 19, 130, 1 3 1 , 1 5 1 ,
Rich, A., 5 5 157, 159--60
Riley, C . , 207 sources. of, 132, 160-1
Risley, C . , 203 working-class, 174
Rosanova, 0 . , 1 93-4 Sargeant, A., 6, 7
Rossetti, C . , 26 satin. stitch, 125, 1 7 5
Rossetti, D.G., 38 School of Mediaeval Embroidery, 3 5 ,
Rousseau,J .-J . , 123-4 37
and girls' education, 124 Schreiner, 0., 14-16
and motherhood, 128 shell work, 120, 1 2 1
Rowbotham, S., 5, 88, lOO, 1 18 Sherrington, G., 8 4
Royal household accounts, 45, 47, silhouettes, 121
48, 49 Sinclair, M., 7
246
Index
62 Group, 2 1 2 Tree ofLife, 5 1

Smith H . , R7-l:!
, Virgin as Queen, 5 2
Society of Antiquarians, 44 Virgin as fertility symbol, 96
Southern, R., 49 the Virtues, 67
spinning, 108-9
split s mch , 40 tambour work
Squarcione, 79 apprentices, 126
stem stitch, 175 and whitework, 1 2 5
Scone, E., 22-3, 26, 3 1 workshops, 126
srrapwork, 7 3 tapestry work, 98
Scuard, S., 49 ratting, 150
srump work, 92-8, lOO Tauber, S., 19 1-2
motifs in, 93, 96, 1 1 1 Taylor, J . , 86-7
suffrage handkerchiefs, 20�1 Tcnnyson, Alfred Lord, 25
Suffrage Movement, 180, 197-201 tent scitch, 93
banners, embroidered, 197-200 Terreno,J., 20�1
symbolism in, 199 Textile Studio, 2 1 2
Sumptuary Laws, 109 Tonna, C., 177-8
suprematisrs, 194 trompe /'oeil, 79, 120
surrealism, 190 Trades Union Movement banners,
symbolism in embroidery, 12 197
Adam and Eve, 9 1 , 204
animals, 7 1 , 95 underside couching, 40, 5 1
Apocrypha, 5 2 53, 54
,
apocryphal imagery, 52-3 Verona, P. da., 80

repudiated, 9 5 V inciolo, F . , 63
c::terpillar, 95 Virgil, 1 1 0- 1 1 1
Celtic, 7 1 Virgin Mary, see symbolism
Coronation of Virgin, 50, 52 Vives, L., 74
domestic virtue, 158-9 vonSchurman, 99, 103-4, 210
eighteenth-century, 14 3
Elizabethan, 71-2 Walker, K . , 206-7, 2 1 0
fidelity, 77 Wantage Needlework Association,
flowers, 7 1 , 95 35
in suffrage banners, 199 Warner, M., 52, 53, 65
grief, 77 Watson, E., 127-8
heroic women Watts, I . , 1 3 2
classical, 66-7 Weaver, B., 205-6
Biblical, 96, 98-9, 101-2, Welby, H., 1 8 5
1 6 1 , 1 8 1 , 199-200 Wharton, E., 8
homogeneous v. narrative, 66 whitework, 125-17 5
Isaac and Abraham, 59, lO L wills, 30, 4 1 , 70
Jephta, 89 Wollstonecraft, M . , 82, 124-5,
)esse Tree, 50-1 139. 140, 1 4 1
lily, 37-8 women
motherhood, 129 legal position in 17th cenrury,
in mourning pictures, 1 37 100
and naturalism, 7 1 mediaeval, Chapter 3
Old Testament, 96 mysogyny ofchurch, 49-50
patriotism, L 58-9 and rhe novel, ll8, 165-8, 177
peace, 204 Women's Arts Alliance, 206
rose, 72 Women's Co-operative Guild, 187
royalist, 95 Women's Liberation Movement, 205
rural poor, 144 Women's Suffrage, 198
Sarah and Abraham, 9 1 Wooley , H . , 92, 104
suffering, 1�1 worsted work, I 04
247
Rozsika Parker studied European Art History at the Courtauld
Institute London. With others she formed the Women's Art Hisrory
Collective in 1972-5. She has since trained as a psychoanalytic

psychotherapist and is currently in practice in London. She is author
of Tom in Two: The Experience ofMaternalAmbivalence, co-author of

Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology and co-ediror of Framing
Feminism: Art and the Womens Movement 1970 -85 (both with
Griselda Pollock) .
A N O R I G I NAL P U B L I C A T I O N F R O M T H E WOMEN'S P R E S S
The besrselling classic of wom en s a r t history, The Subversive Stitch explodes our
'
preconceptions <�bout e>mbroidery. Asking why this sign i fica n t artform has been
classified simply as a skilled craft, Rozs tka Parker locates embroidery clearly and vividly
withm the context of shifting notions of femininity and women's role in society from
medieval times until the present day.
In the mtddle ages, women worked alongstde men i n embroiderers' guild workshops as
destgners and stttchers of gold, sliver and silk. Yet by the eighteenth century, embroidery
was considered to come naturally to women alone. And, by rhe ntneteenth centu ry, the
fine stttchery expected of upper-class women and ex tracted from working-class women
on starvation wages, ensured that embroidery had become both a symbol and instrument
of women's subservience. But there we re also strands of resistance, for at the same time
that embroidery was used to inculcate femininity in women, it a lso provided a mea ns of
negotiat in g t h e constraints of the feminine role.
Drawtng on household accounts, women's magazines, letters, novels and the works of
art themselves, Rozsika Parker traces the reciprocal relationship of women and
embrOidery, to create a major breakthrough i n art history and crttimm.
'A marvellouslv written andillustrated book.' T1mes Educa tional Supplement
'The sHee
of the booCOes1gn H1s '0i&
� gth and fascmatton
'A book wonderfully ric , but i n people and 1deas.' Guardian
Rozstka Parker was a four -listory Collecttve. She now practises

