Wakges: Embroidery Design by Mabel B Keighley

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Embroidery Design by Mabel B Keighley

Illustration: Mabel B Keighley. Applique embroidery panel, 1899.

In 1899 the National Competition of Schools of Art, an annual competition was held at the South Kensington Museum, the future Victoria and Albert Museum. It was held every summer and was a means in which many regional art colleges and schools could introduce their students work to the London public. It served a number of purposes including much needed publicity for the individual colleges concerned as well as the chance for students to gain a mention in specific publications such as The Studio magazine, which covered the event every year. However, perhaps more importantly, there was always the possibility of a commission or assignment with a company, which could well start a potentially long and fruitful career.

The first illustration for this article shows an applique embroidery by Mabel B Keighley which was shown at the summer exhibition for the last year of the nineteenth century. Keighley was a student at Plymouth Technical School, which had been accepting students since 1892. Her entry was thought striking enough to get a mention in The Studio magazine and therefore a welcome publicity coupe for both Plymouth and Keighley.

Although being very much a late nineteenth century design with elements of ornamental Art Nouveau styling, particularly in the woman's costume, the subject matter owes its allegiance and origin to William Morris. Keighley used a quote from Morris collection of poems under the title The Defence of Guenevere in which Guenevere admits to and then analyses her guilt. The quote which was used as a banner of sorts across the top of Keighley's embroidery, read as

Under the may she stoop'd to the crown,

All was gold, there was nothing of brown;

And the horns blew up in the hall at noon,

Two red roses across the moon.

Guenevere and Lancelot obviously share a moment of pleasure and guilt, but this is perhaps not the crux of the decorative piece. It has much more to do with decoration, pattern and accomplishment. Unfortunately, it cannot be seen in colour although The Studio magazine does assure us that the embroidery was both 'rich and luminous in colour'.

Fortunately, for both Keighley and Plymouth, this was not the only moment that The Studio magazine found to praise the work of Keighley. Four years later The National Competition of Schools of Art came around again and Keighley's embroidered entry, which is the second illustration in this article, was praised by the magazine despite the fact that it considered entries in the needlework genre to be particularly bad, or at least nondescript for 1903.

Illustration: Mabel B Keighley. Applique embroidery hanging, 1903.

Although The Studio considered Keighley's 1903 applique embroidery entry, of which there were two, to be ambitious, which often denotes a less than satisfactory outcome, it also called her work 'praiseworthy' and therefore it can be considered that her work was both liked and admired by the magazine. This 1903 embroidered piece does show a progression in Keighley's creative journey with her work, appearing much paired down to the 1899 example, even appearing to have a distinct contemporary graphic quality. Although this was present in her earlier Guenevere example, particularly when considering the body of both Lancelot and his horse, the 1903 entry, although still inspired by the medieval and to some extent possibly even Morris, though not overtly so, the composition apart from the hem of the woman's dress, is bereft of any obvious decoration or ornament. Much of the piece is made up of simple lines and this makes all the more effective, particularly when considering some of the more interesting contemporary developments in the decorative arts of 1903.

Unfortunately, I have no further word of Keighley after 1903. I don't know if she carried on with her embroidery work after she left college, it would be a shame if she didn't as she showed true promise and was developing creatively into an accomplished and potentially experimental artist that could well have taken the medium of embroidery along an interesting and diverse path. If anyone does have information as to the life of Mabel B Keighley, I would love to hear from them.

Further reading links:

Hand Appliqué with Embroidery

The Art of Elegant Hand Embroidery, Embellishment and Applique