Illustration: Florence Jessie Hosel. Hand embroidered artwork, c1908.
Florence Jessie Hosel was in many respects part of a new breed of embroiderer. She was able to take a domestic craft and engineer it through various innovative means into one that was considered by many throughout Europe and beyond, as bordering on a fine art medium. Although Hosel was by no means the first individual to be seen as an art embroiderer and the designation art embroidery itself had been used relatively extensively throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. She was a practitioner that highlighted the potential of needlecraft to be much more than the domestic craft it was often associated with.
Hosel considered herself an art embroiderer; in fact, she would know doubt have been happy with the modern designation of textile artist. She produced work that became famous and highly lucrative not only in her native Germany, but also throughout Europe, North America and beyond. Her work inspired others and was in some ways at least a foundation for which the reputations of later generations of textile and mixed artists were built.
Illustration: Florence Jessie Hosel. Hand embroidered artwork, c1906.
Hosel worked entirely in freestyle, meaning that she did not plan or use any form of cartoon or preliminary drawing. In fact, she worked on a blank, usually linen background, with no guide, which was considered at the time to be extraordinary. She also quickly came to the conclusion that her use of bought threads severely limited her work and more importantly her creative expression. Therefore, she took to dyeing her own threads whereby she could arrange colours and tones in a variety that suited her own needs, particularly when it came to expressing the colour tones of the natural world.
Although only one of the five illustrations of Hosel's work is in colour, the subtlety of tone approached in that colour example gives ample evidence of the artists light touch. She had an innate understanding not just of the practicalities of nature but as many quoted at the time, an understanding of the spirit of nature. Although, as also noted at the time, Hosel lacked the correct artistic training so that her use of perspective was imaginative and her general compositional style bordered on the immature at times, she was however, placed firmly into the mould of the primitive artist of the fourteenth century and was therefore considered to be producing a unique contemporary rendering of an antique style. Many German critics even saw her work as being that of the original fine art as they theorised that tapestry and embroidery had been crafts long before the development of fine art painting in Europe.
Illustration: Florence Jessie Hosel. Hand embroidered artwork, c1908.
She was considered unique in other ways, particularly in her use of materials, but also in the fact that she took a decidedly different route within embroidery to other names that had made the craft one of the leading areas of contemporary decoration. Jessie King, Jessie Newbery and Ann Macbeth were considered leaders in their day of contemporary embroidery and other textile based crafts. However, much of their work was pattern led, with very little being produced in the vein of Hosel. It was in fact Hosel that popularised the concept of embroidery moving beyond the bounds of the traditions of pattern work. She was accepted by many critics in Germany as a fine artist, rather than a form of creative artist limited to a craft level.
Illustration: Florence Jessie Hosel. Hand embroidered artwork, c1908.
Hosel's work was shown extensively in galleries and museums across Germany and she was fated as one of Germany's most innovative textile artists. Her work was considered innovative and spontaneous because of the lack of pre-planning in any stage of production. Her needle was both her pencil and artists brush. It is perhaps the delicacy of that needle that is the most obvious example that links all five illustrations of her work shown in this article. Hosel had a keen interest in all forms of Japanese art, decoration and craft and this is evident in some of her more ethereal landscapes. However, Hosel was by no means a pastiche artist who copied Japanese themes with little or no evidence of her creativity. Her landscapes are those of Germany, not Japan and she obviously had an intimate and innate understanding of those landscapes, which is why they proved so effective and popular throughout Germany.
Illustration: Florence Jessie Hosel. Hand embroidered artwork, c1908.
Hosel's work seems largely forgotten in our contemporary world. Considering that these five examples of her work were produced within the first decade of the twentieth century, her unique understanding of the power of embroidery is all the more astounding. Her innovations within the realm of embroidery have been lost within the larger twentieth century textile art world. However, it seems as if Hosel could be seen as a link between the traditions of embroidery and textile craft in general and the more liberalising world of fine art and its sensibilities. That she paved the way for at least a limited broadening of the parameters of both fine art and textiles, is perhaps her legacy.
Reference links:
The Art of Embroidery: Inspirational Stitches, Textures, and Surfaces
Freestyle Machine Embroidery: Techniques and Inspiration for Fiber Art
The Art & Embroidery of Jane Hall: Reflections of Nature
Creative Art of Embroidery
Painting with a Needle: Learning the Art of Silk Embroidery with Young Yang Chung
The Art of Oriental Embroidery
Art of Embroidery: History of Style and Technique
The Timeless Art of Embroidery (Helen Stevens' Masterclass Embroidery)
Art in Needlework: A Book About Embroidery
Painted with Thread: The Art of American Embroidery
Drawn to Stitch: Line, Drawing, and Mark-Making in Textile Art
The New Crewel: Exquisite Designs in Contemporary Embroidery
Celebrating the Stitch: Contemporary Embroidery of North America
Contemporary Embroidery: Exciting and Innovative Textile Art
The Encyclopedia of Embroidery Techniques: A Comprehensive Visual Guide to Traditional and Contemporary Techniques
