Reaping What They Sewed: Embroidery in Politics, Feminism, and Art

By

Lilith Haig

********

Submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for

Honors in the Department of Visual Arts

UNION COLLEGE

June, 2021

i.
 ABSTRACT

HAIG, LILITH

Department of Visual Arts- Art History/Studio Arts Dual Concentration

ADVISOR: Lorraine Morales Cox PhD

The feminization of needlework under patriarchal systems of power and

oppression has reinforced both long-standing feminine stereotypes and temporal

sociocultural ideals. As a tool of patriarchal oppression, needlework has been used to

confine women to the domestic sphere by teaching them to stay in the home, be quiet,

and follow a pattern; as an educational instrument, needlework reinforced standards of

women’s behavior, aptitudes, and conduct. However, women for centuries have silently

resisted and subverted these expectations and ideals through the very same means.

Women have utilized needlework during times of crisis and collective trauma for

centuries as both a practicality and means of expression. Starting in the second wave

feminist movement, female artists fought for the recognition of needlework as high art, a

category which the craft was explicitly excluded from since 1768 by The Royal Academy

in the UK.

From altered Sampler verses of Early Modernity to stitched responses to the

COVID-19 Pandemic, crisis and confinement has resulted in the employment of textile

craft to disseminate information, protest, collectivize, aid society, and record history

internationally. By taking a historical approach to analyze the ways in which women have

employed needlework during times of social crisis internationally, we can understand the

durable, practical, and precious media as a political device and high art.

ii.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am extremely grateful to Professor Lorraine Morales Cox for advising me throughout

the entire research process of and the creation of this thesis. Her insights, feedback, and

suggestions were invaluable throughout this process. I would like to thank Professor

David Ogawa for taking the time to review this work and provide his insights and

suggestions. I would also like to thank Professor Fernando Orellana for his guidance and

advising throughout the creation of Bloom, the robotic sculptures which accompany this

written work. I extend my gratitude and appreciation to the Visual Arts Department at

Union College as an integral aspect of my undergraduate education, and all of the

professors who I have studied with and learned from. I thank my peers in the Visual Arts

Department for all of the cherished memories in the classroom and in the studio. My

appreciation and gratitude extends to my friends and family for their support, guidance,

and love throughout my undergraduate studies.

iii.
 CONTENTS

Introduction…………………………………………….………………………..………..1

Chapter I: Origins and Gendering of Materiality……………………..…………………..5

Chapter II: Embroidery in Early Feminism..……………………..……………………...11

Chapter III: Second-Wave Feminism and Subversion….………………………………..18

Chapter IV: Contemporary Practices and Digitization…………………………………..25

Conclusion……………………………………………………....……………………….32

Afterword: Materiality and Technology…………….…………………………………...36

Figures…………………………………………………………………………………...39

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..…67

iv.
INTRODUCTION

Needlework is an integral and complex aspect of women’s history as a tool of

their education, activity of leisure, symbol of femininity, and weapon of resistance.

Needlework has been used to reinforce patriarchal standards and codes of women’s

behavior, aptitudes, and conduct. Textile work reinforces a patriarchal oppression of

women to the domestic sphere by teaching them to stay in the home, be quiet, and follow

a pattern. However, women for centuries have silently resisted and subverted these

expectations and ideals through the very same means.

“What is Art?” is a historically debated question within both Art History and

more broadly within Philosophy by the likes of Plato, Kant, and Hegel. However, during

the 20th century feminist scholars questioned the overarching disparities and

displacement of women within all these definitions, systematically excluding and

marginalizing women from the academic canon of fine art, through under representation

and participation in museums and galleries, Founded within Marxist philosophy, these

scholars argue that:

(a) The artworks the Western artistic canon recognizes as great are dominated by
male-centered perspectives and stereotypes...Moreover, the concept of genius
developed historically in such a way as to exclude women artists.
(b) The fine arts’ focus on purely aesthetic, non-utilitarian value resulted in the
marginalization as mere “crafts” of items of considerable aesthetic interest made
and used by women for domestic practical purposes...1

Moreover, the delineation between fine art and craft as separate spheres systematically

excludes much of the creative work of women for centuries. Historically, the scope of

women who had the financial, social, and independent agency to pursue the “fine arts” in

a purist sense was extremely limited. As women were historically restricted from the

1
Thomas Adajian, “The Definition of Art,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed February 16, 2021,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/art-definition/.

1
public sphere and confined to domestic work, much of their creative efforts likewise had

to be subversively channeled into their domestic labors. This can be seen in the artistry of

textile crafts, such as needlework and quilting. Patriarchal dominance and power

structures within the established circle of fine arts excluded female painters and sculptors

while entirely excluding the domestic arts, consigning even the most intricate needle

paintings to “craft.” Given the broad scope of craft, in this essay I am going to be

specifically looking at needlework (considered a textile craft), including but not limited

to embroidery, knitting, and needlepoint.

In his essay, A Third System of the Arts?, David Clowney explores the popular

critical perspective as to why Art and craft have historically been maintained as separate

spheres. Clowney states the functionality of craftwork is what ultimately separates and

devalues it from Fine Art: i.e. true art is nonfunctional.2 For this reason, craft should be

excluded from Art as true art is solely “Art for Art’s Sake,” Art is based in genius and

aesthetics, whereas craft is based in functionality and design.3

The systematic exclusion of women from Fine Art socially and culturally

necessitated women to utilize craft, specifically needlework, as their artistic medium.

Although not all craft is not necessarily art in this sense, I will cover examples in which

women have historically utilized needlework for the purpose of Art, whether directly or

subversively through otherwise “functional” canvases. Feminist scholars Rosika Parker

and Griselda Pollock write on this:

By simply celebrating a separate heritage we risk losing sight of one of the most
important aspects of the history of women and art, the intersection in the

2
David Clowney, “A Third System of the Arts? An Exploration of Some Ideas from Larry Shiner's The
Invention of Art: A Cultural History,” Contemporary Aesthetics 6 (December 21, 2008),
https://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=519.
3
For further discussion, see “2: Creativity and Genius” in Carolyn Korsmeyer, “Feminist Aesthetics”

2
 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the development of an ideology of
femininity, that is, a social definition of women and their role, with the emergence
of a clearly defined separation of art and craft.4
The associated identities of an artist and a craftsperson formulated during the

Renaissance also contributed to the divide between art and craft. Writers such as Georgio

Visari also established parameters for the concept of artistic genius, which was

exclusionary of both craft and women by definition.5 The stereotypical “spirit” of the

artist as rebellious, genius, creative, and individualistic stands in stark contrast to the

“spirit” of the craftsperson as humble and integrated within a handed-down lineage of

traditions, practice, and techniques.6 These qualities of artist and craftsperson align with

Renaissance (and later nineteenth and early twentieth century) ideals and norms of

masculinity and femininity, respectively.

A major factor contributing to the hierarchy between art and needlework are

surrounding systemic and patriarchy-reinforcing economic factors. The monetary value

of the female laborer’s work contributes to the devaluing of needlework; women have

historically been unpaid for their domestic labors, or marginally paid (even in current

times) as textile workers. Even within painting, women’s paintings, such as flower

paintings and miniature paintings, have historically been marginalized and significantly

devalued as opposed to the work of their male contemporaries.

Throughout the 1970s’ second wave feminist movement, feminist artists such as

Faith Ringgold, Judy Chicago, and Miriam Schapiro drew attention to the absence of

women’s domestic arts from the world of high art by incorporating fiber, cloth, and
4
Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (New York: Pantheon,
1982), https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7462020M/Old_Mistresses#work-details, 58.
5
For more on Visari’s definition of genius, see 2: Ingegno/Genius in Douglas Biow’s “Vasari's Words: The
'Lives of the Artists' as a History of Ideas in the Italian Renaissance”
6
Courtney Lee. Weida and Nanyoung Kim, “Crafting Creativity & Creating Craft,” in Crafting Creativity
& Creating Craft (Rotterdam, NY: SensePublishers, 2014), pp. 61-76,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/union/detail.action?docID=3035002, 63.