as a psycho analy t iC psychot neraptst tn LOn don. ::>he is the author of Old Mistresses:
Women, Art and Ideology a n d Framing Feminism: Art and the Women 5 Movement
1 9 70- I 9 8 S (both writte n with G rise ld a Pollock). H er latest book is Torn in Two:
The Experience of Maternal Ambivalence.
(OVER IMAGE: ST. MARGARET AND THEDRAGON

DETAIL FROM THE BUTLER BOWDEN COPE
(ECCLE$1ASTICAL TEXTILE) REPRODUCED COURTESY OF THE
BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE VICTORIA & ALBERT MuSEUM
(OVER DESIGN: NAMARA
ART HISTORY/WOMEN'S STUDIES
UNITED KINGDOM: £12.99
ISBN: 0 7043 4478 5

PARKER, R. - The Subversive Stitch Embroidery

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PARKER, R. - The Subversive Stitch Embroidery

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THE SUBVERSIV E STITCH

Embro1dery and the Mak1ng o� the Fem1n1ne

Many people have enabled me to complete this book:

Firsr published by The Women's Press Ltd. 1984

Reprinted 1986, 1989

Reprinted ar1d revised 1996

Copyright© Rozsika Parker 1984, 1996

British Library Cataloguing-in-PublicationData

ISBN 0 7043 4478 5

Typeser inMC Typeset, Chatham Kent ,

Printed and bound in Great Britain by BPC Books Ltd

1 : The Creation of Femininity 1

2: Eternalising the Feminine 17

3: Fertility, Chastity and Power 40

4: The Domestication of Embroidery 60

5: The Inculcation of Femininity 82

6 : From Milkmaids to Mothers 110

7: Femininiryas Feeling 147

8: A Naturally Revolutionary Art? 189

Notes to chapters 216

Needlework is the favourite hobby of two percent of British

The Guardian was no doubt confident that its coverage of the

smiling girls displayed copper atoms embroidered in silk.2 By the

encouraged in women, though obviously related to the biological

Many feminists have looked to political theory and psycho­

Rubin in an essay in Towards an Anthropology of Women, 1975,

it is acknowledged to be art. When women embroider, it is seen

from painting, concealing the profound differences that have

1\:a{lonal Gallery, London Oil on canvas, 2. 17 X 1. 56 m.

3 Nineteenth-century print of a mother and

5 In LUI>e, Marcus Stone (British, l84{}-L921), Castle Museum, Nottingham,

6 Anonymous mourning picture, private

embroidered in silk by her own hand', 10 and Helen Mather is

which was the token and memorial of his sin.'1 1

After dinner, according to immemorial custom, Mrs Archer

Economically and ideologically, Janey- the unmarried, upper

She was not a clever needle-woman: her large capable hands

Edith Wharton exemplifies two common uses of embroidery in

stereotype and to combat the way in which embroidering was

I shall speak the truth: I don't much like my daughter sewing.

The child's silence, her thoughts kept to herself, signify her

young embroiderers of bygone days, sitting on hard little

Colette's sense of anxiety when faced with her silent stitching

intimations of autonomy are so resolutely quashed by the stereo­

dreaming over embroidery induced 'dispositional hypnoid

When I was young I little thought

The verse is a curious mixture of piety and rebellion, resentment

pictures related both to the expansion o f domestic mourning

Embroidery summons up both 'advanced' civilisation and very

Slowly the scores of little tucks and fine embroidery shaped

She also perceived the bond that embroidery forged between

The women's choice of work indicates the different personalities;

While placing embroidery as an art like poetry and painting,

and feminine purity, thus presenting it as a sexual characteristic,

The Victorians re-discovered mediaeval embroidery, wrote the

The tenacity of the Victorian reading of this history is largely

Among all the contradictions that besieged the Victorian middle

the 'woman question' should not be seen as marginal to a

') Altar fronc,il, Ladies' Ecclesia�ti�"l S<x.1try, designed by Gt-orge Street, St

11 Mariana, Sir Frederick Millais (British,

male-dominated ruling class, n

The middle ages constituted an era that appeared to provide

One is its naturalism - its identification with nature and the

Not only did chivalry sanction and secure the hierarchical

Many feminists have looked to political theory and psycho

intimations of autonomy are so resolutely quashed by the stereo

Well meaning ladies transfer all the nicknackery of the work

Like all crude stereotypes, Pugin's characterisation of mid

With the revival of a more correct taste in Ecclesiastical Archi

smithery J department whilst the women undertook the needle

Millais portrays Mariana standing over her unfinished embroid

It's a weary life, it is, she said:

The rules and rituals which characterised the nineteenth