TY - JOUR
AU - Quirk,, Maria
AB - Abstract The activities of female-run embroidery agencies have been largely ignored in scholarship dedicated to the design professions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This study reveals that embroidery agencies and societies played a key role in organizing and systematizing the female-dominated embroidery workforce, thereby granting women needleworkers new access to the business side of art. In illuminating the material and economic conditions of these women’s working lives, the author unpacks the complicated, and sometimes contradictory, relationship between embroidery organizations and professionalism, at a time when the design industries themselves were becoming increasingly professionalized and commercialized. Two broad categories of embroidery agencies are examined: modest, economically driven work depots; and artistically and philanthropically motivated embroidery societies. In the brief period of time when the popularity of the Arts and Crafts aesthetic and demand for ecclesiastical embroidery made embroidery a viable remunerative business, dedicated agencies and societies gave women with little or no connections to the art world access to a market for their wares. It was this access that allowed female needleworkers to practice as professional art workers according to that term’s most basic definition – they supported themselves monetarily through artistic work. During her lecture tour of the United States in 1909, the designer and embroidery expert May Morris hailed the benefits of unions and guilds for women needleworkers. Her talk on medieval embroidery included a history of the first female trade union, which, she claimed, was founded for embroidery workers in Paris in the thirteenth century. Women’s involvement in this group demonstrated that textile work had long been a serious and intellectual profession, best produced by highly trained, organized needlewomen working collectively, and not by female amateurs working independently within the home.1 Morris espoused the importance of guilds in securing fair employment and remuneration for female workers, and for regulating prices and standards. Two years earlier, Morris had helped found the Women’s Guild of Art, an organization that aimed to provide a forum for professional interaction and exchange between women designers in the face of their continued exclusion from the all-male Art Workers’ Guild.2 Like that group, the Women’s Guild of Art endeavoured to provide a social centre for like-minded members, who were united in their pursuit of art as a serious, professional endeavour: ‘it is a pleasure to meet women who know their work and are not playing at art’, Morris noted.3 Although the Women’s Guild of Art was partly founded in response to the gender-biased admission policy of the Art Workers’ Guild, it shared that group’s aim of differentiating its members from amateur design workers. Since the 1980s, a growing field of scholarship dedicated to the professionalization of the design industries has recognized the significance of societies and organizations in regulating occupational status and legitimacy.4 Design guilds, artist clubs and exhibition societies are regarded as key to the professionalization of art and design that took place throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Art occupations were not subject to strict educational and institutional parameters, and so professional societies took on an important role in monitoring professional status and standards, representing artists’ interests, and facilitating connections between the art world and the broader community. In the absence of mandatory qualifications or registrations to guarantee status, guilds and societies were particularly relevant to women seeking to make a living and be taken seriously as art professionals, because of the widely accepted association between women and amateurism.5 As Samuel Haber notes, ‘the influx of a significant number of women into any profession sorely endangered its elevated status’. The professionalizing processes within the field of design, which included the advent of guilds and societies, were aimed at distinguishing the expert work of practitioners from that of amateurs through a system of valuation and reward that revolved around men, whose presence formed a bulwark against the penetration of (female) amateurism.6 The gender tensions that surrounded design societies and their professionalizing potential are recognized by scholars of design history and feminist art historians, who have highlighted the male impulse to exclude women members in order to strengthen an organization’s claim to professionalism, and have explored the desires of aspiring female professionals for institutional legitimization. However, May Morris’ discussion of professional women needleworkers highlights a category of design society that is under-represented in histories of design and professionalism in the nineteenth century – the female-run embroidery agency. These groups are often marginalized in the narrative of design professionalization because their members and founders are considered amateurs, and the design work they produced deemed to be lacking in artistic merit. Similarly, at their time of operation the role of philanthropy in these societies complicated the professional status of the workers involved, and contributed to the debates and concerns regarding women, work, and artistic value that were present in contemporary public discourse on culture. The lack of respect and appreciation awarded to the work these societies produced, along with the agencies’ discreet membership policies, has resulted in a scarcity of surviving archival material and contemporary press reportage, and this in turn has made it difficult for historians to recognize and evaluate the scale, activities, and influence of embroidery societies and guilds.7 These groups lacked some of the obvious external hallmarks and operational standards of the traditional professional societies that were run on the model of the Royal Academy, but their role in facilitating the professional practice of women art workers and their links to art-commerce should not be underestimated. The aim of this article is to assess the importance of philanthropic and commercial embroidery societies to the working lives of women who needed or intended to make a living through artistic practice, and to test the influence of these groups in legitimizing women’s artistic activities to the broader design community. The focus here is thus on the organizational and commercial structure of these societies and the economic relationship they fostered with women members and workers. The meaning of the term ‘professionalism’, which is key to the framework of this discussion, was vague and slippery in the late nineteenth-century art world, particularly in relation to women. Artists and designers only began the process of professionalizing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and so the term had not yet evolved to designate specific attributes that should be held in common by all practitioners, as it did for the traditional professions of law, medicine, and the clergy. Educational standards were not uniform or binding across the artistic industries, and the notions of occupational hierarchies and public service, which were central to traditional conceptions of professionalism, were less relevant to art and design.8 With these tensions and inconsistencies in mind, the Art Journal defined a professional artist in 1900 as one ‘whose ideal of professional standing is an annual income from his work’.9 This definition of professionalism presented problems for women because of the long-held association between women artists and amateurism, a status that was defined by its anti-commercialism. As amateurs, women artists fit into a culturally recognizable artistic tradition. Young women had long been encouraged to draw and to pursue decorative arts as enriching and refining leisure activities. With its close association with feminine domestic culture, embroidery was regarded as a particularly suitable art form for women to pursue within their homes; the fact that handling an embroidery frame showed ‘the elegance of the figure […] to great advantage’ was an additional benefit.10 The cultural ubiquity of the female ‘dabbler’ normalized the idea of women making art; it was not regarded as unusual or inappropriate so long as their ambitions were modest and their motivation merely personal pleasure. Artistic practice of this kind was compatible with Victorian ideals of femininity, and was not threatening to male cultural authority. When women began to earn money from their art, however, and entered the male-dominated arena of commerce and business, their activities, skills, and qualifications began to be called into question. Women artists and designers who needed to earn money from their wares in order to support themselves were thus in a precarious position. It was only through entering into market transactions that they could validate the objective value of their work and prove that their skills were more than mere domestic