3
embroidery into their artworks.7 The display and installation of these artworks in galleries

continues to rise today, establishing a systematic recognition of the historic exclusion of

women artists within the fine arts. Amidst the internet era, many textile artists have

utilized social media to establish a platform for their art independent of galleries, build

international community, and monetize their works.

7
Estella Lauter, “Re-Enfranchising Art: Feminist Interventions in the Theory of Art,” Hypatia 5, no. 2
(1990): pp. 91-106, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1990.tb00419.x, 94.

4
CHAPTER I: Origins and Gendering of Materiality

We can come to trace the origins of needlework as an instrument of feminine

suppression to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in British embroidery production.

Opus Anglicanum embroidery was a technically intricate and expressive style of

embroidery produced in England from approximately 900 to 1500. This style of

embroidery was done on linen or velvet with silk and metal threads, adorned with pearls,

jewels and beaten gold. This embroidery was considered to be of the same artistic caliber

as painting and sculpture, only shifting to a “lesser art” during the Renaissance.8 The rise

in popularity and subsequent commercial production for Opus Anglicanum embroidery

resulted in the transfer in production from scattered, individual women to

tightly-controlled, male-controlled guild workshops based in London. Although they

were embroidering the pieces, women were often denied full-membership within the

guilds, their wages being paid to their fathers/husbands.9

Starting in the Colonial era, women often received their early education through

stitching samplers. Through embroidery, these samplers served as an educational means

to teach women letters and numbers, prayers and poems, along with creating imagery of

small animals, foliage, houses, and churches. In his overview of American sampler poetry

from 1650-1850, historian David Stinebeck describes the generational transfer of

needlework sampler designs and traditions as a “collaborative form of feminist

self-expression through time.” (Stinebeck 1184) He establishes this form of feminism as

a passive expression of agency through public assertion, as the samplers hung in plain

view of the men that lived in or visited the home. Although much of Colonial American

8
Parker, Ibid. 40
9
Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (New York: Pantheon,
1982), https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7462020M/Old_Mistresses#work-details, 60.

5
women’s education came from the Bible, the poetry of these sampler verses was often

written by women to reflect family values. As samplers were used as an educational tool

and site to set moral standards and codes for young women, sometimes samplers also

served as the location on which the underlying conflicts with these ideologies were

expressed.10 In this way, women were able to covertly and silently resist the feminine

ideals pressed upon them by a patriarchal society.

Women were utilizing samplers as a means of disemminating and recording

progressive feminist thought as early as the 17th century. This 17th century sampler verse

from the Victoria & Albert Museum (see Figure 1), embroidery study collection, in

colored silk on linen, is the earliest known circulation of this altered sampler poem:

When I was young I little Thought

That Wit must be so dearly bought
But Now Experience Tells me how
If I would Thrive then I must Bow
And bend unto another’s will
That I might learn both art and skill
To Get my Living with My Hands
That so I might be free from Band
And My Own Dame that I may be
And free from all such slavery.
Avoid vaine pastime fle youthfull pleasure
Let moderation allways Be My measure
And so prosed unto the heavenly treasure11

Later versions have been found in circulation into the early 19th century, showing that

this altered verse was disseminated generationally. The poem suggests needlework as a

potential path to employment for women, and that fulfillment will be found in

employment.
10
Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: The
Women's Press Limited, 1984), 13.
11
Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson, eds., Early Modern Women Poets (1520-1700): An Anthology
(Oxford University Press, 2001),
https://books.google.com/books?id=EynvtQmeW-kC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&c
ad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, 468.

6
 The gendered divide and hierarchy between craft and fine art within social

systems and structures of power was stratified during the Enlightenment. During this

time, academies for Fine Arts and male students were established alongside workshops

for women to learn craft arts.12 The Royal Academy of Arts in London was established in

1769 for the elevation, cultivation, and celebration of the “Polite Arts” 13 By 1770, two

separate clauses were enacted to first exclude needlework imitations of painting from

exhibition, and later clarified to exclude needlework as a whole, a medium through which

London galleries had previously featured and recognized female needlework artists such

as Mary Linwood and Mary Delany.14

Mary Linwood (1755-1845), famous for her embroidered replicas of Old Masters

paintings (see Figures 2 and 3) was one of the most well-known needlepainters of the

Victorian Era. With the institutional exclusion of needlework from the realm of High

Arts, Linwood kicked off a tour in 1798 featuring over one hundred of her glazed and

framed embroidered paintings at London’s Hanover Square Rooms. Although she

achieved high regard from critics, their approval was still decorated with misogynist

underpinnings and a condescending tone:

Every amateur of the arts should go to Miss Linwood's Exhibition at the

Pantheon, where they will have an opportunity of comparing the admirable effect
of Worsted, as a resemblance of painting. During the vacations at this season,
young Ladies from school should be allowed to inspect these elegant and
ingenious productions of the needle. With very few exceptions, they display a
beautiful spectacle, and even to those who might hitherto have considered
Needle-work an uninteresting object of criticism; their close similarity to pictures,

12
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Thought and the Arts: Collected Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990.
13
Sir Joshua Reynolds, “A DISCOURSE Delivered at the Opening of the Royal Academy, January 2nd,
1769, by the President.,” in Seven Discourses On Art, accessed February 7, 2021,
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2176/2176-h/2176-h.htm.
14
Isabelle Baudino, “Difficult Beginning? The Early Years of the Royal Academy of Arts in London,”
Etudes Anglaises 66, no. 3 (February 22, 2013): pp. 181-194, 188.
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00917808.

7
 which have ever engaged the attention of persons of taste and talents, will
recommend these performances to particular observation.15

Although the critic spoke highly of Linwood’s paintings, his approval is undoubtedly

gendered and condescending towards Linwood and needlework as a medium of art. The

critic distinguishes the craft of needlework from the art of painting in a hierarchical and

dependent manner by elevating Linwood’s work upon its “resemblance of painting.” He

also does not recognize the needle paintings as art or even as a creation by Linwood, but

objectively as “productions of the needle,” It is also important to note the gendered

connotations of the critic using the adjective ingenious rather than simply genius.16

During the Victorian Era, eternal, stereotypical associations with femininity came

to be synonymous with those of embroidery; at the same time, embroidery has been used

to educate and reinforce temporal ideals of femininity for centuries. Victorian ideals of

femininity were shaped by the same values associated with needlework, the ideal being

dutiful, pious, wageless, and modest. For example, when the male Reverend T. James

criticized and mocked the scale, detail, and robust blooms of the cabbage rose in Church

Work for Ladies, this common motif was quickly replaced by the Tudor rose. 17

It is also important to note the prevalence of embroidery within the other

prominent Victorian feminine art form: the novel. Within Victorian novels, embroidery

serves as a symbol of feminine moral, social, and behavioral codes and expectations, as

presented and enforced by patriarchal systems and power structures. Charlotte Bronte, for

example, employs embroidery as a medium through which to explore the contradictions

15
World and Fashionable Advertiser in Hedquist, Valerie in "How a lost painting endured: Gainsborough's
Woodman, Macklin's Poets' Gallery, and Miss Linwood's needle painting." Southeastern College Art
Conference Review 16, no. 3.
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A367076932/AONE?u=nysl_ca_unionc&sid=AONE&xid=f6d9acb5 (and
Note: (54.) World and Fashionable Advertiser, 30 June 1787.)
16
See footnote 5
17
Ibid. 32, 34.

