Following the closure of the Training School a number of City livery companies, including the Worshipful Company of Broderers and the Worshipful Company of Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers, worked with the RSN to establish an apprenticeship that focused on training people who would go on to work in the RSN Workroom. Almost all the core team members of the RSN Embroidery Studio today came through this route. The Apprenticeship varied from a two-year to a three-year programme and while it retained some aspects of the old Diploma it added new practical elements, such as: tassel making for upholstery; Both Sides Alike for military pieces; Creative Box, following the resurgence of interest in seventeenth-century stumpwork caskets; ecclesiastical vestments; and conservation.

Through the course of the Apprenticeship, which ran from 1962 to 2009, a number of changes were also made to the projects worked on by the apprentices. Blackwork was transformed from its Tudor role of an infill pattern representing lace toa medium for working in light and shade using the same geometric patterns, but creating something pictorial, whether that be a building, an object or particularly a portrait. Church work took a more secular turn and became known as ‘Figure, Symbol and Animal’. Apprentices could explore the same techniques but depict anything from Greek myths to favourite stories, giving them more opportunity to incorporate their own design ideas.

By 2009 very few Apprentices could be taken into the Embroidery Studio. What the RSN now needed was more teachers. A change was required.

To show some of the transition from the 1950s to 2009 one project has been selected for exhibition. It was first known as Churchwork, then variously as cross and two saints, cross saint and animal and finally became secular as Figure, Symbol and Animal. These pieces show this transition.