accomplishments. However, by moving out of the subjective realm of the amateur and claiming professional status by selling their work, women were opening themselves up to criticism regarding their ‘natural’ creative deficiencies and the weakness and commercialism of their work. As Jennifer Ruth notes, women professionals had to occupy a ‘paradoxical position inside and outside the market’, attempting to achieve a market-derived legitimacy and livelihood while maintaining the modesty and decorum expected of women participating in the public sphere.11 Needleworkers faced an additional challenge in achieving professional recognition. Embroidery was often a collaborative practice where products were attributed collectively or even anonymously. In an artistic culture increasingly focused on the efforts of individual creators, and where the designer was privileged over the maker, the collaborative model of art-making practised by embroidery societies and guilds could be seen as compromising the individual recognition and professionalism of members.12 Women’s uneasy relationships with the labels of amateur and professional are reflected in recent scholarship on women and professionalism in the nineteenth century, where there has been a shift away from asserting clear demarcations between the two statuses. In Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada, 1850–1970 editor Kristina Huneault questions the relevance and appropriateness of professionalism as a methodological framework for the study of women designers, and critiques the practice of uncritically broadening the definition of professionalism to include the activities of women. ‘The un-theorised acceptance of an evaluative division between amateur and professional forecloses opportunities to understand some of the most significant aspects of women’s art production’, Huneault argues.13 This text is part of a larger trend in the literature on women and art, which has shifted attention away from individual creators and towards a broader understanding of creative labour. Hence it was in response to art historians who evaluated women in the ‘context of male “professional art”’ that Rosemary O’Day chose to focus on amateur women artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.14 Likewise, Patricia Zakreski and Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi’s Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century considers the permeable and complex boundaries between amateur and professional art, and the place of women on the margins of cultural production, whether as amateur artists, muses, patrons, or viewers.15 There is certainly value in asserting the significance and contributions of women whose artistic practice lay outside the parameters of ‘masculinist’ definitions of professionalism; nineteenth-century needleworkers can be seen as fitting within this category.16 However, where such scholarship critiques the use of professionalism as a framework for the discussion of women designers, I argue that professionalism remains a relevant concept for the study of needleworkers because practitioners themselves recognized the value of achieving that status. Indeed, some of the agencies and societies discussed here took it as their mission to elevate the reputation and standing of needlework so that it could be inserted into traditional understandings of professional decorative art. They wanted needlework to be recognized as a professional art form so that it would be easier for its practitioners to find customers and pursue respectable careers. In advocating for the professionalism of their members’ collaborative, sometimes anonymous, artistic activities, embroidery agencies challenged the dominant image of the professional artist as one that was autonomous, design-orientated, and male.17 While professionalism was undeniably a highly gendered term, for the women discussed here it was a desirable status because of the circular link between professionalism and economic reward. Women needleworkers needed to be seen as professionals, because the status enabled them to be taken more seriously and command higher prices for their work. The act of selling was challenging for many women, who were outsiders in the male-dominated spaces of the commercial art world. The difficulties women designers faced in accessing buyers for their work and, it follows, achieving professional credibility and remuneration, explains why needlework societies and agencies were such significant players in the late nineteenth-century art world, and why they are deserving of attention. I argue that these societies were conduits to the business side of art, and facilitated the commercialization – and thus the professionalization – of female needleworkers. I seek to present the members and founders of these groups as working women, and illuminate the material and economic conditions of their professional lives through the lens of their organizational participation. I. The status of embroidery in late nineteenth-century England and the rise of ecclesiastical needlework Needlework societies were situated at a nexus of new and traditional attitudes towards embroidery – the form of labour, artistic, domestic or otherwise, that was widely regarded as epitomizing middle-class women’s work throughout the nineteenth century.18 Embroidery agencies benefited from and relied upon the art form’s continuing association with women and the domestic sphere, while at the same time finding inspiration in and contributing to a resurgence of interest in embroidery as a serious form of decorative art. Embroidery ventures sought to capitalize on these conditions and attitudes by building new, viable business enterprises for the sale and production of needlework that merged commercialism, artistry, and philanthropy. Key to the feasibility of these ventures and the opportunities they afforded women art workers was the renewed demand for needlework from both ecclesiastical patrons and secular art buyers in the second half of the nineteenth century, a demand that stemmed, at least in part, from the embrace of embroidery by gothic revivalist architects in the mid- to late nineteenth century, and the subsequent enshrinement of needlework within the Arts and Crafts tradition. In 1874, the British Architect noted that from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth, ‘no church embroidery worth mentioning was done in England’. It was the emergence of the Oxford Movement in the mid-nineteenth century and the revival of architectural interest in church decoration that ‘lifted the whole art of church embroidery into a new sphere’.19 The architect Augustus Pugin was particularly influential in reviving interest in church embroidery. He believed that medieval inspired furnishings, including embroidery, were necessary to decorate the gothic-inspired churches he designed, and felt that the existing state of embroidery was too poor to fulfil this need. ‘We cannot yet hope to revive the expression and finish of the old work’, he commented, ‘but we may readily restore its general character.’20 According to the Art Journal, this renewed interest in medieval art and design helped revive the ‘peculiarly feminine’ art of embroidery, which rapidly assumed new ‘importance as a branch of art manufacture’.21 Women were seen as especially sympathetic to the values of piety, purity, and spirituality that were represented in Church designs, and so were ideal candidates to carry out commissions.22 The response of women to the revival of ecclesiastical embroidery was ‘zealous and untiring’ according to one commentator, who noted that new organizations along with existing religious sisterhoods assumed responsibility for disseminating knowledge of the art and producing commissions.23 Early adopters included Agnes Blencowe, who founded the Ladies’ Ecclesiastical Embroidery Society during the height of the gothic revival in the 1850s. She pledged to ‘honour and obey’ the theories of the revivalists and undertook work designed by George Bodley, J. D. Sedding, and Edmund Street.24 By the 1860s, ecclesiastical decoration had become a major industry, sustaining individual art workers, small embroidery societies, and larger design firms such as Morris, Marshal, Faulkner, and Co., whose initial embroidery commissions were ecclesiastical in nature.25 Convents and religious sisterhoods also carried out a significant portion of ecclesiastical needlework; Watts and Co., for example, relied heavily on convent workrooms such as that of the Society of Sisters of St Margaret in East Grinstead.26 II. Work depots and the threat of amateurism At the same time as convent workrooms were gaining prominence in the realm of ecclesiastical design, small embroidery societies and agencies emerged to fulfil the necessary role of consolidating and organizing secular embroidery workers, while at the same time facilitating business transactions and patronage. Embroidery work attracted a plentiful and eager workforce, for whom the pursuit represented a rare form of remunerative labour that was both technically accessible and socially acceptable. By the last decades of the nineteenth century the