8
within femininity and presented ideals thereof; in her works, embroidery and femininity

are employed to explore opposing themes of self defense and self denial, along with

establishing solitary female spaces and also announcing female subservience and

availability.18 Bronte’s 1849 novel, Shirley, centralizes this relationship:

"Rose, did you bring your sampler with you, as I told you?"
"Yes, mother."
"Sit down, and do a line of marking."
Rose sat down promptly, and wrought according to orders. After a busy pause
of ten minutes, her mother asked, "Do you think yourself oppressed now—a
victim?"
"No, mother."
"Yet, as far as I understood your tirade, it was a protest against all womanly
and domestic employment."
"You misunderstood it, mother. I should be sorry not to learn to sew. You do
right to teach me, and to make me work."19

In this example, Rose Yorke’s initial rejection of embroidery reflects her rejections of

Victorian standards for women. The young adult wishes to travel and adventure, standing

in opposition to the expectation of women to stay confined to the home. Although her

character never outright rejects women’s domestic work, she does state that life must

consist of more for women.

The changing relationship of namesake Shirley Keeldar’s adherence to Victorian

ideals of femininity is also synonymous with her relationship to embroidery in the novel.

Initially, Shirley has no time for embroidery, as an independent non-sexual woman with

agency. However, once Shirley acknowledges her love for Louis Moore, she takes up

embroidery and the device becomes entrenched with her femininity:

“I was near enough to count the stitches of her work, and to discern the eye of her
needle”20

18
Ibid, 165.
19
Charlotte Brontë, in Shirley (T. Nelson & Sons), accessed February 17, 2021,
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30486/30486-h/30486-h.htm, 352.
20
Charlotte Brontë, in Shirley, 550.

9
 The character Madame Defarge in Charles Dickens’ 1859 novel, A Tale of Two

Cities, (see Figure 4) knits a registry of those to be killed in the revolution constantly in

the background throughout the novel. As other women join Madame Defarge in her work,

knitting becomes a central image symbolizing the Revolution.21 Their needlework not

only established their place as active members of the Revolution, but served as a

subversive means for the women to have a political voice.

This motif was more than a symbol; seemingly subordinate women have been

utilizing embroidery and knitting as a means to code messages, disseminate information,

and protest during times of civil unrest for centuries. From the Suffragettes of the United

States and Britain, to Chilean arpilleras during a military dictatorship, to the Greenham

Women’s Peace Camp of the late 1980s, women have reappropriated embroidery as a tool

of establishing a public political voice despite its domestic implications. Throughout the

20th century, needlework was employed as a uniquely feminine and subversive mode of

collectivization, expression, and action within a variety of cultures and contexts.

21
Barbara Black, "A Sisterhood of Rage and Beauty: Dickens' Rosa Dartle, Miss Wade,
and Madame Defarge." Dickens Studies Annual 26 (1998): 91-106.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/44372502, 98.
10
CHAPTER II: Embroidery in Early Feminism

At the turn of the 20th century, the women’s suffrage movement utilized

needlework to communicate their goals and demands in both the United States and in

Great Britain. Banners were embroidered with not only the suffragists’ political aims, but

were also utilized as a medium to record information, identify local groups, and

commemorate important women within the movements. By embroidering fabric banners

as opposed to printing on paper or cardboard, these objects of protest become elevated;

while it makes these objects more precious and time-consuming to create, it also makes

them more durable and long-lasting. Disguised as embroidery groups, suffragists would

often hold large gatherings in which they would embroider these banners collectively,

while discussing their larger political aims and plans of action. The juxtaposition of these

objects as simultaneous historical artifact and work of art is a motif that is picked up

again by the second wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

In Great Britain, the Women’s Suffrage Movement utilized the

Victorian-established connection of embroidery and femininity to their advantage. They

did not attempt to “disentangle” the two, but rather used this to change ideas and

stereotypes associated with embroidery and femininity. By embroidering banners rather

than printing signage, suffragettes were able to feminize the devices of their political

protest; using embroidery as a means to disseminate their political goals and bringing

their objects onto the streets (as embroidered works usually remained in the home),

suffragettes reinvented a practice which traditionally re enforced women’s confination to

the domestic sphere. Bringing objects of the private, domestic sphere into public spaces,

these women rejected their current sociocultural status as passive domestic helpmeets,

11
establishing a public and political voice. They attempted to rebrand embroidery as a

signifier of strength and action, rather than weakness and passivity. Their banners

celebrated female historical figures (such as Marie Curie with the word “RECTITUDE”)

and featured slogans such as ASK WITH COURAGE; DARE TO BE FREE;

COURAGE, CONSISTENCY, SUCCESS; and ALLIANCE AND DEFIANCE. 22

Banners were not the only item embroidered; British suffragists also embroidered

table napkins to commemorate their rallies and events. Figure 5 shows a table napkin

printed and embroidered to commemorate the Votes For Women Great Demonstration at

Hyde Park on June 21st, 1908. The center of the printed portion features a map outlining

the path of the march and the locations where speeches took place. Around this is a

timetable of the events and speeches of the day, surrounded by portraits of the leaders and

those who gave speeches. The floral embroidered portion around the printed section is

done in the colors of the Women’s Social and Political Union, purple and green, who was

the organizing group behind the demonstration. Figure 6 shows a handkerchief from a

1913 rally in Hyde Park, organized by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage

Societies. This handkerchief is also a combination of print and embroidery, containing the

program of the two-day event with the surrounding floral embroidery featuring the colors

of the NUWSS, red and green.

As a means of subversion, women who were incarcerated as a result of suffrage

activities embroidered with available materials in order to communicate (as they were not

permitted to speak to one another) and record their experiences (see Figure 7). These

woven records would come to serve as historical artifacts documenting their specific

22
Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: The
Women's Press Limited, 1984), 198.

12
locations within prisons, abuses suffered, and details/outcomes of their resistances, such

as hunger strikes.23

The suffragette movement within the United States also utilized embroidery to

both convey political messages on banners and as a means of recording the groups and

individuals marching and their reasons for doing so.24 Figure 8 shows Jeanette Tillotson

Acklen holding the banner she marched behind during the Tennessee campaign for

women’s suffrage (see Figure 9). Ms. Acklen’s husband was notably a U.S.

Representative and strong supporter of the suffrage movement. The golden yellow used

for the banner was one of the symbolic colors (the other being white) established by the

National American Woman Suffrage Association. Yellow roses were adopted as a symbol

of the movement, anti-suffragists toting the red rose as symbolism of their adversary. In

Tennessee, the final state needed to ratify national women’s suffrage, this symbol was

even worn by the members of the legislature in the form of lapels on voting day.25

The use of embroidery within the suffragette movement influenced the systematic

instruction on embroidery in the early 20th century. The Glasgow Society of Lady Artists

was founded in 1882 at the Glasgow School of Art in order to promote the elevation of

the female-dominated craft and decorative arts to the level of the male-oriented fine

arts.26 Many teachers and students of the school were actively involved in the suffragette

movement. In response to the manner of utilization of embroidery by suffragists,

instructors at the Glasgow School of Art overhauled methods of embroidery teaching,

23
Eileen Wheeler, The Political Stitch: Voicing Resistance in a Suffrage Textile (Textile Society of America
Symposium Proceedings, 2012), 7.
24
Tactics 5
25
Mary Skinner, “A Look Back at Tennessee's War of the Roses,” Nashville Attractions (Tennessee State
Museum, June 2019), https://tnmuseum.org/Stories/posts/a-look-back-at-tennessees-war-of-the-roses.
26
“Glasgow Girls,” accessed March 3, 2021,
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/glossary-terms/glasgow-girls.

