Introduction

Introduction by Dr Susan Kay-Williams, Chief Executive of the Royal School of Needlework

Our anniversary exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum was a long-time in the planning, through all the Covid period when it was often challenging to reach people and see what might be available to borrow, and even if the Fashion and Textile Museum would be able to open when it had been forced to close by lockdowns. Once we felt a bit more certainty and the museum had confirmed its re-opening, I turned to thinking about the best ways to give a flavour of the variety of the work of the RSN and to surprise people at the range of what the RSN has worked on and the teaching it has offered over the last 150 years. Past exhibitions, of which the last large one was in 1997, have focused on the grand and large pieces, but this time it felt important to reflect more breadth, as well as the kind of partnerships the RSN has enjoyed in recent years whether with the RSN Embroidery Studio or with the Degree Course.

In the end, we managed to span all the periods of the RSN either with designs, worked pieces or with student work and I hope it surprised people and showed them that we are more than they might imagine. For a start, this was an organisation that was founded by women, for women with a philanthropic as well as a decorative purpose. The founder, Lady Victoria Welby and her two supporters, Lady Marian Alford, and especially Princess Christian of Schleswig Holstein known to the RSN as Princess Helena, were keen to offer suitable work to educated women who would otherwise find themselves destitute as well as keeping the art and techniques of hand embroidery alive.

Many of the pieces on show have come from the RSN Collection and Archive. This is not the well-known resource that it should be because, as yet, we have not been able to put it online. We are raising funds for this and hope we will be able to begin the work soon, as one of the legacy projects of the RSN’s anniversary, so people will be able to see more of what we have in the Collection.

As most of our early work was made for external clients these pieces are not with the RSN but in use up and down the country, so we are delighted that we have been loaned many pieces which help to tell the RSN story, from our association with the Arts and Crafts movement to our links with royalty, the military and the church. Nevertheless the content here is just a tiny fragment of the RSN’s work and output over the last century and a half.

Of particular importance to the RSN is representing the role of stitch in mental health and wellbeing which, for the RSN began in the First World War, and is now front and centre again because of how people found stitching helpful during the lockdowns.

We hope you will enjoy viewing many of the pieces that were on display at the Fashion and Textile Museum, a very fitting location given the breadth of the RSN’s work, and that you find something that surprises you along the way.

Dr Susan Kay-Williams