ecclesiastical embroidery sector was crowded with would-be workers. ‘The competition in making and supplying embroidery in this country is very keen’, noted Myra’s Journal, claiming that existing firms and societies were inundated with applications for employment.27 Societies of various scales and specializations were thus needed to help connect individual art workers with purchasers, distribute their wares, and attract commissions. The most rudimentary of these groups took the form of work-depots, modestly run organizations that collected and stockpiled embroidered items to sell through storefronts, and occasionally distributed commissions to members who worked from their homes. The Ecclesiastic Art Depot operated according to this simple structure, charging a yearly subscription of five shilling in return for selling women’s church work through their Kensington shopfront.28 Many other depots existed in this mould, some specializing in church embroidery and others dealing in fancy and plain needlework of all kinds. Some of these groups professed to operate a selective membership, requiring potential workers to be nominated and produce examples of their work along with references. The majority, however, were self-supporting and non-selective, asking aspiring members only to pay a yearly subscription or initial entrance fee before collecting a small commission on all works sold.29 This category of embroidery society has its roots in the commercial and charity bazaars that proliferated throughout England from the early nineteenth century onwards. Bazaars were primarily organized and staffed by women, and sold either the handicrafts of middle- or upper-class volunteers in the aid of a particular charity or work produced by working-class women and ladies in ‘reduced circumstances’ who participated in bazaars to earn a living.30 Thousands of bazaars or ‘ladies’ sales’ – the terms were largely interchangeable – were held throughout Britain each year, as well as contributing to the emerging consumer culture of the period and encouraging an early commodification of needlework and embroidery, the events played an important role in expanding and facilitating women’s roles in philanthropic ventures.31 In terms of their contribution to artistic culture, however, bazaars were derided as representing the worst in (female) amateur artistic practice. Charlotte Yonge characterized the handmade goods sold at bazaars as objects that ‘good natured people buy when they had rather not, at some exorbitant price’, produced by amateurs who did recognize their own ‘inferior work’.32 Other commentators were even less generous; the Manchester Guardian labelled bazaar handiwork as ugly, silly, and trivial.33 Art critics seeking to chastise the Royal Academy or other galleries for poor quality or badly managed exhibitions likened their displays to bazaars.34 The contemporary literature surrounding embroidery agencies and depots suggests that these organizations distanced themselves from the inferior workmanship and design principles associated with bazaars and ladies’ sales, despite the fact that some embroidery depots were motivated by very similar concerns. This differentiation was key to embroidery societies’ professionalizing impulse: they sought to organize embroidery labour in a business-like and commercially focused way that created an efficient and trusted link between the consumer and the uniquely skilled creator. The very act of subscribing to an embroidery agency or society rather than attempting to find work on an individual basis was thus seen as a means for women to distinguish their skills and products from that produced by amateurs or for domestic purposes. ‘Only those things sold and bought on a business basis can be regarded as a satisfactory method of making money’, noted one commentator, who encouraged women embroiderers to actively ‘seek out work’ in a business-minded manner.35Needlework for Ladies for Pleasure and Profit, an advice book reprinted throughout the 1880s to provide information on how to make needlework remunerative, advised women to approach agencies and societies that specialized in selling and distributing needlework, particularly those which took orders and commissions from customers to pass on to members – a method of selling that was much more profitable for workers than the practice of stockpiling and selling assorted examples of members’ work. It encouraged women to produce useful and high quality items that would be competitive in the crowded embroidery marketplace, and to promote their work actively in order to separate themselves from the multitude. ‘Do not be afraid to give your work publicity; it stands to reason that if it be good work, the more it is known the more it will be likely to sell and bring in a profit.’36 For many women who subscribed to embroidery agencies, however, the self-promotion and publicity typically involved in attracting purchasers and cultivating commissions was undesirable or impossible. The promise of discretion was a selling point of several embroidery societies, whose methods of business were designed to preserve workers’ reputations. The Ladies’ Crystal Palace Stall, for example, promised that ‘strictest confidence is observed with regard to the names and addresses of the members’, while Liverpool’s Ladies’ Work Society was formed to enable ‘ladies in reduced circumstances to dispose of their work quietly and advantageously’. 37 Membership of these societies allowed individual workmanship and labour to be subsumed into a collective authorship, which protected members’ personal reputations and social standings from the denigrating associations of paid work. This approach differentiated embroidery societies from the primary design society of the period, the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (ACES). Founded in 1887 with the objective of showcasing designers’ work to the press and the broader art-buying public, the ACES was the first professional society to provide a platform for the decorative arts that mirrored in scale and spectacle the major fine art exhibitions of the period. Its ambitious claims about the value of the decorative arts and their artistic worth challenged the traditional hierarchical division between fine and applied art.38 A distinguishing feature of the ACES was its insistence that all works be exhibited under the names of both the designer and the executants. This practice aimed to further break down hierarchies in the reception of art – this time between the highly valued creativity of the ‘genius’ designer and the often overlooked technical skills of the maker. This stipulation was particularly relevant to women, whose talents were more often associated with copying, drafting, and executing rather than designing and inventing. Thorough labelling and attribution reasserted the value of their technical and practical contributions as makers and publically declared their creative role when applicable.39 Against this backdrop, needlework societies’ commitment to anonymity can be seen as out of step with developments in the exhibition and sale of design. They harked back instead to guilds of a ‘pre individualistic age’, when workers subsumed their identities and contributions under a collective professional identity.40 From a practical perspective, however, the position of embroidery societies in the art market did not require them to trade on the artistic currency of designers’ and makers’ names, and the stance of members regarding public recognition appears to have been ambivalent at best. What many embroidery societies shared with the ACES was a desire for the talent and expertise of non-designer art workers to be acknowledged and valued both intellectually and monetarily, if not individually. III. Embroidery societies, art, and philanthropy It was this rationale that, at least in part, accounts for the development of societies that aimed to elevate the status of embroidery as an art form while simultaneously providing work for women in need of remunerative employment. The most influential of these societies was the Royal School of Art Needlework, commonly credited with popularizing the notion of ‘art embroidery’.41 The revival of English ecclesiastical embroidery in the 1850s and the revival of medieval craftsmanship espoused by William Morris and John Ruskin, influenced the development of art embroidery, which was set apart from plain and everyday needlework in the monetary, social, and aesthetic value that it claimed to hold.42 It was the linguist and watercolourist Lady Victoria Welby who recognized the untapped potential of art embroidery for providing artistic and remunerative opportunities for women workers, and who established the RSAN in a single room on Sloane Street, Kensington in the early 1870s. The School’s purpose was to revive and promote the ‘beautiful and practically lost art’ of artistic needlework, but, according to its vice president Marion Alford, it was the ‘urgent need for employment for women of education, born ladies, and reduced to poverty by the misfortunes or mistakes of their parents’, that ‘suggested this revival in decorative needlework’.43 The aim of the