Ann Macbeth and the Glasgow Embroidery Style

Illustration: Front cover of Ann Macbeth and the Glasgow Embroidery Style.

A new year and a new ebook from The Textile Blog. 

This particular title explores the embroidery style and teaching methods of one of the most important members of embroidery craft in Europe of the twentieth century and certainly the most important in Glasgow. Ann Macbeth ran the embroidery department at the Glasgow School of Art from the departure of the former head Jessie Newbery in 1908 until 1920 when she in turn departed, being replaced by Ann Knox Arthur. 

Macbeth firmly believed in the economic and creative empowerment of women and therefore the education of girls in practical independence as well as self-belief through individual creativity was always a main concern of hers. She firmly believed that the craft of embroidery which was seeing a contemporary rejuvenation under the guidance of the Glasgow School of Art, could be fostered to both direct and sustain an independent lifestyle for women.

Illustration: Sample pages from Ann Macbeth and the Glasgow Embroidery Style.

Ann Macbeth and the Glasgow Embroidery Style covers both her own personal and individual creative work as well as that of her wider educational remit, both of which were equally important in their own way towards the history of twentieth century embroidery and craft. Macbeth was a designer that was very much part of what was known as the Glasgow Style which came to prominence in the early twentieth century. She was a name that was known well in both Scotland and Europe for her contemporary view of embroidery, a craft that was often seen as being more attached to its own traditions than that of the modern. However, it is perhaps her incorporation of contemporary embroidery within the education system, as well as the creative freedom that went hand in hand with the modern, that is perhaps one of her most important legacies. 

Her innate belief in the natural independence of women, along with her equally firm belief in the creative ability of every individual is perhaps a contribution to the world of embroidery and of craft, which is still very with us today.

Illustration: Sample pages from Ann Macbeth and the Galsgow Embroidery Style.

Chapter headings include: Embroidery Through Education, Educational Needlecraft 1911, Ecclesiastical Embroideries and Macbeth as Designer. The book has 50 pages and 31 illustrations in a variety of colour and black and white.

Ann Macbeth and the Glasgow Embroidery Style, along with previous titles: Pugin the Pattern Designer, Nature and Surface Pattern and Islamic Decoration and Ornament can all be purchased from the Ebooks page or by clicking directly on any of the book titles mentioned anywhere in this article, or pressing on one of the book covers on the right hand side of the blog.

I hope that you enjoy the book as I begin to start planning the next one.

Ann Macbeth and Educational Embroidery

Illustration: Ann Macbeth. Embroidered panel, c1906.

Textile design and craft have often been inextricably linked with that of education and particularly that of female education. The movement towards universal education that was so much a part of the social development of the nineteenth century, particularly in North America and Europe, saw textiles enter the classroom. One form of textile craft that took particular root was that of embroidery. Admittedly, it was largely limited to the female school population and many people today see that fact alone as an indictment of extreme discrimination and belligerance of government policy towards women and the role they were to play in society at large. However, there is perhaps a different way of seeing the use that was made of embroidery in schools during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that is perhaps a little more balanced, if still not entirely palatable to our twenty-first century reasoning.

That brings me quite aptly to Ann Macbeth. While writing the ebook Ann Macbeth and the Glasgow Embroidery Style which should be available before the end of the year, I kept thinking about some of the reasoning behind why Macbeth felt so passionately that embroidery was and should be such an important part of a girl's education. Macbeth, although a teacher and head of the embroidery department at the Glasgow School of Art in the early years of the twentieth century, was also involved in the training of state education teaching staff in embroidery. She was also particularly keen to incorporate embroidery learning skills within the school system as early as possible. This was not, in her estimation, to bring up generation after generation of young women who had good domestic skills as accomplished home embroiderers, but had much to do with ideas concerning the empowerment of women.

Illustration: Ann Macbeth. Curtain with applique border, c1910.

This may sound very strange coming from the perspective of the traditions of embroidery, which although not entirely part of the world of women, men were involved in a number of ways in embroidery over the centuries, it is indicative of the traditions of the female craft sphere, as are many of the textile crafts. However, Macbeth saw embroidery as a means of women empowering themselves through at least a modicum of financial independence and security. During her teaching period embroidery was still considered a potentially profitable employment route for women. Although there were a number of difficulties with the intermittence of low wages, middle men and the fickle consumer market, women could potentially earn a living if they were accomplished enough. This seems to have been one of the main reasons that Macbeth was so convinced that girls should start with embroidery at such an early age. She reasoned that even if they chose never to sew another stitch after they left school, they would have had years of experience from their school years on which to fall back if they should hit straightened times. The fact that women were often economically vulnerable was an acute awareness of Macbeth.

One of the most important developments of the twentieth century, at least for much of North America and Europe, was the gradual unravelling of the domination of men in all forms of life. While there is obviously still a long way to go, even though many men in North America and Europe are convinced that everything is now hunky dory, it clearly isn't, one of the most important aspects of female independence has to be financial. Although women such as Macbeth were convinced that gaining the vote for example, was a pressing and focused goal, many in the suffragette movement were concerned that by concentrating on such a focused and contained achievement, men would eventually hand over the vote leaving women with little but that vote. It has to be remembered for example that men would dominate, and in many cases still do, the selection of candidates for election, so women could have the vote but only vote for men, thereby negating many of the issues that women wanted to be on the public agenda. In this respect, the suffragette movement was more than a movement for short term political gain and much more to do with the longer term goal of true independence for women to run their lives within or without relationships with men, as fully independent and secure. 