13
encouraging students to develop their own designs and patterns as opposed to following

traditional imagery. This progressive stance toward embroidery extended in their

ideologies toward early education, advocating at the 1928 annual conference for the

National Union of Women Teachers that an egalitarian approach be taken toward the

instruction of young pupils, teaching young boys domestic subjects such as needlework

and cooking, and teaching young girls woodwork. Despite these efforts, popular culture

continued to glamourize and promote the leisure market, which propagated embroidery as

a means for individual women to “manifest feminine qualities” in an individualistic

mannar as an expression of their identities and personalities.27 Whereas during Victorian

times, embroidery was synonymous with a universal self-less ideal of femininity, during

the twentieth century embroidery was promoted to embody the feminine ideas of the

individual.

The United States saw a marketed revival of Colonial Era moral values

propagated through photography which presented a colonial aesthetic as the visual and

moral embodiment of “the good life,” In her essay, Spinning Wheels, Samplers, and the

Modern Priscilla The Images and Paradoxes of Colonial Revival Needlework, Design

Historian Beverly Gordon addresses the marketed needlework within the American

Colonial Revival movement, arguing its weaponization to promote anti-feminist moral

and social ideologies:

The entrepreneurs were in effect selling a two-dimensional version of the

tableaux-like kitchen and were thus perpetuating the stereotypes of the nineteenth
century; theirs, however, were more charged, reverent images.28

27
Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: The
Women's Press Limited, 1984), 202.
28
Beverly Gordon, “Spinning Wheels, Samplers, and the Modern Priscilla: The Images and Paradoxes of
Colonial Revival Needlework,” Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 2/3 (1998): pp. 163-194,
https://doi.org/10.1086/496744, 168.

14
At the same time suffragists were protesting and women were fighting to enter the

industrial workforce the colonial revival movement was promoting its antiquated

antithesis; the feminine ideal of the passive, domestic, ephemeral embroiderer was

marketed to women through the dissemination of imagery representing the idealized

colonial interior and woman in magazines and other print media. This ideal was also

promoted in the Arts within the Pictorialist movement of photography by artists such as

Clarence Hudson White. (see Figure 10)

Modern artist Hannah Hӧch utilized embroidery in her artistic practice to push

back against these sentiments. A member of the Berlin Dada movement, Hӧch was most

notable as a pioneer of collage art, specifically her photomontages in which she would

arrange and layer fragments from magazines into disturbing, anamorphic forms. In 1918,

Hӧch published a manifesto entitled “On Embroidery” which directly addressed women

to take embroidery seriously as an integral part of their history, and as their art:

Embroidery is very closely related to painting. It is constantly changing with

every new style each epoch brings. It is an art and ought to be treated like one…
you, craftswomen, modern women, who feel that your spirit is in your work, who
are determined to lay claim to your rights (economic and moral), who believe
your feet are firmly planted in reality, at least Y-O-U should know that your
embroidery work is a documentation of your own era.29

In this manifesto, Hӧch encouraged women to implement the design principles of

Modernist art and aesthetic into their embroidery practice, breaking free of the traditional

standard patterns and imagery of “florals, baskets, birds, and spirals,” which in her

opinion was a major contributing factor to the lack of artistic seriousness taken toward

29
Maria Makela, “Grotesque Bodies: Weimar-Era Medicine and the Photomontages of Hannah Höch,” in
Modern Art and the Grotesque, ed. Frances S Connelley (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 193-219,
197.

15
embroidery.30 In this way, Hӧch not only called for the evolution of embroidery, but for

the political and social evolution of women.

In her 1925 collage, Bewacht (translation: Watched, see Figure 11), Hӧch

combines reproduced imagery of an embroidered red carnation, the only aspect of the

collage in color, with a cutout of a baroque-era man with a gun slung over his shoulder.

His face has been replaced with an egg shaped cutout, mirroring the large egg-shaped

cutout he stands upon. He is poised to “face” the carnation, which is blooming away from

him. Rosika Parker writes on this:

Hannah Hӧch in her collage Bewacht appears more concerned with embroidery’s
connotations than with the art’s formal qualities: the juxtaposition of shapes and
objects conjures up the class and sexual associations of the art.31

In this way, this photomontage can be seen to represent a move away from antiquital

values in regards to both femininity and embroidery. Hӧch’s later collage work featuring

textiles and embroidery took a direct approach to Modernist aesthetics and sentiments,

breaking traditional form through geometric graphic abstractions.

As art and industry merged through the subsequent decades between WWI and

WWII, the purpose of embroidery also changed to serve as an applied, rather than

expressive, medium.32 As a part of the war effort, women at home were expected to knit

supplies and clothing for soldiers and their children in order to conserve resources.

Leisurely and artistic needlework such as embroidery were put aside in favor of a

utilitarian needlework which served family and country rather than the individual woman.

Although both World Wars saw the resurgence of a patriarchically-defined and

30
Kathleen C. Boyle (University of Florida, 2014), pp. 1-87, 10.
31
Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: The
Women's Press Limited, 1984), 194.
32
Marjan Groot et al., “Lost in the History of Modernism: Magnificent Embroiderers,” in MOMOWO:
Women Designers, Craftswomen, Architects and Engineers between 1918 and 1945 (Ljubljana: Založba
ZRC, 2018), pp. 103-116, 116.

16
gender-role affirming deployment of needlework through propaganda dissemination (see

Figure 12), the emerging second wave feminist movement quickly called for the

reeavluation and redefining of needlework starting in the 1960s.33 We will see

needlework once again utilized as a means of feminine individual and collective

expression, political voice, and protest both within public and fine arts spaces.

33
Anne Bruder, “Stitching Dissent,” in Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American
Revolution to the Pussyhats, ed. Hinda Mandell (London: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group,
Inc., n.d.), pp. 111-121, 116.

17
CHAPTER III: Second-Wave Feminism and Subversion

Beginning in the 1970s, Western feminist artists reclaimed needlework as both a

feminine object of protest and art. These second wave feminists were largely middle class

white women seeking to elevate the artistic status of needlework while bringing the

collective, private and domestic traumas of women into public spaces. Despite the sexism

displayed toward their work, feminist art began to emerge during the 1960s in gallery

spaces. During the 1970s, feminist artists employed textiles in their practice, seeking to

decrease the binary between the terms art and craft; the work of these artists often

centered around stigmatized womens’ issues such as pregnancy, rape, homemaking, and

menstruation.34 By using a domesticized medium to address women’s issues and then

elevating the visibility of these objects as art for the public, artists such as Judy Chicago,

Miriam Schapiro, Joy Wieland, and Faith Ringgold made women’s private struggles

public and made the personal political.

Amidst political and social turmoil in the 1970s, Chilean women employed

embroidery in order to collectivize and record the atrocities that were taking place under

a seventeen-year militant dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet who arrested, tortured,

and imprisoned thousands of dissidents and their families.35 Their embroideries allowed

their stories to be heard internationally as a powerful political voice. While women were

not permitted to work outside their homes under strict gender-roles, women in the

Santiago region were able to collectivize in secret home workshops and basements of the

34
Sandra Markus, “Craftivism from Philomena to the Pussyhat,” in Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest
from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats, ed. Hinda Mandell (London: The Rowman & Littlefield
Publishing Group, Inc., n.d.), pp. 15-25, 20.
35
Danilo Freire et al., “Deaths and Disappearances in the Pinochet Regime: A New Dataset,” 2019,
https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/vqnwu, 8.