school was thus to provide practical courses of training to female students who fit the RSAN’s criteria for assistance, in preparation for taking up paid positions within the school’s commercially focused workrooms. Once applicants had passed the compulsory period of training they were awarded a certificate of competency and placed in one of the school’s specialized studios to practise crewel work, appliqué, or gold work, and to carry out the various commissions that the school received. Skilled art students recruited from the National Art Training School worked in the ‘painting room’, where they produced designs and patterns for embroidery kits that were sold to amateur needlewomen.44 As Talia Schaffer explains, the RSAN was a ‘perfectly Ruskinian pursuit’, which embodied the art critic’s reformist sensibility alongside his belief that embroidery, as a form of edifying domestic decoration, was a female responsibility.45 The RSAN operated on a mixed basis of charity and commerce, and, as Linda Cluckie notes, attempted to reconcile philanthropic, artistic, and commercial aims.46 Class identity was an important factor in regulating the philanthropic aspect of the RSAN’s operation and objectives. Training and employment opportunities were awarded strictly to ‘deserving’ women of respectable character whose personal circumstances necessitated their entry into paid employment. The school’s early enrolment and record books illuminate the difficult personal and professional circumstances of potential applicants, who were sometimes orphaned, widowed, or tasked with providing for siblings. Some could only sustain the course of study for a few weeks before family responsibilities took precedence, and unfortunate marriages and poor health were frequently recorded as a cause of ‘great distress’ or destitution.47 The School’s emphasis on the class and reputation of its employees can be overstated; the two referees who were required to vouch for each applicant often did so as a favour to Lady Welby, and Welby’s friends and the RSAN’s patrons frequently paid students’ fees for the School’s mandatory training programme.48 Training and working at the school, meanwhile, provided the practical expertise members needed to pursue embroidery professionally in a variety of fields. Some, like Clara Isabella Todd, cultivated a lifelong career in the School’s service. Todd entered the school in 1889 at the age of 19, at which point she was ‘entirely dependent on her earnings’. She received the school’s certificate in embroidery and entered the workroom in 1890 to carry out commissions and finished pieces for the school’s showroom. In 1897 she was chosen to teach at the technical evening class, a new initiative to provide a comprehensive, professional education to prospective embroidery teachers. In 1902 she was promoted again to the position of work mistress, and was placed in charge of one of the school’s workrooms.49 Other graduates found employment as embroidery teachers in technical and secondary schools throughout the country, or became art-workers at other embroidery societies or at artistic design firms like Liberty’s.50 Societies like the RSAN provided a modest but steady income to the women they employed. The School was based on a guild-like structure, and workers were paid according to their level of competence and work produced per hour. The average wage for a skilled needleworker employed for ecclesiastical work was between 20 to 30 shillings per week, or between £50 and £80 annually, although less skilled workers earned as little as 15 shillings a week.51 Marion Alford admitted that this could ‘hardly be called a living’, but claimed that it ‘is better than no occupation at all’. The meagre wages offered to low-skilled workers were a point of contention amongst some, and the RSAN records indicate that several women left the School’s employ as a result.52 However, these wages were on par with or exceeded those paid to embroidery workers at commercial firms; Lily Yeats received a salary of 10 shillings a week as an embroidery assistant at Morris and Co. during the same period, for example.53 The labour-intensive nature of the work undertaken by the School also required hourly wage rates to be kept low so that finished items could be priced competitively. An ‘exquisite’ suite of works designed by Walter Crane for example, which included four large wall panels alongside multiple smaller pieces, would have necessitated hundreds of hours of work and was priced at £370.54 Employment at the School also provided a stability and consistency that was difficult for women to achieve as freelance needleworkers or outworkers at large design and textile firms. Outwork was an attractive employment option for some women because it was carried out within the privacy of workers’ homes, however the work entailed strict deadlines and excessive hours for little pay.55 According to Anthea Callen, embroidery outworkers were a ‘cheap labour force’ that could be ‘called in and dismissed on a whim’.56 In comparison, the RSAN employed 135 women on a permanent basis by the early 1880s, 90 of whom were embroidery artists working on secular and ecclesiastical commissions ‘of all kinds’.57 Once employed, members were paid weekly regardless of the returns received by the School, a policy of stability that involved ‘considerable sacrifice at times when business [was] less active than usual’.58 The artistic legitimacy of the RSAN’s products was a point of great concern to the School’s patrons and management committee, who recognized that a reputation in the art world would reflect directly on the professionalism of their workers. Early examples of the School’s work exhibited at the London International Exhibition of Art and Industry attracted criticism from the press for their ‘incongruous’ and ‘motley’ designs, which distracted from the technical proficiency on display.59 The RSAN’s management acknowledged that high quality, artistically minded designs were crucial in fulfilling the school’s aim of reviving needlework as an art form, but design credibility was also vital in situating the school’s wares at the high end of the decorative art market, thus differentiating them from the poor quality and unartistic work associated with embroidery depots and bazaars. In 1875, RSAN patron Princess Helena established a fund for the purchasing of designs from respected artists like Edward Burne-Jones and Walter Crane, and an advisory board made up of male artists was formed to oversee the School’s artistic direction (Figure 1).60 Figure 1. Open in new tabDownload slide Screen designed by Walter Crane and executed by the Royal School of Art Needlework, c. 1876. This piece was probably exhibited at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Figure 1. Open in new tabDownload slide Screen designed by Walter Crane and executed by the Royal School of Art Needlework, c. 1876. This piece was probably exhibited at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. These arrangements have led to criticism that the school promoted a gendered division of artistic labour, whereby women focused on execution and men exercised their creativity and intelligence through the production of designs. Roszika Parker posits that in limiting workers’ freedom to create their own designs, the school discouraged individual, female creativity and artistic initiative. However, this view discounts the contributions of women such as Gertrude Jekyll, Emma R. Smithers, Helen Marion Burnside, Agnes Webster, and Mary Herbert, all of whom worked as designers for the school in either permanent or freelance capacities throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Burnside, who enjoyed a long career in the literary and artistic spheres despite being deaf since childhood, supplied her first design to the RSAN in 1879 and worked in-house as designer to the School until the late 1880s, after which she continued to contribute designs on a freelance basis. Burnside’s designs were included in the RSAN’s Handbook of Embroidery published in 1880, which served as an informative how-to guide for amateurs and as a showcase for the work of RSAN designers, whose contributions were illustrated in an extensive appendix. The designs printed, which also included work by Jekyll, Herbert, and Webster, were praised by the Graphic as ‘really beautiful examples of artistic design’.61 The ‘taste, style and technical skill’ of female designers employed by the RSAN were observed by the Queen in a review of the School’s pavilion at the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia.62 Christiana Cresswell and Rose Phillips, who managed the School’s paint room, were singled out for praise; Phillips ‘promises to become a clever designer’, the paper noted.63 While the RSAN publicized their connections with well-known male designers, and promoted the efforts of their in-house and freelance female design team, the names of embroidery workers were generally absent from exhibitions and publications. Like other embroidery agencies that dealt with women in reduced or distressed circumstances, the RSAN operated a policy of worker-anonymity for the presumed benefit