Illustration: Ann Macbeth. Embroidered table mat, c1906.

Macbeth saw this in her own way as the role that embroidery could at least partially play amongst the female population. If a woman, before or after marriage, could produce her own work and earn her own money, then she was an independent figure in the community. If she could then support, through her independence, that community, she would be seen as a vital element, rather than one that was placid, supportive and secondary. One of the important points that Macbeth made concerning the teaching of embroidery within the classroom, was that girls should be encouraged to produce their own pattern work, be capable of understanding colour combinations and tones and be versatile in stitch and composition. In this way women would feel both confident as creative individuals, but also not feel as if they were mere copyists of work supplied by others. In this respect she wanted women to feel as if they could control the entire embroidery process and not just elements. In other words, by encompassing the entire process of the craft, more money could be made, less middle men were needed, and more independence could be accrued for women.

Macbeth realised that this was not necessarily a golden route to fame, fortune and the complete independence of womankind. There were numerous problems that sometimes seemed insurmountable, particularly with a social framework that had been stagnant and entrenched for so long, so that both men and women would have to remove themselves from the framework to even see the framework itself. However, it was the idea of even an element of personal independence that was important to Macbeth and if she could achieve that through the teaching of embroidery through the school system, then it was worth doing, even if only a few women were able to stand alone if they chose to and in that she should be commended

Further reading links:

Illustrative Work of Jessie M. King

Illustration: Jessie Marion King. Illustration to Poems of Shelley, 1907.

Jessie Marion King was a Scottish artist and illustrator who produced much of her more memorable work in the early years of the twentieth century. Although she is mainly known for her illustrative work during the early period of the twentieth century, she also produced textile work including batik in which she was quite extensively committed well into the 1920s, as well as embroidery. She had been both a student and teacher at Glasgow School of Art and was one of the artists and designers that helped to cement the unique style that Glasgow was to call its own, a combination of Arts and Crafts practicalities and Art Nouveau aesthetics.

The illustrative piece by King that is given as an example in this article was published in 1907. It was part of an edition of Shelley's poetry and bears the text at the bottom of her illustration: 

...until thine azure sister of the spring shall blow her clarion o'er the dreaming earth...

The poem is Ode to the West Wind and the illustration produced by King was just one of a set that were beautifully and creatively engineered by her in order to appear both ethereal and yet to have significant strength in order to reflect the art of poetry to both change and reflect imagination. King was particularly good at producing illustrative work that carefully balanced itself between confident artistic expression and delicate poetic imagination. She was said by many of her contemporary critics to have taken her work beyond the mere reflection of the books she illustrated. It was suggested that her own creative work added to the full complement of a book, implying that the publication may well have been the poorer without her contribution.

Interestingly, two of the early books that King illustrated were by William Morris who, like many of her generation, she saw as a combination of mentor, originator and guide. The Wood Beyond the World and Defence of Guinevere were books that were both steeped in the Arts and Crafts Movement as well as the earlier medieval revival that poured into and inevitably influenced the craft movement in both England and Scotland for much of the nineteenth century. However, there were other influences outside of the remit of Morris and his movement that were equally compelling and intriguing to King and her generation, though would perhaps have trouble the sensibilities of Morris.

A number of critics drew comparisons between the work of King and that of Aubrey Beardsley. She was by no means unique in this comparison and it is interesting that many of the artists and designers of the Glasgow movement were also linked with Beardsley, particularly Margaret and Frances MacDonald. While there is indeed a layer of Beardsley's influence across the work of a number of King's contemporaries, it can only ever be said to have been one of the influences, but not necessarily an overriding one.

King is an interesting artistic expression of the coming together, even overlapping, of two worlds. Both of these worlds rarely saw a commonality, but in many ways they were indelibly linked. Those two worlds were the English and Scottish Arts and Crafts movement and the European based Art Nouveau. The expression of the physical and observational parameters of nature encased in the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, along with the more cerebral imaginations of nature beyond its physical limitations as often expressed in the wider parameters of the Art Nouveau movement, particularly in literature and music, seem to come together effortlessly in Kings illustrative work. In some ways she was a creative artist that had gone beyond the immediate and the home-grown, beyond the mental limitations of the Arts and Crafts movement, towards the expanded universe of Art Nouveau and its dependency on the fantastical, or at least beyond the everyday imaginations of most. It is this movement beyond the roots of the native and practical Arts and Crafts that spells the change in emphasis and mental space that creative artists had occupied within the England and Scotland for so much of the nineteenth century.

On a more practical level, it is interesting to note that King produced textile work in tandem with her illustrative. More interesting still is that fact that at least a proportion of that textile work was embroidery. Drawing with embroidery was a skill she held in common with a number of the new creatives during the early years of the twentieth century. This freedom of movement gave embroidery a wider artistic remit, allowing compositions to go beyond the traditions of the craft. That artists and designers took the initiative and produced work that could be both complex and simplistic, depending on attitude taken towards line, gave greater freedom of expression and helped extend the parameters of the craft into that of the fine art world. King herself produced line work in both illustration and embroidery; it is tempting therefore to wonder how much each discipline influenced the other. Either way, King produced an astounding confidence in her work and was rightly admired for both her individual creative direction, as well as her ability to reflect the sensibilities and sensitivity of the new century.

Further reading links: