The RSN has always entertained visitors and some of them have come on informal visits, such was the visit of the Duchess of Cambridge in 2012 but this is not a new phenomenon. Queen Victoria did it too. The Kilburn Times of 24 September 1880 records:

‘Some time ago the Queen paid an informal visit to the {Royal School of Art Needlework] early one morning, before the fashionable world expected to meet so august a personage looking over a school of embroidery.’  It goes on to say that she looked into the work rooms, and even in to the workboxes of the stitchers and the cupboards where the bolts of cloth were kept.

The writer of the Ladies Column then goes on ‘But most of all the Royal eyes were charmed with the rows of drawers full of skeins of delicate silks and crewels, specially dyed for the use of the school.’

The writer concludes with an interesting musical analogy. ‘Tones of each colour no longer satisfy critical taste: semi-tones and demi-tones are essential. The tuning fork has not more vibrations to produce a single keynote than has every colour its degrees of depth and richness.’

So we think Queen Victoria would have liked the Wall of Wool in our Embroidery Studio (photo featured).  Although the thing most amusing, was that in a subsequent newspaper column from 1882, possibly the same writer comments on the fact that when Queen Victoria arrived, the workers had hurriedly shoved all detritus into workbaskets and cupboards so they could appear clean and tidy.  When Her Majesty subsequently asked to look inside, said workbaskets and cupboards, the writer considered The Queen got more than she bargained for!