Kate Pankhurst and Kathryn Sanders are our Future Tutor Graduates of 2021 who, over the last three years, have learnt to teach the art of hand embroidery to the next generation. This month, we meet Kate who shares her RSN journey with us.
“I first learned of the RSN in 2016 as a Historic Royal Palaces volunteer specialising in packaging historic objects, I was ‘lent out’ by my Kensington Palace team leader to work with some Grinling Gibbons pieces at Hampton Court. While on duty there, a leaflet about hand embroidery classes caught my eye.
I’d had a long career in graphic design, working for magazines including The Radio Times, Empire and the Times supplement, which I’d stepped away from to help my partner launch the first CrossFit gym outside the USA. Once all the logos, T-shirts and apps had been designed, my creative itch still needed scratching! With more time on my hands, this was when I became a volunteer with Historic Royal Palaces, which in turn led me to the RSN.
My only previous stitch experience had been Cross Stitch kits, so I had no idea of the depth, breadth and variety of embroidery styles. I jumped straight into the deep end of the RSN Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery course, and started swimming! It was a good decision as my Blackwork piece ‘80 Kilos‘ was shortlisted for the Sew & So Needlecrafter of the Year 2018, and all four Certificate pieces won me the Wendy Hogg Prize for Mounting 2019.
I was accepted on the Future Tutors Programme in 2018. Embroidery had stitched up my heart, and I felt so strongly that I had been led to take this path to which nothing else compared. I wanted a new direction that was truly challenging, authentic, creative and full of integrity. I instinctively knew the RSN would deliver!
And so, the stitchathon began! Stratford in East London to Hampton Court is a four-hour round trip train journey, which I took three days per week for tuition, with the other four days to complete the homework. In the early weeks, it was possible to have a day off – ah, I remember those – vaguely! The intensity increased with each additional module, until it became normal to be stitching for 60 hours or more a week. My partner took over all the shopping and cooking!
Choosing a favourite technique isn’t easy. Some I embraced and loved easily, like Silk Shading. Marg Dier is a wonderful and patient Tutor and, under her tuition, I’ve produced three successful pieces: Parrot Tulip, Villanelle and Batman the Robin. Other techniques really baffled me to begin with, and took me a lot of effort and practice to become fluent. In the end, they have become techniques I adore, and I’m very pleased with my Ada Lovelace Stumpwork piece and my Speke Hall Creative Box. My most heartfelt work is the Blackwork portrait of my father, Ted, in his WW2 RAF uniform. It is stitched using brown threads to reflect the sepia photograph source material.
The pandemic in March 2020 saw us all dispatched to our homes, but RSN tuition continued online. To be honest, embroidery is the perfect activity for Lockdown! But in those first frightening weeks as we watched the news, I wondered how this momentous time would be memorialised, as our forebears created monuments for WW1. My conclusion was, we would most vividly recall the work of the NHS; but also the scientists who guided our every move, while battling to find a vaccine. My Fine Whitework piece ‘Epidemi-Angel‘ is my tribute to them, and a memorial to the Covid 19 pandemic. The work was completed on the day Oxford/AstraZeneca announced their vaccine’s 70-90% efficacy. The Museum of London has expressed interest in considering it as part of their permanent collection.
Just as I returned onsite at the beginning of third year, I was delighted to hear that I was to be supported as a QEST Scholar which made for a great start to my final year of the Future Tutors Programme! QEST, or the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, is a charity dedicated to ‘supporting excellence in British craftmaship’. My third year has been spent mostly in the RSN Embroidery Studio learning professional techniques of conservation, restoration and creating new commissioned pieces. I learned Whitework repairs, and cleaned and mounted several heirloom samplers but then the second major lockdown sent us all home again – we were however able to complete our ecclesiastic vestments and banner making via Zoom!
On our return in March, I was privileged to be part of the team cleaning and repairing the St Alban’s Cathedral shrine cover. Shortly afterwards, I spent six weeks as part of the team embroidering the new shrine cover for St Amphibalus in the same cathedral. Although smaller, the piece is intricately stitched on silk fabric using Appliqué and Goldwork techniques. It was during this time that I saw for myself one of the RSN’s mottos at work: ‘Never a seat shall go cold’. When one embroiderer got up for a break, someone else sat down and continued the work. I will never forget the honour of working on this project, especially as it will occupy a public, sacred space far into the future.
As the course draws to an end, I am working on my final projects and thinking of the future. I have already run a couple of workshops both online and in person, and hope to increase the frequency in future. I’m bursting with ideas for kits and classes inspired by the previous three years, and look forward to some special projects for the RSN’s 150th Anniversary.
It has been a privilege to learn so much from the foremost embroidery school in the world. I look forward to teaching, making and running a successful enterprise of my own. When the new V&A site opens in Stratford in the next few years, I will be first in the queue to offer my services.”
More about the RSN Future Tutors Programme