18
Vicaria de la Solidaridad (Vicarate of Solidarity), and embroider their atrocities in

patchwork tapestries known as arpilleras:

Arpilleras served to document and denounce oppression in a country where all

normal channels of free expression were closed. To the women, making arpilleras
was a way to share their sorrows and concerns. To present-day viewers, arpilleras
are a testament to the women’s extraordinary strength and survival through
tremendous suffering and loss,36

These arpilleras were sold internationally by the Vicaria de la Solidaridad, providing

these women with a source of income while sharing their stories.37

Invasión de Sinchis a Cangallo (see Figures 13, 14, and 15) depicts the invasion

of Cangallo by military forces and the sudden arrests of civilians via helicopter. The

lower half of the tapestry illustrates the separation of plain clothed men and women as

they are led towards a helicopter by military forces. The upper right portion of the

tapestry shows a woman suspended from another helicopter, detailing the manner in

which these people were abducted. The upper portion also depicts a man still working in

the fields harvesting fruit under a smiling military watch while three men on the other

half appear to be dead, half buried in the fields. This tapestry records specific details

about the time, location, and details of the incident, making it not only a powerful

political means of subversive dissemination of information, but as a creative historical

record.

The governmentally-perceived non threat of this “woman's work” allowed the

Chilean arpilleras to evade the strict censorship regulations imposed on literature and

other media for a period of time during Pinochet’s dictatorship. However, their

36
Richard O'Toole, “What Is an Arpillera?,” The William Benton Museum of Art (Connecticut State Art
Museum, June 23, 2014), https://benton.uconn.edu/exhibitions/arpilleria/what-is-an-arpillera/#.
37
Dayna L. Caldwell, 2012. "The Chilean Arpilleristas: Changing National Politics Through Tapestry
Work," Textiles and Politics: Textile Society of America 13th Biennial Symposium Proceedings, 3.

19
international recognition eventually led to the recognition of the arpilleras as subversive

contraband and the women were aggressively harassed by the military. The most violent

response occurred January 17th, 1977 where an exhibition of the arpilleras at the Paulina

Waugh Art Gallery was firebombed by members of the military.38

The arpilleristas of Chile utilized textile work in order to collectivize, record, and

share the atrocities of Chile under the rule of Pinochet’s regime. Their works allowed

international political awareness to be brought to Chile during the seventies and eighties.

Not only did these women defy the oppressive censorship laws governing other media

and creative outlets, but they defied gender roles and expectations by serving as the

political voice for their communities and loved ones.

The Dinner Party (1975-1979) by American femist artist Judy Chicago, pays

homage to famous female historical figures while simultaneously exposing the oppressive

constructs which have woven femininity with embroidery for centuries. The work was

first exhibited at the San Francisco Art Museum in 1979 and is currently installed

permanently in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art of the Brooklyn

Museum. Executed by over 400 individuals over a period of 4 years, Chicago’s vision

matriculated in 39 full, embroidered and hand-painted, place settings seated around a

non-hierarchical triangular table. Each place setting commemorates important historical

female figures, divine and human. (See Figure 16)

Each place setting features gold cutlery and a golden goblet, and a painted china

plate and an embroidered runner. The embroidery is on the edges of the runners,

38
Rebecca Ansen, “Arpilleristas: Women's Craft as a Form of Protest,” Revolution in the Southern Cone,
2010, http://revolutionsofsouthamerica.weebly.com/arpilleristas-womens-craft-as-a-form-of-protest.html.

20
gradually coming into closer contact with the plates. In Chicago’s words this transition

serves to be:

a metaphor for the increasing restrictions on women’s power that occurred in the
development of Western history. There is the same congruence between the plate
and the runner that the woman experienced between her aspirations and the
prevailing attitudes towards female achievement, and occasionally there is an
enormous visual tension between the plate and its runner as a symbol of the
woman’s rebellion against the constraints of the female role.39

Through the equal importance of the painted place with the runners, this work symbolizes

the equal importance of painting and embroidery as art.

During the same time in the 1970s, the parallel postal-art project “Feministo”

(AKA “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman/Housewife”) was underway in the UK.

This project also sought to elevate the artistic value of embroidery while elevating the

domestic laborer as artist. Through its open-ended outreach, the project offered

connection and identity to its participants beyond their domestic persona as mother, wife,

or caretaker.40 The works were created as a visual dialogue about the daily life of

housewives and mothers, featuring imagery of domestic life and traditional craft

techniques. These pieces cumulated in an exhibition, challenging the “value-laden

division between ‘home’ and ‘work’, ‘art’ and ‘craft’,” 41 By disrupting the structure of

the art gallery with these domestically produced works about women’s issues,

“Feministo” established, also established the personal as political.

Rozsika Parker’s 1984 book, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making

of the Feminine, was a groundbreaking publication which analyzed the historical origins

39
Judy Chicago and Susan Hill, The Dinner Party Needlework (Anchor Books, 1980), 24.
40
Chris Lynch, “If You Show Me Yours, I'll Show You Mine,” The Tate Papers 25 (2016),
https://doi.org/10.21061/alan.v24i1.a.2.
41
Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: The
Women's Press Limited, 1984), 208.

21
and politics surrounding the textile arts and its ties to femininity. The book contextualizes

arguments and stances taken by the second wave feminist movement of the 1960s and

70s within the larger history of feminine supression and methods of subversion within

women’s needlework. This publication led to a series of six groundbreaking 1988

exhibitions by the same name, featuring a dual focus on women’s embroidery from

1300-1900 and contemporary embroidery.42

Along with the arpillera discussed above, Lyn Malcolm’s 1985 Why have we so

few great women artists (See Figure 17) was exhibited in this show. This installation

features multiple forms of needlework positioned around a pair of knitting needles:

samplers, an embroidered wall hanging, embroidered box, knit baby shoes, handkerchief,

cupcakes made of fabric, and a tablecloth. Each of these textiles sequentially spells out

the title of the piece. By delineating the scope of domestic needlecrafts women were

expected to learn and practice, Malcolm creates commentary on the ways in which

needlework has limited women’s progress and status within the arts. The installation

poses the answer to the question it begs to differ, emphasizing the limitations of women’s

domestic labors upon her art. The piece also addresses second-wave feminist concerns

around women’s representation in the arts (and the lack of recognition of textile works

within these structures).

Another contemporary work from the exhibition featured imagery from the

British Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp which operated from 1981-1985. The

peace camp was established in opposition to US cruise missiles being sited in Berkshire,

UK. Leah Harper writes of her experience:

42
“The Subversive Stitch Revisited: The Politics of Cloth,” Exhibitions (Goldsmiths, University of
London), accessed March 10, 2021, https://www.gold.ac.uk/subversivestitchrevisited/exhibitions/.

22
 One of the things I remember most, apart from the mud, was how the layout of the
airbase clearly represented how power works. The American military were at the
core, then the British soldiers and then the police. Outside were this bunch of
women, locked out, who would periodically tear down the surrounding fence. We
could violate this male space and we were not leaving.43

In the face of a violent, heavily armed military presence, these female activists gathered

by the thousands and claimed this space as a means of establishing political voice. After

weapons were flown into the base in 1983, thousands of women tore down miles of

fencing. Through a combination of passive and active resistance, these women were able

to enact political change; Mikhail Gorbachev specifically mentioned the activism of the

Greenham Women as enabling him to meet with Ronald Reagan in 1986, leading to the

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.44

Like in the suffrage movement that came before it, the women in the camps

stitched banners as a means of voicing their political demands. The Subversive Stitch

exhibition featured a number of these banners, as well as Janis Jeffries’ 1986 Home of the

Brave (See Figure 18), which is similar in form to the suffragette embroidered

handkerchiefs. The lace handkerchief features a central image of one of the stitched

banners reading “Women for Peace,” surrounded by embroidered text which reads “You

can’t cage the Future, on Guard at Greenham 1981-1986,” Like the suffragette

handkerchiefs, this piece seeks to commemorate the political action taken by women.