of the women employed. Unlike the School’s showrooms, the working studios were closed to visitors. Vice-Principal Marion Alford promised workers that: Every member may keep her incognito, as strictly as she pleases, for no list of names is ever produced or published, or either the staff or the workers. It is, however, to be hoped, that the occupation is so honourable, and so far removed from sordid toil, by its artistic nature, that no one can be otherwise than proud, to be engaged in it.64 For women who preferred the circumstances of their employment to be kept private, the school operated as both chaperone and intermediary, acting as a vital ‘go between in the tricky negotiations that accompanied the exchange of money between men and women’.65 The use of high-profile male designers was thus further justified as a means of ensuring that the school was a seen as a genuine artistic institution, a status that Alford hoped would alleviate concerns about the propriety of women’s employment.66 In the same vein, Alford’s writings on the School emphasized the feminine and genteel nature of the RSAN’s mission and labour, and marginalized its commercial aspects so to further distance workers from the degrading associations of paid employment. Although Alford adopted this approach to make it easier for women to work at the school, downplaying the business side of the RSAN also undercut its claims of professionalizing embroidery, and complicated the perceived seriousness and expertise of its workers. With so few surviving records documenting the opinions and experiences of RSAN workers themselves however, it is difficult to generalize about employees’ relationships with the School and their attitudes towards its artistic, philanthropic, and commercial purposes. Certainly, not all the women who trained and worked at the RSAN sought to conceal their employment or expertise, particularly as their skills and the School’s institutional pedigree became increasingly in demand. Proficient and artistically minded embroidery workers were sought after by speciality and high-end retailers; Liberty and Co., for example, exclusively employed women trained at the RSAN to execute work for both their wholesale and retail market.67 The hiring standards Liberty implemented reflected a new respect for specialized qualifications and expertise in embroidery that elevated the professional status of needleworkers, separating their work from both the indignity of salaried labour and the inferior workmanship associated with amateur practice. The RSAN was widely regarded as the best source for these qualifications, and publicizing their credentials was recommended to women as the best means of finding work in the embroidery sector.68 The RSAN thus raised the status and market value of its workers by providing them with two pillars of nineteenth-century professionalism: educational bona fides and institutional membership. The fact that the founders of the Decorative Needlework Society had previously been involved in the management of the RSAN was commonly touted in press reports and advertisements for that group’s work as a sign of its seriousness and artistry.69 The Decorative Needlework Society and the Ladies’ Work Society70 were smaller operations than the Royal School of Art Needlework, though they shared or were inspired by its artistic and philanthropic aims and professional structure. Like the RSAN, the Decorative Needlework Society required members to undertake a course of instruction in art and antique embroidery before they were eligible for employment at the Society’s workrooms on London’s Baker Street. They created a market niche providing restoration for ornamental and antique embroidery in addition to fulfilling commissions and producing new designs, often inspired by medieval or Old Italian styles, and were consistently praised for technical excellence and elegant designs and repairs.71 The training and studio space the Society provided to workers along with the ‘high class’ commissions it took on served to identify the Society’s employees as professionals, who were dispensing a specialized and necessary service to the public, a point that the Queen noted in their review of the amateur and professional embroidery exhibits at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society’s exhibition of 1888: Going through the needlework exhibits in the ‘Arts and Crafts,’ however, one is immediately stuck with the amount of amateur, or at least untrained work to be found here […] Among the professional exhibitors the Decorative Needlework Society sent by far the largest group of embroideries.72 In this way, Heather Haskins suggests, embroidery workers’ route to becoming a professional was similar to that of fine artists, in that relevant organizational membership ‘conveyed professional status’ and delivered the occupational respect and prestige that term implied.73 The RSAN, the Decorative Needlework Society, and the Ladies’ Work Society were closely linked. Workers appear to have moved between the groups at different points in their careers, and the three societies were connected through royal patronage and occasionally exhibited collectively.74 The Ladies’ Work Society had the closest connection to the Royal Family; Queen Victoria’s most artistically minded daughter, Princess Louise, founded it in 1875 to provide remunerative employment to distressed gentlewomen through needlework. Like the RSAN and the Decorative Needlework Society, the Ladies’ Work Society operated both as a school, teaching and improving women’s embroidery skills, and as a commercial agency, connecting women with suitable patrons and projects and selling their wares through the Society’s own storefront on Sloane Street. It aimed to ennoble women’s lives through work and help them achieve independence, principles that were close to Princess Louise’s own heart: unable to pursue her own art professionally she devoted herself to improving ‘educational, artistic and economic opportunities for women’.75 In joining the society, she claimed, gentlewomen ‘bravely step out of their quiet corners in life and ask not for sympathy nor help but for work’.76 Princess Louise advised and supervised the Society’s operations personally, and exercised her own artistic abilities by creating designs for members to execute.77 She also encouraged other members of the royal household to support the group; the Society’s most high-profile commission was the coronation robes of Queen Alexandra and her ladies, which were designed by Princess Louise.78 The involvement of Princess Louise and her family in the running of the Ladies’ Work Society, and the emphasis it placed on the ‘gentle birth’ of employees, endowed the society with an aura of respectability, allowing members to engage in profit-driven work without fear of reproach. While the RSAN, the Decorative Needlework Society, and the Ladies’ Work Society were open about their commercial agendas and relied on their royal patrons, artistic credentials, and selective employment practices to vouch for the respectability of their activities, other embroidery societies were reluctant to publicize the mercantile aspects of their operations. The Leek Embroidery Society, founded by Elizabeth Wardle in 1879, was a popular source of ecclesiastical commissions amongst architects such as Edmund Street, G. G. Schott, and Norman Shaw (Figure 2). Wardle was the wife of a successful textile merchant, and was known for her ability to translate architects’ ideas and designs into embroidery and devise subtle, complex colour themes for frontal-pieces, pulpit cloths, vestments, and other church decorations.79 She also created ecclesiastical designs herself, and employed a team of between 10 and 20 female workers to execute commissioned works. As the Wardle method of needlework involved embroidering designs on top of printed textiles, a high degree of skill and workmanship was required and so Wardle also provided training in needlework through a school associated with the Society.80 Wardle maintained that her employees viewed the work as a philanthropic leisure activity, and claimed that the Society’s aim was to promote good, artistic design rather than to provide employment to women.81 However, many of the society’s members relied on the remuneration they received for commissioned works as their living wage. Upon visiting the Society’s training school, one journalist commented on the poor working conditions and wages endured by workers, who were paid threepence per hour: As the school is in a district where wages are low and living cheap, the employment is eagerly sought for by the girls who would otherwise, perhaps, go into the factories, but it seemed to me that an average of ten or twelve shillings a week was very poor pay for close sitting at the needle of eight hours per day. The time has not yet come, I am sorry to say, when all classes of women can command a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.82 Figure 2. Open in new tabDownload slide Panel embroidered by Frances Mary Templeton for the Leek Embroidery Society, c. 1892. This is a rare example of an embroidered piece that is attributable to an individual needleworker. