Discover more about the RSN and find out why we’ve been the international centre of excellence for the Art of Hand Embroidery for more than 150 years. We’ll also introduce you to key guest speakers in our engaging live talks.
Easily accessed via Zoom, all of our talks are embellished by captivating images and are followed by live Q&A sessions.
| Please read the important information at the end of this page before booking a Talk. Thank you. |
The Unknown American Heiress, Alberta Sturges, 9th Countess of Sandwich
Viscountess Hinchingbrooke Julie Montagu, Wednesday 29 January 2025. 7pm UK
Join broadcaster Julie Montagu (American Viscountess), as she investigates the life of Alberta Sturges, 9th Countess of Sandwich. In the gilded corridors of early 20th-century high society, Julie introduces us to Alberta as she stands at a crossroads between societal expectations and personal enlightenment.
Born into an era marked by the transatlantic marriages of American heiresses, Alberta faces pressures to conform. Yet, her personal journey is one of profound introspection and spiritual discovery, influenced by her deep engagement with the teachings of Swami Vivekananda.
Alberta’s story is a compelling exploration of identity, duty, and the pursuit of a life led not by societal norms, but by the quest for personal truth and spiritual integrity.
25 Years of Stitching with RSN Tutor, Helen McCook
RSN Tutor Helen McCook, Wednesday 12 February 2025. 7pm UK
2025 marks a quarter of a century since Helen McCook arrived at the RSN to begin her apprenticeship as a complete non stitcher. Helen says that discovering the RSN was a little like falling down the rabbit hole into wonderland, in this case, a stitchy wonderland!
Since graduating Helen has pursued many and varied avenues within the textile industry, including working for one of the ‘big three’ international auction houses and running embroidery studios while continuously working for RSN as both a tutor, assessor and professional studio embroiderer. She has lead a varied and exciting life as a freelance artist, embroiderer and tutor.
Expect lots of anecdotes, photographs and stories from Helen’s adventures as one of the UK’s best loved stitchers!
Stitching Friends: Quaker Schoolgirl Embroidery in Seventeenth-Century London
RSN Curator Dr Isabella Rosner, Wednesday 26 February 2025. 7pm UK
Join Isabella as she explores the samplers, workboxes, and embroidered accessories of early modern Quaker girls educated in and around the City of London. Surviving examples are surprisingly decorative, contrasting with the plainness that was a tenet central to the Society of Friends from its founding in the 1650s. This talk uses objects across a variety of collections to survey possible reasons for this intriguing aesthetic contradiction.
Dr Isabella Rosner recently received her PhD from King’s College London, where she studied Quaker women’s needlework, waxwork, and shellwork in seventeenth and eighteenth-century London and Philadelphia. Isabella was named a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2023.
Exploring 17th Century objects as Makers and Researchers
RSN Curator Dr Isabella Rosner and RSN Studio embroiderer Marg Dier, Wednesday 12 March 2025. 7pm UK
The seventeenth century was a golden age in the history of English embroidery, a period when girls at school, women in the home, and professional embroiderers in workshops were using lustrous silk and metal threads, seed pearls, coral, and beads to adorn everything from samplers to mirror frames.
In this talk, RSN Curator Isabella Rosner and RSN Studio embroiderer, Tutor, and Fellow Marg Dier focus on seventeenth-century English items in the RSN Collection, discussing how they would approach each object as a researcher, a stitcher and conservator. The pair will be in conversation, discussing a stumpwork casket panel, a glittering floral composition, and a variety of other early modern objects.
May Morris, Arts & Crafts Designer-maker
Needlework Historian, Dr Lynn Hulse, Wednesday 26 March. 7pm UK
A pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement, May Morris (1862-1938) was a leading exponent of decorative needlework or ‘art embroidery’, the champions of which sought to overturn the Victorian obsession with Berlin work, a form of shading in cross or tent stitch that lacked manual dexterity and aesthetic subtlety, and elevate needlework from a domestic craft to a serious art form.
Join Dr Lynn Hulse as she explores Morris’s significant contribution to the development of decorative needlework for the domestic interior in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Morris’s output is testament to her creative skills both as a designer and maker. Invention, she argued lay not only in technical stitch but in the selection and arrangement of colours, the choice of suitable materials and above all, good design based on an appreciation of the intellectual quality of medieval ornament. Together, these four elements ensured that a piece of embroidery ‘shall not be meaningless,’ wrote Morris, ‘but rather a thing of use and individual interest.’
Lynn is a Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Royal Historical Society, and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Broderers. She is also co-founder of Ornamental Embroidery, which specialises in the teaching and designing of historic needlework.
Important Booking Information
Please note that these Talks are live online events and are not available to watch immediately afterwards. If you cannot watch the live event — or if you want to watch again in the future — we usually re-release popular talks at a later date On Demand. Please note that there is a separate fee for Talks on Demand.
Bookings for live RSN Online Talks close at 3pm on the day of the event and are NON-REFUNDABLE. After booking, you will receive your unique Zoom invite by email 24-48 hours before each event (3 hours if booked on the day). The invite should arrive ‘from’ [email protected] – we strongly recommend that you add this address to your ‘Safe Senders’ list to ensure safe receipt.
If you do not receive your invite by the above deadline please first check your ‘junk/spam’ mail folder to ensure it hasn’t been routed there by mistake. If you still do not have the invite, please email [email protected] no later than one hour before the event is due to start. Please include your order reference number.
Each place booking and subsequent Zoom link is unique to ONE customer and ONE device only. If you wish to book multiple places on behalf of additional attendees please provide the name AND email address of any additional attendees in the ‘Additional information’ section of your order at checkout.
All RSN Live Online Talks are scheduled and advertised in UK local time (GMT or BST depending on the time of year). If you are outside of the UK please check your local time, particularly if your location changes to/from Daylight Savings Time on a different schedule to the UK during March/April or October/November. To check and convert times please visit TimeAndDate.com.
All RSN webinars include live Closed Captioning (subtitles). These can be disabled if not required.
If you require additional assistance, please refer to our FAQ page. Thank you.
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