The second-wave feminist movement of the 1970s fought to make the private

issues of women public, reigniting the calls for political action made by the suffragists of

the early 20th century. These feminists not only fought for legislative action to protect

43
Leah Harper et al., “How the ​Greenham Common Protest Changed Lives: 'We Danced on Top of the
Nuclear Silos',” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, March 20, 2017),
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/20/greenham-common-nuclear-silos-women-protest-peac
e-camp.
44
Ibid.

23
women, but fought for the elevation of the public status of women in the arts and larger

society. By reclaiming women’s history while advocating a more equitable future, the

second wave feminist movement served past and forthcoming generations of women.

Inserting needlework as a symbol of patriarchal domestic confinement within public

spaces publicized the private struggles of women while elevating the media within the

arts. At the same time, women internationally used needlework as both a subversive and

outspoken means to collectivize and politically advocate for their communities in the face

of atrocity.

24
CHAPTER IV: Contemporary Practices and Digitization

The needlework of contemporary female embroidery artists is reflective of Third

Wave feminism’s celebration of inclusive and multifaceted definitions of femininity, and

its openness to the evolution and sometimes contradicting expression of the female

identity.45 While the second wave feminist movement was largely by and for middle class

white women, the third wave feminist movement is characterized by sociocultural and

economic inclusivity. While this era of feminism can be fragmented in specific goals and

aims, the internet has allowed contemporary feminists to collectivize internationally and

form sweeping social movements around collective issues, such as seen within the 2017

“Me Too” movement.

The contemporary embroidered artworks of Alicia Ross, Sarah-Joy Ford, Hannah

Hill, Sophie King, and Julie Jackson address Third Wave Feminist themes of identity and

the historical context of embroidery and feminity, along with intersectional issues of

sexuality, sexual identity, and race. By addressing the historical contexts and surrounding

associations of femininity and embroidery within an artistic context, these artists are

reclaiming embroidery as a feminine-serving, rather than feminine-opressing, medium

within the arts.

Alicia Ross is a Ohio-based artist whose large-scale embroidery work explores

socially-constructed gender roles and the female form within the male gaze by blurring

“the line between the sacred and the profane,”46 Her works often call into question

dichotomies of womanhood, such as mother vs. mistress, virgin vs. whore. By translating

digitally manipulated photographs of popular cultural female figures and reappropriating

45
Lorraine Morales Cox, “Critical Stitch,” in Critical Stitch, ed. Rachel Segilman (Union College, NY:
Mandeville Gallery, 2010).
46
Alicia Ross, “About,” ALICIA ROSS, accessed March 10, 2021, https://www.aliciaross.com/about.

25
imagery from fashion magazines/pornography into embroidery, Ross translates

traditionally ephemeral, screen-percieved, 2D mass imagery into a permanent, physical,

3D object. Utilizing the method of cross-stitch, Ross replicates screen pixelation in her

embroidery.

Ross’ 2013 Moral Fiber series juxtaposes deconstructed imagery of women’s

bodies from pornography with framing typical of religious portraiture. The framing of

The Purse (see Figure 19) is resonant with that of Christian stained glass portraiture. By

placing her embroidery within the space of this frame, associations with religious idols

such as the Virgin Mary are drawn by the viewer, contrasting with the deconstructed,

pornographic content of the embroidery. The figure has a halo of pearled basting needles

about her head, and holds a linen purse which provides another layer of dimensionality to

the piece. The large purse seems representative of female agency, implying both a public

life and monetary power. The figure is in an active posture denoting power as well, her

gaze downward toward her own body. Through the juxtaposition of the religious

referencing drawn by the frame and the pornographic figure depicted, themes of the

virgin/whore dichotomy are drawn. While the deconstruction of the figure does not

desexualize the female body, the posture of the figure and the dimensionality/size of the

purse are denotative of female agency and power through her sexuality.

Sarah-Joy Ford is an UK-based embroidery and quilt artist whose work takes a

Third Wave Feminist approach to textile arts and centers around themes of feminine

queerness. Her ongoing research for her PhD in Design at the Manchester School of Art

is titled Quilting the Lesbian Archives, she writes:

Quilting gives me a thrifty strategy for approaching this archive; gathering

fragments, re-arranging with tender inquisitiveness, and forming a new

26
 arrangement that might offer a different ways of knowing the familiar...this
non-linear, materially driven form can offer a site for exploring the unruly
experiences of the lesbian bodies, temporalities and affects. Although quilts have
traditionally celebrated the milestones of a heteronormative life – birth, marriage,
children, death – this project subverts this tradition and proposes the quilt as a
space collapsing linear time and encountering the unexpected affects of the
Lesbian Archive. 47

Ford takes interest in the historically-proven capacity of women’s textile arts to invoke

community and as a device to instigate political change, while creating a space for

non-heteronormative women to exist within this feminine tradition.

Ford employs digital design and computerized sewing machines to translate her

imagery onto the quilts. Her color palette and materials are often sensationally feminine,

boasting bright pinks and purples on luxurious satins and silks. Her 2019 quilt,

Honorable Discharge (see Figure 20) serves as a love letter to the “erotic fearlessness” of

Donna Jackson, a woman who was discharged from the US military in 1990 for coming

out as gay. Prior to the era of public opposition toward “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policies,

Jackson was publicly shamed and ostracized.48

Like Alicia Ross, Ford deconstructs and minimizes overtly sexual female figures

in order to place the emphasis on the woman’s power through her sexuality and agency,

rather than depicting them as a passive sexual object. Honourable Discharge features the

central imagery of Jackson in self-gratifying sexual ecstasy, embroidered in vibrant pinks

and reds upon a lush quilt of white and baby pink satin. The figure is nude apart from the

army tag around her neck and her glasses, both iconic and identifiable aspects in relation

to Jackson’s identity. Subtly embroidered around the figure in baby pink are rings of

47
Sarah-Joy Ford, “Practice-Based: Quilting the Lesbian Archive, Sarah-Joy Ford,” Decorating Dissidence,
no. 8 (April 3, 2020),
https://decoratingdissidence.com/2020/04/03/practice-based-quilting-the-lesbian-archive-sarah-joy-ford/.
48
Sarah-Joy Ford, “Honourable Discharge,” SARAH-JOY FORD, accessed March 11, 2021,
https://sarahjoyford.com/artwork#/honourable-discharge/.

27
broken chains, stars, axes, and the interwoven venus symbol as symbol of lesbianness,

externally adorned with a pair of wings. The overall effect of the quilt is a powerfully

feminine and luxurious proclaiment of female sexuality and agency.

London-based artist Hannah Hill has inserted embroidery within social media and

meme culture to instigate conversations about the historical exclusion of women’s

needlework from the arts. Through an ironic and humorous lens, Hill creates awareness

for feminist issues surrounding embroidery within spaces and amidst audiences which

would typically not encounter these issues. In 2016 she went viral on Twitter when she

posted her embroidered reappropriation of a popular meme with the caption “Spent about

15 hours embroidering this feminist art meme,” (See Figure 21). The amount of time

taken to embroider this meme stands in sharp contrast to the usual rapidity with which

viral internet memes are recontextualized and reposted.

Since this artwork went viral, Hill has used embroidery within her artistic practice

to address intersectional feminist issues of women’s mental health, ethnicity, and

sexuality. Her work is aesthetically remnant of the Grime art movement, which is a

digital art practice that subverts everyday objects and self-portraiture through a contrasted

and heavily outlined approach, characterized by melts, drips, and graphic imagery.