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Figure 2. Open in new tabDownload slide Panel embroidered by Frances Mary Templeton for the Leek Embroidery Society, c. 1892. This is a rare example of an embroidered piece that is attributable to an individual needleworker. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Although Wardle couched the Society’s activities in philanthropic terms, she ran the Society as a commercial operation and expected professional standards from workers. According to Cluckie, employees’ wages were determined by the profits made by the sale of individual items, and so there was incentive to produce a high quantity of good quality wares.83 Employees of the Society such as Annie Redfern, Mary Ellen McDonaugh, and Molly Garside recorded their occupations as embroidery workers on the censuses of 1891 and 1901, indicating that they supported themselves through their work with the Society and regarded needlework as a profession. Wardle’s claim that the society operated on a purely philanthropic basis may have been motivated by a desire to minimize employment costs; by denying that members viewed their work as a remunerative profession Wardle would have been able to justify keeping wages low, while maintaining the image of the Society as one motivated by artistic ideals rather than commerce. Regardless of Wardle’s protestations, and the challenging work conditions members endured, the Society’s ecclesiastical commissions provided women with a valuable and necessary, if modest, source of income. IV. Conclusion The viability of female-run embroidery agencies was intertwined with the popularity and demand for artistic needlework that existed in the second half of the nineteenth century. While small-scale embroidery agencies and depots primarily sold modest, low-cost items to middle-class consumers, more ambitious and artistically minded embroidery societies like the RSAN and the Decorative Needlework Society relied on commissions from more rarefied clients, and produced wares that were out of reach of most buyers. These groups were key to professionalizing the art of embroidery by re-framing the traditionally domestic pursuit as a viable artistic occupation and opening up commercial opportunities for practitioners. However, the work of embroidery agencies, and the philanthropic, Arts and Crafts ideals they embodied, were increasingly seen as out of step with the modern needs and desires of consumers as the design world itself became more professionalized in the first decades of the twentieth century. As the disconnect between Arts and Crafts practices and the mechanized modes necessary to mass produce goods was recognized by design practitioners and reformers, an increased focus was placed on bridging the gap between manufacturing, industry, and design. The founding of the Design and Industries Association (DIA), one of the two societies that sought to further professionalize the design industry in the interwar period, was a move towards restructuring the design sector organizationally to achieve that goal.84 In light of the DIA’s promise to accept ‘the machine in its proper place’, the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts expressed doubt at the continuing viability of philanthropic design societies that used traditional needle arts and embroidery to find work for women. Referring to the efforts of the Home Arts and Industries Association in particular, an organization that typified the cultural philanthropy that also motivated embroidery agencies, it noted: We have to bear in mind that such materials are, in the twentieth century and in this country rather in the nature of luxuries. At the moment people are willing in the interests of a cause to buy them, but it seems doubtful whether […] this state of mind can go on indefinitely.85 In the face of new organizations focused on efficiency and modernity, the Journal questioned the relevance of women’s work societies that espoused the ennobling properties of art, and which focused on reviving traditional designs and techniques. Although demand for well-qualified embroidery teachers was on the rise in the early years of the twentieth century, as the art form gradually established its place in the curriculums of schools and art colleges, demand for handcrafted, artistic embroidery declined as competition from cheaper and more accessible sources increased. The relationship between embroidery agencies and professionalism was complicated. For many artistically minded women seeking remunerative employment, these societies constituted the most socially appropriate and discreet form of artistic work, and provided an important conduit to consumers and art commerce. The agencies helped professionalize and commercialize embroidery, establishing a place for the art form within the nexus of retail outlets, exhibition societies, and patrons that characterized the professional design world. However, the societies’ philanthropic motives and operating principles complicated workers’ relationships with professionalism. A patronizing, often class-based, undercurrent is perceptible in the operation of embroidery societies, which undercut the professionalism and competitiveness of workers. In responding to claims that RSAN products were overpriced, Marion Alford commented: It must be remembered that the enterprise is not merely commercial. It is also avowedly, if not primarily, one of social beneficence. The prices are, in fact, carefully fixed on the lowest scale which experience shows to be compatible with the maintenance of the institution.86 By admitting that the RSAN relied on the ‘sympathy’ of the buying public to pay a premium for its products, Alford implies that even well-trained, professional women artists needed special charitable assistance to be competitive and survive in the art marketplace.87 The remuneration women received at all the agencies discussed here was low – often below a living wage – and the policies of anonymity and discretion in place at many agencies made attribution of individual artistic work almost impossible, factors that further complicated workers’ claims to the status of professional artist. Nevertheless, the specialized, modest nature of these societies, and their discreet overtures towards art capitalism, were also what made it possible for female members to become professional art workers according to that term’s most basic definition: they supported themselves monetarily through artistic work. Most significantly, embroidery agencies gave women with little or no connections to the art world, and who had traditionally been viewed as amateurs because of both their class and their gender, access to the segments of the art-buying public that were relevant to them. They provided women with the technical training and support they needed to reshape skills born in the domestic sphere for professional purposes. Membership of these societies marked out a woman as a legitimate art practitioner, and separated her from the associations of ‘fancy sale’ amateurism that continued to hinder the progression of embroidery as an art form. At a time when the design and art establishments were dominated by male influence and authority, embroidery agencies benefited and supported women’s artistic professionalism in tangible and practical ways, enabling more women than ever before to make a living through the needle arts. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). 1. " ‘First Trade Union of Women Workers’, New York Times, 19 December 1909, p. 16. 2. " Morris’ ‘interest in suffrage is linked with the guild workers in the Arts and Crafts’. ‘Seeks Art, but Sees Smoke’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 29 October 1909, p.3. 3. " Letter to John Quinn, 6 December 1910. On Poetry, Painting, and Politics: The Letters of May Morris and John Quinn, ed. by Janis Londraville (London: Associated University Presses, 1997), p. 69. 4. " See, for example: Jonathan Woodham, Twentieth Century Design (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 165–69; Jill Seddon, ‘Mentioned, but Denied Significance: Women Designers and the “Professionalisation” of Design in Britain’, Gender and History, 12.2 (2000), 246–48; Grace Lees-Maffei, ‘Professionalisation as a Focus in Interior Design History’, Journal of Design History, 21.1 (2008), 1–11. 5. " Women’s involvement in design and their perceived value and role within these fields was intertwined with popular conceptions of professionalism. Like drawing, the decorative arts were considered to be suitable leisure activities for middle- and upper-class women throughout the nineteenth century, and the advent of the Home Arts movement and the popular craft revival of the interwar period strengthened the association between the applied arts and (female) amateurism. For the craft revival of the 1920s see Fiona Hackney, ‘“Use Your Hands for Happiness”: Home Craft and Make-Do-and-Mend in British Women’s Magazines in the 1920s and 1930s’, Journal of Design History, 19.1 (2006), 23–28; Pat Kirkham, ‘Women and the Interwar Handicrafts Revival’, in A View from the Interior: Women and Design, ed. by Judy Attfield and Pat Kirkham (London: The Women’s Press, 1989), pp. 174–83. 