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Although a large body of needlework has always been attributed to Mary Queen of Scots, little attempt was made to authenticate these pieces or to explain how so energetic and impetuous a woman could have found pleasure in the meticulous craft of embroidery. This is the first comprehensive study of the Queen as a needlewoman describing all the works associated with her. For the first time every piece marked by her cipher or monogram is illustrated in full. A biographical outline provides the framework for understanding her work by setting it in the context of her unsettled and stormy life. It recounts the influence of her formative years in France and her absorption in needlework during the y...
Meticulously embroidered pictures that could be framed and displayed formed a part of a girl's education throughout the Georgian period in Britain (1714-1830). This book explores the subjects and techniques associated with them and also looks briefly at the work produced in American schools. As well as schoolgirls, prominent women such as Miss Morritt, Mrs Knowles and Miss Linwood produced large embroidered pictures to simulate paintings, which although greatly admired at the time are now almost totally neglected. Pictorial needlework also adorned upholstery, chair seats, screens and wall hangings. this book will be a useful handbook for collectors, museum curators and antique dealers, and an inspiration to the modern needleworker.
The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 brings together new work by scholars across the globe, from some of the founding figures in early modern women's writing to those early in their careers and defining the field now. It investigates how and where women gained access to education, how they developed their literary voice through varied genres including poetry, drama, and letters, and how women cultivated domestic and technical forms of knowledge from recipes and needlework to medicines and secret codes. Chapters investigate the ways in which women's writing was an integral part of the intellectual culture of the period, engaging with male writers and tradi...
This charming guide gathers together writings on all aspects of British gardening, from the nineteenth century plant hunters such as 'China' Wilson and the Veitches, who brought seeds and specimens from every corner of the world, to the designers such as Capability Brown and Gertrude Jekyll, who set their mark on gardening styles. In pieces written by the paper's stellar list of gardening correspondents - Vita Sackville-West, Penelope Hobhouse, Monty Don, Carol Klein, not to mention Christopher Lloyd, the grand old man of British gardening - it explores our dedication to the growing garden. And, with stories about the restoration of the Lost Gardens of Heligan, the building of the great glasshouses at Chatsworth, and the preservation work carried out a Kew, it paints a picture of how history can be unearthed through gardening and emphasises how important it is to preserve our green-fingered heritage. Coming right up to the present day with pieces on the advances at the Eden project, Notes on the Garden is the perfect bedside companion for anyone who loves the feeling of soil between their fingers.
This collection investigates Queen Elizabeth I as an accomplished writer in her own right as well as the subject of authors who celebrated her. With innovative essays from Brenda M. Hosington, Carole Levin, and other established and emerging experts, it reappraises Elizabeth’s translations, letters, poems and prayers through a diverse range of approaches to textuality, from linguistic and philological to literary and cultural-historical. The book also considers Elizabeth as “authored,” studying how she is reflected in the writing of her contemporaries and reconstructing a wider web of relations between the public and private use of language in early modern culture. Contributions from Carlo M. Bajetta, Guillaume Coatelen and Giovanni Iamartino bring the Queen’s presence in early modern Italian literary culture to the fore. Together, these essays illuminate the Queen in writing, from the multifaceted linguistic and rhetorical strategies that she employed, to the texts inspired by her power and charisma.
Rachel P. Maines’s latest work examines the rise of hobbies and leisure activities in Western culture from antiquity to the present day. As technologies are "hedonized," consumers find increasing pleasure in the hobbies’ associated tools, methods, and instructional literature. Work once essential to survival and comfort—gardening, hunting, cooking, needlework, home mechanics, and brewing—have gradually evolved into hobbies and recreational activities. As a result, the technologies associated with these pursuits have become less efficient but more appealing to the new class of leisure artisans. Maines interprets the growth and economic significance of hobbies in terms of broad consumer demand for the technologies associated with them. Hedonizing Technologies uses bibliometric and retail census data to show the growth in world markets for hobby craft tools, books, periodicals, and materials from the late 18th century to today. The book addresses basic issues in the history of labor and industry and makes an original contribution to the discussion of how technology and people interact.
A comprehensive bibliography and exhibition chronology of the world's greatest museum of the decorative arts and design. The Victoria and Albert Museum, or South Kensington Museum as it used to be known, was founded by the British Government in 1852, out of the proceeds from the Great Exhibition of 1851. Like the Exhibition, it aimed to improve the expertise of designers, and the taste of the public, by exposing them to examples of good design from all countries and periods. 2,500 publications have to date been produced by, for, or in association with the V&A. The National Art Library, which is part of the Museum, has prepared this detailed catalogue, supplemented by a secondary list of 500 other books closely related to the V&A. The 1,500 exhibitions and displays recorded include those held in the main Museum and at its branches, the Bethnal Green Museum (now the National Museum of Childhood) and the Theatre Museum, Covent Garden, and additionally those it has organized at external venues, in Great Britain and abroad. The exhibitions and publications are fully cross-referenced, and there are name, title and subject indexes to the whole work, as well as an explanatory introduction.
Annual publication including essays and reviews of new books which deal with Shakespeare and his age
Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Sept. 16, 2013-Jan. 5, 2014.