However, Hill has become successful employing this aesthetic, traditionally dominated

by male artists and masculine motifs, within an inherently feminine form in order to

address feminist issues. As a social activist, Hill has utilized her success to host

embroidery patch workshops around London with young girls as a medium to advocate

body positivity and self care.49 She is highly active on both Instagram and Twitter

49
Hattie Collins, “Hannah Hill Sews Powerful Statements through Embroidery,” i-D Magazine (Vice,
December 6, 2016),
https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/xwdz8q/hannah-hill-sews-powerful-statements-through-embroidery.

28
(@hanecdote), where she uses her platform as an artist to both share her artwork and

engage in political commentary of feminist issues. Through her engagement with social

media, Hill has been able to establish both a platform for her artwork and a feminist

community independent of capitalistic structures of power. As a social influencer, Hill

uses her platform as a tool to incite positive change and bring awareness to feminist and

human rights issues.

Popular UK-based feminist embroidery artist Sophie King utilizes social media to

amass a following and create a platform for herself independent of traditional art

establishments. With almost 200,000 followers on her Instagram account

(@kingsophiesworld) and commissions by the likes of Gwen Stefani, Teen Vogue, and

Refinery29, King uses her platform and artwork to present social-political commentary

on the problems faced by women in daily life.50

King’s series of embroidered roses juxtaposes delicacy and intensity, ephemerality

and permanence, by directly embroidering onto live roses (see Figure 22). This series

through text and imagery, addresses the emotional turmoil of relationship separation upon

live roses, a symbol traditionally given to women as a sign of love and appreciation.

Through the integration of two historical symbols of femininity, these pieces are timeless

while they are ephemeral, powerful while delicate. In much of her work, through

embroidered text, King physically materializes and gives permanence to feminist

sentiments typically engaged with in online spaces, before using her platform to share

these embroideres and reengage with these issues.

50
Sophie King, “ABOUT,” SOPHIE KING, accessed March 12, 2021,
https://kingsophiesworld.co.uk/pages/about.

29
 Subversive Cross Stitch was founded by Julie Jackson in 2003 in a witty response

to encountering traditional sampler designs. Jackson began publishing books featuring

cross stitch patterns of feminist witticisms in 2006, such as “Subversive Cross Stitch: 50

F*cking Clever Designs for Your Sassy Side,” Her publications, kits, and merchandise

have been sold by popular retailers such as Urban Outfitters, Target, fab.com, and blue Q,

as well as being featured in articles by magazines such as Bust, Venus, Nylon, and

Readymade.51

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Jackson created and disseminated a free PDF

cross-stitch patterns, amassing thousands of downloads and creating a community of

women on social media sharing their works and practices (see Figure 23). Through this,

these women have reclaimed cross-stitch within the domestic space as a feminist practice

while creating an international community of feminist needleworkers during a time of

stay-at-home orders and domestic isolation.

Third wave feminist artists employ needlework and new media practices as a

means of reclaiming history and advocating for future political change. Through new

avenues such as social media, third wave feminist artists are able to reject capitalist

consumer culture and internationally and interculturally build community:

Instagram embroidery accounts and craftivism groups allow women to opt out of
environmentally and socially damaging production cycles, and connect with a
heritage of female labor and community52

This opportunity afforded by social media to build an inclusive, diverse community

independent of geographic location and class status enhances the ability of third wave

51
Julie Jackson, “About Subversive Cross Stitch,” About Subversive Cross Stitch | Subversive Cross Stitch,
accessed March 17, 2021, https://shop.subversivecrossstitch.com/pages/about-us.
52
Wendy Syfret, “How Women Are Changing the World with Textiles,” i-D Magazine (Vice, November 14,
2016), https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/papevm/how-women-are-changing-the-world-with-textiles.

30
feminists to collectivize and push their aims of broadened inclusivity independent of

patriarchal, capitalistic structures.

The heightened visibility of crafting on the internet broadens the works beyond a

material phenomenon, encouraging viewers to perceive them beyond their tactility and

representations, to their subjectification processes and social value.53 This integration of

old and new media practices reflect the ideals emphasized by third-wave feminism of

intersectionality and inclusivity. The DIY needlework culture blossoming within online

spaces also challenges the gendered binary of masculinity/digital culture and

feminity/fabriculture. By challenging this binary, modern feminist artists are breaking

down stereotypes around gender and artistic medium.

53
Jack Z Bratich and Heidi M Brush, “Fabricating Activism,” Utopian Studies 22, no. 2 (2011): p. 233,
https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.22.2.0233, 246.

31
CONCLUSION

The industrialization of needlework beginning with the commercialization of

Opus Anglicanum embroideries transferred the production and sale of embroideries from

women to patriarchal structures within tightly-controlled guild workshops. Through the

mass production and circulation that resulted, needlework became devalued as art and

grew into a utilitarian consumer product or viewed as a lesser craft. The gendering and

devaluation of needlework was heightened during the Renaissance through the

establishment of separate academies for women’s craft and men’s fine art. These

patriarchal structures of power excluded all needlework and textile art from the Fine Arts,

while critics and literature established social constructs of the artist which further

excluded women.

During the Victorian era, embroidery and femininity became increasingly

synonymous. At the same time embroidery was used as a tool to educate women, it was

also used to reinforce patriarchal constructs of femininity of domesticity, passivity, and

subservience. As reflected in popular literature, needlework was viewed as a reflection of

a woman's femininity and as a symbol of her agency. However, needlework also became

a means of feminist resistance, subversion, and political power as exemplified by the

character Madam DeFarge in A Tale of Two Cities and within early sampler verse

alterations; although still confined to the domestic sphere, needlework allowed women to

express a passive form of agency.

The first wave of the feminist movement in the UK and the US utilized

needlework as a means for Suffragists to gather, organize, and voice their political aims.

They utilized needlework to stitch their political protest banners, elevating the status of

32
these objects through their durability and aesthetic beauty. Suffragists also employed

embroidery to record their history, from handkerchiefs detailing their protests to found

objects documenting their imprisonment.

Feminists in the early 20th century also advocated for the elevation of embroidery

within the arts, seeking to deconstruct the patriarchal structures which had excluded their

works from the Fine Arts, such as the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists. Even female

artists entrenched within masuline-dominated art movements, such as Hannah Hӧch,

addressed the importance of the evolution of embroidery for the evolution of the social

and political status of women.

Commercial interests continued to reinforce Victorian-esque ideals of embroidery

and femininity. The primary distinction between associations of femininity and

embroidery between the Victorian era and early 20th century was that the former

established embroidery as a universal symbol for femininity, while the latter established

embroidery as an individualized expression of femininity. The promotion and

glorification of embroidery as women’s domestic leisure stood in stark contrast to the

progressive use of embroidery as a means of feminine collectivization and political

power.

The second wave feminist movement established the personal as political, seeking

to bring women’s issues into the light by making the private, public. In this, artists

continued to fight for the elevation of textile arts and used this media to publicly address

issues of rape, pregnancy, menstruation, and homemaking. This period also saw an

increase in feminist art critics and scholars who wrote and organized exhibits seeking to

reclaim women’s embroidery as fine art. Needlework became an instrument of feminist

33
collectivization and expression within the arts, such as Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party.

Projects like Feministo created a collective platform for everyday women to create, share,

and display their embroideries, creating community while providing women an identity

beyond their domestic roles. Through their gallery display, these projects elevated both

the artistic status of embroidery and the women from domestic laborer to artist.

Embroidery continued to be utilized as a feminine means of subversion and

political expression during the late 1970s. Chilean Arpilleras utilized embroidery to

bypass strict censorship laws under a military dictatorship, collectivizing and sharing the

atrocities faced by their communities with the world. The Greenham Women’s Peace

camp utilized suffragist practices of stitched protest banners in combination with physical

occupation of patriarchal military structures. The needlework from both of these

feminine-driven political movements later became artworks within gallery exhibitions.