6. " Samuel Haber quoted in Lees-Maffei, ‘Professionalisation as a Focus in Interior Design History’, p. 9. 7. " Not all professional societies with philanthropic interests were treated with suspicion. The Royal Literary Fund, for example, provided financial assistance to writers in need and was regarded as a legitimate, if flawed, institution. It was the value judgements attached to women needleworkers’ art, and the association between women and trivial, un-artistic wares sold at charity sales that informed attitudes towards embroidery societies. See Solveig Robinson, The Book in Society: An Introduction to Print Culture (London: Broadview Press, 2014), p. 156. 8. " See Margali Larson, The Rise of the Professions: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). Paula Gillett expands on how traditional criteria of professionalism translated into the art industries in Worlds of Art: Painters in Victorian Society (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990). 9. " James L. Caw, ‘The Art Works of Mrs. Traquair’, Art Journal, May 1900, p. 148. 10. " Elizabeth Ellis, ‘The Romance of Embroidery’, English Illustrated Magazine, 51, 1907, p. 69. 11. " Jennifer Ruth, Novel Professions: Interested Disinterest and the Making of the Professional in the Victorian Novel (Columbus: Ohio State University, 2006), p. 22. 12. " The move away from anonymity towards individualism was a common trend within the wider history of nineteenth-century professionalization. Anonymous publications were common in magazines throughout the early and mid-nineteenth century, for example. As the publishing and newspaper industries became more commercialized, and the profession of writing more reputable, publishers began to embrace the value of individual authorship. Journalists were increasingly expected to be experts in their field, and to publically defend their opinions. As was the case in art, this increased focus on individual writers was a sign of the growing respectability of journalism and the status attached to its practice. See Laurel Brake, Subjugated Knowledges: Journalism, Gender and Literature in the Nineteenth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1994). 13. " Kristina Huneault, ‘Professionalism as Critical Concept and Historical Process for Women and Art in Canada’, in Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada, 1850–1970, ed. by Janice Anderson and Kristina Huneault (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2012), p. 8. 14. " Rosemary O’Day, ‘Women and Art’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 71.2 (2008), 325. 15. " Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century: Artistry and Industry, ed. by Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi and Patricia Zakreski (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013). 16. " Annmarie Adams and Peta Tancred, Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 122. 17. " Wendy Parkins, Jane Morris: The Burden of History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), p. 163. 18. " Kathryn Ledbetter and Renn Edward Wortley, ‘The “Ungallant Silence of the Historian”: Elizabeth Sone, Esther Owen and the Art of Needlework’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 19.3 (2014), 261–77. 19. " E. M. Barry, ‘Ecclesiastical Embroidery’, British Architect, 2.27 (1874), 316–17. 20. " Quoted in Barbara Morris, Victorian Embroidery (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1962), p. 85. 21. " Reverend Edward L. Cutts, ‘Ecclesiastical Art Manufacture’, Art Journal, (December 1865), 357. 22. " It is worth noting that architects like Pugin also blamed women for the poor state of English ecclesiastical embroidery. Rozsika Parker notes that advocates of neo-gothic and medieval styles ‘blamed what they considered the decadence of contemporary church needlework on " “the ladies” and aimed as much at reforming the ladies as their work’. Although women were relied upon to produce the new designs that emerged from the ecclesiastical embroidery revival, men directed the movement and style within which they were working. Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: I. B. Tauris and Co., 2010), p. 34. 23. " Barry, ‘Ecclesiastical Embroidery’, p. 316. 24. " Parker, The Subversive Stitch, pp. 34–35. 25. " Linda Cluckie, The Rise and Fall of Art Needlework (Bury St. Edmunds: Arena Books, 2008), p. 13, p. 40. The number of companies devoted to ecclesiastical furnishings increased significantly from the 1860s to the 1890s. James Bettley has found that ‘from the nine firms listed in 1865, there was a rise to 26 in 1875, 34 in 1885 and 42 in 1895. Among those firms listed only as “church furnishers” there is a similar increase, from seven in 1865 to 14 in 1875’. Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 3. 26. " See Ayla Lepine, ‘On the Founding of Watts & Co., 1874’, Branch: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth Century History, <http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=ayla-lepine-on-the-founding-of-watts-co-1874#_ftn9.end> [accessed 10 October 2014]. Although they were paid for their work, the motives were not commercial or professional in nature and so their activities are not a focus here. 27. " J. N. P., ‘Employments for Women: Women as Art Needleworkers’, Myra’s Journal, 1 August 1889, p. 429. 28. " Dorinda, Needlework for Ladies for Pleasure and Profit (London: Swan, Sonneschein Lowrey and Co., 1886), p. 168. 29. " Dorinda, Needlework for Ladies for Pleasure and Profit, pp. 13–14. 30. " Annette Shiell, Fundraising, Flirtation and Fancy Work: Charity Bazaars in Nineteenth Century Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2012); F. K. Prochaska, ‘Charity Bazaars in Nineteenth- Century England’, Journal of British Studies, 16.2 (1977), 63–64. See also Gary Dyer, ‘The Vanity Fair of Nineteenth-Century England: Commerce, Women, and the East in the Ladies’ Bazaar’, Nineteenth-Century Literature, 46.2 (1991), 196–222. 31. " Prochaska, ‘Charity Bazaars in Nineteenth Century England’, pp. 67–71; Cluckie, The Rise of Fall of Art Needlework, p. 13. 32. " Charlotte Yonge, Womankind (London: Mozley and Smith, 1877), pp. 222–23. 33. " ‘Handicraft: An Exhibition in Manchester’, Manchester Guardian, 13 October 1921, p. 10. 34. " See, for example, ‘The Royal Academy’, Saturday Review, 13 May 1876, p. 608; ‘The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1903’, Art Journal, June 1903, p. 162. 35. " ‘Employments for Ladies: A Word of Warning’, Myra’s Journal, 1 December 1900, p. 16. 36. " Dorinda, Needlework for Ladies for Pleasure and Profit, p. 14. 37. " Dorinda, Needlework for Ladies for Pleasure and Profit, pp. 167, 169. 38. " The ACES can be seen as both modelling itself on, and offering an alternative to, the Royal Academy (RA). In the scale and catholicity of the ACES’s exhibitions at the New Gallery, its detailed and researched catalogues, and its aversion to overt commercialism, the Society was clearly positioning itself as the applied arts equivalent of the RA, an institution which would bestow on its exhibitors and members the same exposure, prestige, and opportunities as the Academy. But the ACES’s championing of the value of the applied arts challenged the RA’s long entrenched focus on the fine arts. In the preface to the first exhibition’s catalogue, ACES president Walter Crane claimed that the society would provide decorative artists the opportunity to appeal ‘to the public eye […] upon strictly artistic grounds in the same sense as the pictorial artist’. Imogen Hart, ‘On the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society’, Branch: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History <http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=imogen-hart-on-the-first-arts-and-crafts-exhibition> [accessed 1 October 2014]; Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society Catalogue of the First Exhibition (London: Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 1888), p. 5. 39. " In the inaugural exhibition of 1888, 51 women were listed in the catalogue, making up nearly 20% of the total number of exhibitors. However, despite the Society’s emphasis on the importance of each exhibitor’s ‘author’ name, it is likely that this number does not accurately represent women’s contribution to the show. Small design guilds and organizations, including needlework societies, submitted work under a collective name, ignoring the request of the Society to credit individual workers. Press reviewers also struggled with the ACES’s naming policy, frequently reporting the name of the designer in isolation and misattributing works, often to the detriment of women designers who were incorrectly labelled as executants. Hart, ‘On the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society’; Heather Victoria Haskins, ‘Now You See Them, Now You Don’t: The Critical Reception of Women’s Work at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 1888–1916’ (PhD diss., Concordia University, 2005), pp. 131, 155. 