The Royal School of Needlework and Pasold Research Fund invite papers for the Royal School of Needlework’s first conference on historical needlework, ‘Stitched Together: Needlework Making and Research’.

21 -22 August 2025

Royal School of Needlework, Hampton Court Palace

Keynote speakers: Dr Lynn Hulse, Raisa Kabir, Rose Sinclair MBE, Hannah Sutherland ACR

This conference will imagine needlework in its broadest sense, classified as all art and craft involving a needle, hook, or shuttle. This includes embroidery, plain sewing, lace making, knitting, crocheting, and weaving.

Needlework is universal, made around the world in countless ways for nearly all of human history. Through needles, hooks, and shuttles, we see economic, social, political, religious, and cultural changes. Needlework demonstrates who had access to what materials, how designs and stitches travelled the world via the Silk Road and across oceans, how the rise and fall of empires affected design and resources, how technology influenced changing aesthetics and craft practices, and how people have spent their time in business and leisure.

Though needlework has long been the subject of academic, socioeconomic, and object centric study, there have been very few opportunities for those who create needlework and those who research needlework to collaborate and learn from one another. It is the hope that this conference will bridge the gap between visual and historiographical analysis and knowledge of the historical, socioeconomic, and literary contexts of needlework with embodied knowledge of materials, techniques, and artistic choices.

This conference is a meeting place for anyone working on topics related to historical embroidery to present their work and research. This includes work happening in academia, museums and heritage institutions, art studios, classrooms, and independent research environments. We encourage proposals from established and emerging scholars, makers, curators, conservators, and anyone whose work is relevant to discussions about historical needlework in any capacity.

We invite proposals for 15-minute presentations. These can take any format, such as academic papers, conversations between makers and researchers, or demonstrations. We are especially interested in presentations that explore the potential of collaboration between those who use historical needlework in different ways.

 Topics may include but are not limited to:

• New discoveries in the field of historical needlework
• The relationship between making and research
• Conservation of historical needlework
• Curating historical needlework
• Marginalised needleworkers (race, gender, class, region, technique)
• Historic needlework networks, especially global ones
• Studying historical needlework through making
• Potential for collaboration between various stakeholders in the world of historical Embroidery

Proposal deadline: Monday, 14 April 2025

Please send a paper title, abstract (maximum 250 words), and bio (maximum 50 words) to [email protected]. Decisions will be made by mid-May.