Sharing Favourite Embroideries
5th April, 2022
What’s your favourite embroidery?
To celebrate our anniversary and the opening of ‘150 Years of the Royal School of Needlework: Crown to Catwalk’ exhibition, we want to share everyone’s love of embroidery with the world! To do this, simply highlight your favourite piece of hand embroidery on social media, using ‘#RSN150’ and @royalneedlework, and we will share across the RSN’s international community.
No matter how near or far you are from us, we would love you to follow our new initiative and share the beauty of hand embroidery during our special 150th anniversary year. This might be a piece which you’ve seen in a museum at home or abroad, which your friend or grandmother created or a piece which you embroidered yourself!
Dr Susan Kay-Williams is the first to share her favourite embroidery:
“I have chosen this embroidery because I was finally able to see it ‘in the flesh’ quite recently. The piece is huge, 19ft by 8ft, and looks fantastic considering it is 114 years old! It was made by the RSN in 1908 for the Franco-British Exhibition, which took place at Shepherds Bush and White City in London celebrating the Entente Cordiale signed in 1904 by the UK and France.
Having seen it up close, it is magnificently worked in two strands of fine crewel wool to enhance the shading, which gives it a very three-dimensional look. While I was looking at it, I was bemoaning the fact that, alas, I do not have a large enough wall to put it on!
It can be seen at Wightwick Manor near Wolverhampton to which it was given by the Principal of the Royal School of Needlework, Mrs Hamilton King in 1958 when we no longer had a spare 19ft wall.”
Let’s spread the beauty of hand embroidery with all communities across the world and share the wonder of this stunning art form, where there is no language barrier.
Share your favourite piece on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, with hashtag #RSN150 and @royalneedlework. We will then share them for everyone to admire, introducing us all to artists or museum pieces that we didn’t know before!