40. " Hilary Underwood, ‘Mary Watts, the Home Arts and Industries Association and Compton’, in An Artist’s Village: G. F. and Mary Watts in Compton, ed. by Mark Bills (London: Phillip Wilson Publishers, 2011), p. 57. 41. " The prefix ‘royal’ was added to the name of the School in 1875 when Queen Victoria offered her patronage. HRH The Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, ‘The Royal School of Art Needlework’, in Women’s Mission: A Series of Congress Papers on the Philanthropic Work of Women, ed. by Baroness Burdett-Coutts (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1893), p. 224. 42. " Art Embroidery or Needlework was defined in the Dictionary of Needlework in 1882 as: ‘A name recently introduced as a general term for all descriptions of needlework that spring from the application of knowledge of design and colouring, with skill in fitting and executing. It is either executed by the worker from his or her own design or the patterns are drawn by a skilled artist, and much individual scope in execution and colouring is required from the embroiderer. The term is chiefly used to denote inlaid and on laid appliqué, embroidery in silk and crewels for ordinary domestic purposes, and embroidery with gold, silver and silk for church work; but there is no limit to its application.’ Sarah F. Caulfeild and Blanche C. Saward, Dictionary of Needlework (London: L. Upcott Gill: 1882), pp. 15–16. 43. " Brochure for the School of Art Needlework, 1873. Royal School of Needlework Archive; Marion Alford, ‘Art Needlework’, Nineteenth Century, March 1881, p. 441. 44. " Lynn Hulse, ‘Introduction’, in Royal School of Needlework Handbook of Embroidery (1880) by Letitia Higgin (Surrey: Royal School of Needlework, 2010), p. 1. 45. " Talia Schaffer, Novel Craft: Victorian Domestic Handicraft and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 54. 46. " Cluckie, The Rise and Fall of Art Needlework, p. 15. 47. " Admission Book, RSN Box 11, RSN Archive. 48. " My thanks to Dr Susan Kay-Williams of the Royal School of Needlework for this information. 49. " Admission Book, RSN Box 11, RSN Archive. 50. " HRH The Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, ‘The Royal School of Art Needlework’, p. 226. 51. " J. N. P., ‘Employments for Women’, p. 429; Alford, ‘Art Needlework’, p. 441. 52. " A Mrs Carmichael, for example, who worked in the drawing department was ‘dissatisfied with her remuneration’ and ‘withdrew having half her [training] fee returned to her’. Admission Book, RSN Box 11, RSN Archive. 53. " By 1894 Lily’s earnings had increased to 30 shillings per week. William Michael Murphy, Family Secrets: William Butler Yeats and His Relatives (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), p. 70. 54. " Hulse, ‘Introduction’, pp. 40, 67. 55. " Anthea Callen, ‘Sexual Division of Labour in the Arts and Crafts Movement’, in A View from the Interior: Women and Design, ed. by Judy Attfield and Pat Kirkham (London: The Women’s Press, 1995), p. 152. 56. " Callen, ‘Sexual Division of Labour in the Arts and Crafts Movement’, p. 152. I am referring here to outworkers of arts and crafts inspired design and textile firms. The working conditions of outworkers employed for commercial textile manufacturers and as dressmakers are outside the scope of this study. 57. " London of Today: An Illustrated Handbook for the Season, 1890, ed. by Charles Pascoe (London: Simpson, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1890). Alford, ‘Art Needlework’, p. 441. 58. " HRH The Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, ‘The Royal School of Art Needlework’, p. 225. 59. " Quoted in Hulse, ‘Introduction’, p. 20. 60. " HRH The Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, ‘The Royal School of Art Needlework’, p. 220. 61. " Graphic, 17 April 1880. 62. " Queen, 59, 1875, pp. 209–17. 63. " Both of these women continued to work as designers throughout their lifetimes. Cresswell attended the National Art Training School and later worked as an interior decorator. Phillips helped found the Decorative Needlework Society and worked in the Aldam Heaton and Co. showroom. Hulse, ‘Introduction’, p. 62, n. 148 and n. 149. 64. " ‘ Lady Marian Alford, Vice-President’s Report to HRH The President and the Council of the Royal School of Art Needlework for 1875 (London: James Colmer, at the Ladies’ Printing Press, 1876), p. 6. 65. " Kara Jane Olsen, ‘Through the Looking Glass: Engagements with History and Decorative Arts in Britain, 1870–1910’ (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2002), p. 119. 66. " Olsen, ‘Through the Looking Glass’, p. 120. 67. " J. N. P., ‘Employments for Women’, p. 429. 68. " Myra’s Journal advised that the best way to find work as an embroidery worker was to gain proper training at the RSAN, the most well-known and respected art needlework institution. Its secretary claimed to ‘never hear […] of any thoroughly competent person remaining long out of employment’. M. W. J., ‘Employments for Gentlewomen: Art Needlework and Embroidery’, p. 12. 69. " The Decorative Needlework Society was founded in 1878 by two women who had held ‘leading positions’ at the RSAN. Mary Schoeser, The Watts Book of Embroidery: English Church Embroidery 1833–1953 (London: Watts and Co., 1998), p. 141; ‘Exhibition of Fans’, Morning Post, 4 July 1878, p. 6. 70. " Not to be confused with the Ladies’ Work Society (founded in 1876) that was affiliated with the Society for Promoting Female Welfare. 71. " York Herald, 12 October 1887, p. 5; Dorinda, Needlework for Ladies for Pleasure and Profit, p. 167; L. H., ‘Decorative Needlework in London’, Art Amateur, 20.2 (1889), 44; ‘The Decorative Needlework Society’, The Times, 5 December 1911, p. 17. Among the best-known works restored by the Society were the fifteenth century Hardwick tapestries, owned by the Duke of Devonshire, described by the New York Times as ‘one of the most remarkable pieces of work ever accomplished in the way of restoration of antiquities’. ‘One of the Famous Hardwick Tapestries’, 15 May 1910, p. 4. 72. " ‘Embroidery at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition’, Queen 84, 1888, p. 697; ‘Advertisement: Art Needlework’, British Architect, 27 August 1880, p. 9. 73. " Haskins, ‘Now You See Them, Now You Don’t’, p. 130. 74. " A joint collection of art needlework from the three societies was held in Birmingham for example. Birmingham Daily Post, 14 February 1882. The degree to which these three organizations were officially connected remains unclear. The Magazine of Art noted that the RSAN’s president had offered patronage to the Decorative Needlework Society, and ‘in that sense the society may be regarded as linked to the parent school at South Kensington’. ‘Art Needlework – II’, Magazine of Art, January 1880, p. 182. However, it also noted that the societies were administered separately and connected only by the ‘common cause which all the art needlework schools have’. ‘Art Needlework – III’, Magazine of Art, January 1880, p. 391. 75. " L. S., ‘Ladies’ Work Society’, Manchester Guardian, 2 March 1883, p. 7; Robert M. Stamp, Royal Rebels: Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne (Toronto: Dundum Press, 1988), p. 101. 76. " L. S., ‘Ladies’ Work Society’, p. 7. 77. " ‘Chit Chat’, John Bull, 6 November 1875, p. 772; Baroness Burdett-Coutts, ‘Notes on the Philanthropic Work of Women’, in Women’s Mission: A Series of Congress Papers on the Philanthropic Work of Women, ed. by Baroness Burdett-Coutts (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1893), p. 397. 78. " Henry W. Lucy, ‘Life in London and Thereabout’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 July 1902, p. 5. 79. " Brenda King and Kathryn Walton, ‘The Extraordinary Leek Embroidery Society: Textiles, People and Places’, Textile Exhibition, Nicholson Museum and Art Gallery, 2013; ‘National Silk Textile Exhibition’, The Times, 8 May 1894, p. 3. 80. " Walter Shaw Sparrow, ‘The Leek School of Embroidery and its Work’, Magazine of Art, January 1902, pp. 552–53. 81. " ‘Our Ladies’ Column’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 13 October 1883, p.2. 82. " ‘Our Ladies’ Column’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 23 June 1883, p.2. Wardle founded the Leek School of Art Embroidery in 1880 or 1881, and it was closely associated with the Society. 83. " Cluckie, The Rise and Fall of Art Needlework, p. 101. 84. " Seddon, ‘Mentioned, but Denied Significance’, pp. 431–35. 85. " ‘Arts and Crafts’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 65 (1916), 732. 86. " ‘The Royal School of Art Needlework’, Magazine of Art, January 1882, p. 221. 87. " Anthea Callen, Angel in the Studio: Women in the Arts and Crafts Movement (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), p. 102. © 2016 Leeds Trinity University
TI - Stitching Professionalism: Female-Run Embroidery Agencies and the Provision of Artistic Work for Women, 1870–1900
JF - Journal of Victorian Culture
DO - 10.1080/13555502.2015.1132754
DA - 2016-06-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/stitching-professionalism-female-run-embroidery-agencies-and-the-GPt6QKoy0B
SP - 184
VL - 21
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
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