The second wave feminist movement saw women forming communities to create and

disseminate their needlework publically in order to meet their political aims and allow

their voices to be heard. While the Chilean Arpilleras created their works covertly, this

subversive deployment of needlework allowed their communities voices to be heard by

an international audience.

The third wave feminist movement places an emphasis on sexually and racially

inclusive constructs of femininity while advocating for women’s collective advancement

in the public sphere. Needlework has been reclaimed by both artists and everyday women

as a feminist, rather than feminine, practice. Often drawing on historical motifs and

associations with femininity

34
 Within the fine arts, women reclaim the history of needlework to dismantle old

constructs of femininity while advocating for third-wave feminist ideals of inclusivity

and sexual agency.

The internet and social media platforms have provided needlework artists the opportunity

to establish themselves independent of patriarchal power structures while creating

international communities for women to politically collectivize. Contemporary feminist

needlework reclaims embroidery as object of women’s domestic leisure independent of

patriarchal structures and markets while being politically feminist in content.

35
AFTERWORD: Materiality and Technology

The feminization of tactile, material artistic mediums such as embroidery, quilting,

and needlework is often incongruent with the present-day dominance of digital culture and

technological forms of artistic expression. Although some needlework artistics have

integrated their practice with digital aesthetics and platforms, there still exists a gaping

duality between the tactile and the technological. As the prevalence and domination of

digital culture rose throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, the representation of female artists

and feminine ideals operating within this space was and largely still is marginalized.

Although some female artists have integrated materiality with digital and robotic

technologies, these artists are currently few and far between, and their representation

within gallery spaces is extremely sparse.

The history of digital culture is and remains inherently masculine as both a

male-dominated professional and artistic field. Despite pushes for women and girls to

enter technological studies and professions and the rapid growth of jobs available within

this sector, the rate at which women are pursuing degrees and careers in these fields has

declined over recent decades.54 Within digital art exhibitions and festivals, a 2018 study

of 2076 total artists found that women artists comprised only 22% of exhibitors, 83% of

which reported experiencing discrimination within their field.55

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Cyberfeminist movement advocated for

women to challenge digital culture. The 1992 “Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st

54
In 1997, 28% of those graduating with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science were women, while in 2016 it
was only 19%.# As of 2020, women comprise only 19% of entry-level tech positions and 10% of executive
positions, while earning less on average. Data taken from “The Latest Statistics on Women in Technology,”
ISEMAG (ICT Solutions and Education, November 1, 2020),
https://www.isemag.com/2020/10/telecom-the-latest-stats-on-women-in-tech/. and N. Georgiou, “Gender
inequality and the digital arts: How do sexism and gender biases influence female digital artists” (2018).
55
N. Georgiou, “Gender inequality and the digital arts: How do sexism and gender biases influence female
digital artists” (2018)

36
Century” by the VNS Matrix collective argued the female body as site of destruction

under patriarchal technology, aiming to marginalize the masculine grip on technology by

“delineating computing in and through the female body and female pleasure,”56 In

popular digital media such as commercials, television, and video games, the female body

is often corrupted by patriarchal entities as a marketing device, i.e. “sex sells.” Through

women themselves integrating female sexuality within technological spaces, women can

reclaim agency over their autonomy and bodies. This is also intersectional with feminist

Afrofuturist reconstructions of the female body. Today, new media feminist artists

reclaim the sexuality by asserting agency over their own bodies by visually and

physically integrating the female body with technology. Although I was unable to find

artists who specifically incorporated needlework and robotics, progressive contemporary

female artists such as Liliane Lijn’s 2016 Spinning Dolls (Figure 24) have integrated

technology and textile, marrying Third-Wave feminist and Cyberfeminist ideals and

old/new media integration.

This research informed my own studio practice. In conjunction with this essay, I

constructed a pair of interactive robotic sculptures incorporating patchwork, embroidered

textiles titled Bloom (Figure 25). Through research into the history of women’s

needlework as political device and fine art, observation of statistical trends on the ways in

which women have been set back by the COVID-19 pandemic, and robotic technologies,

these sculptures utilize both a historical and contemporary framework to marry

traditionally feminine (embroidery) and cutting-edge, masculine-dominated (robotics)

media within the arts.

56
Jennifer Way, “Digital Art at the Interface of Technology and Feminism,” (A Companion to Digital Art,
John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2016), 198.

37
 The textiles used were found at a flea market and are hand-sewn patchwork silk

scarves with linear embroidery running their lengths. Each fragment of these scarves

carries its own history; these fragments are in a variety of colors and show patterns

popular within a wide spectrum of cultures. I think of each of these pieces like individual

women, the pieces sewn together with pieces of similar color and complementary pattern

to form each scarf: their cultural feminine lineage. Overlaid with a linear embroidery

pattern, the needlework fortifies the strength and unification of these fragments. I then

sewed three scarves together for each sculpture, marrying the individual scarves into a

singular textile, representative of a universal feminine.

These ceiling-suspended sculptures are an abstract emulation of the rose, which

bloom over the viewer as they are walked beneath. In many cultures and especially

within needlework, the rose serves as a symbol of love, resilience, vitality, and female

sexuality. Bloom synthesizes my passions for juxtaposing old and new media forms,

feminist themes, and interactivity. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, this project is a love

letter to the genealogy of women who mend themselves, their families, and their

communities.

38
FIGURES

39
Figure 1: Unknown, Sampler, 1650-1700

40
41
42
Figure 2: Mary Linwood, Salvator Mundi after Carlo Dolci, 1798

43
Figure 3: Mary Linwood, Tygress, 1798

44
Figure 4: Sol Eytinge Jr., Monsieur and Madame Defarge, 1867

45
Figure 5: Museum of London, Votes for Women Souvenir & Official Programme, 1908

46
Figure 6: Museum of London, Great Law Abiding Women’s Suffrage pilgrimage Great
Demonstration in Hyde Park and service in St Paul's Cathedral, Saturday and Sunday,
July 26th & 27th, 1913

47
Figure 7: Cassie Wilcox, Needlework panel, 1911

48
Figure 8: Tennessee Virtual Archive, Jeanette Acklen with suffrage banner, 1948

49
Figure 9: Tennessee State Museum, suffrage banner, 1920

50
Figure 10: Clarence Hudson White, Ring Toss, 1899

51
Figure 11: Hannah Hӧch, Bewacht, 1925

52
Figure 12: New York City WPA War Service, Remember Pearl Harbor / Purl Harder,

1942

53
Figure 13: artist(s) unknown, Invasión de Sinchis a Cangallo, ≈1977

54
Figure 14: artist(s) unknown, Women under arrest (Invasión de Sinchis a Cangallo, upper
section), ≈1977

55
Figure 15: artist(s) unknown, Women under arrest (Invasión de Sinchis a Cangallo, lower
left section), ≈1977

56
Figure 16: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1975-1979

57
Figure 17: Lynn Malcom, Why have we so few great women artists?, 1985

58
Figure 18: Jannis Jeffries, Home of the Brave?, 1986

59
Figure 19: Alicia Ross, Untitled (The Purse), 2013

60
Figure 20: Sarah-Joy Ford, Honourable Discharge, 2019

61
Figure 21: Hannah Hill, untitled (via Twitter @hanecdote), 2016

62
Figure 22: Sophie King, embroidered "never forgive, always forget" real roses, 2018

63
Figure 23: various via Instagram- courtesy of subversivecrossstitch.com , Nevertheless
She Persisted, 2018

64
Figure 24: Liliane Lijn, Spinning Dolls, 2016

65
Figure 25: Lilith Haig, Bloom, 2021

66
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73