| Description | The centrepiece of the Whitelands collection is a leather-bound album, ‘Specimens of Needlework’, the cover stamped ‘K. S. [Kate Stanley] 1902’.
It contains 43 samplers, each mounted on a page bearing its year of production and the name of the student who worked it. With the first stitched in 1877 by E. Winton, and the last by Margaret Burton in 1902, the samplers span the final-year cohorts during Stanley’s 26 years as Head Governess.
The first 24 samplers in ‘Specimens of Needlework’ are approximately 18-21cm wide and 19-22cm high and date from 1877 to 1881. They are principally darning samplers, showing also examples of patching, buttonholes, herringbone, a few decorative stitches and, in the later specimens, a scattering of embroidery.
In Practical Plain Needlework, Annie R. Chamberlain identified three types of darning. ‘Plain darning’, in which ‘the simplest process of weaving is imitated’, is the most familiar and was used to strengthen and repair a multiplicity of fabrics and garments.
‘Swiss darning including stocking-web stitch’ recreates knitted fabric to ‘exactly cover or replace the original threads’. The Whitelands examples are very fine containing upwards of 182 stitches per square centimetre.
Lastly there is ‘pattern darning’ where ‘the groups of threads taken up on the needle and passed over vary according to the pattern of the material to be darned’. Particularly suited to the replication of patterns on damask fabric it was also known as damask darning. The Whitelands samplers contain numerous extraordinarily fine specimens, the stitches worked in a variety of coloured threads on a white or cream ground.
Despite the prevalence of damask darning in the samplers to 1881, Stanley’s 1883 ‘Needlework and Cutting Out’ dismissed it in one sentence, noting that the requisite ‘skill, care, and patience’ meant ‘comparatively few children would be able to accomplish it’.
Sampler expert Jane Toller, having never seen an example of pattern darning used in the repair of antique textiles, suggested the samplers may have been made simply ‘as an exercise in superfine needlework’.
A local newspaper correspondent visiting Whitelands in December 1884 reported that:
‘The specimens shown us were marvels of superlative fineness. Some of the stitches were so tiny, that without a magnifying-glass it seemed hopeless to count them … Specimens of fancy stitches, darning, marking, and of intricate crossing and re-crossing, which could only be accomplished at the rate of about a square inch in one or two hours, were carefully preserved in an album. What a tale of hours and hours of useless labour and waste of eye-sight the book seemed to tell! However, we learnt, with pleasure, that now these useless elaborations and intricacies are modified, and in part abandoned’.
The final 16 samplers in ‘Specimens of Needlework’, dating from 1890-1902, are plain needlework samplers. Still of exceptional quality, they are entirely white – except when the maker’s initials are worked in red as marking practice – devoid of darning, and demonstrate the various techniques needed to make simple garments such as seams, hemming, gathers and tucks. Between these two groups are three ‘transitional’ samplers, dated 1882 and 1883, which, in different ways, show the move from damask darning to plain needlework.
[From https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/16943/1/Remedy%20for%20Rents.pdf] |
| Administrative History | Kate Stanley was the daughter of a slater and plasterer and trained at Whitelands. She began teaching at the College in 1859 and was Head Governess from 1876 until her retirement in 1902.
An excellent needlewoman, her manual for trainee teachers, ‘Needlework and Cutting-Out’ was published in 1883. She dedicated it to: Professor Ruskin, LL.D., who writes, ‘While the plough of the husbandman goes well in the field, and the plough (needle) of the woman goes well at home, the nation will be happy.’
Ruskin clearly subscribed to the Victorian notion of prescribed gender roles with women responsible for the domestic sphere. But he believed girls should be educated and while their education should enable them ‘to make the home a place of beauty and comfort for the warrior’, he thought they should as far as possible study the same subjects as boys.
Needlework was perceived to be an intrinsic element of femininity for nineteenth-century women and girls. In practical terms it was expected that working-class females would make and mend most of the clothing and household linen for their families or, as domestic servants, their employers.
Morally, needlework was believed to instil the desirable female qualities of discipline, patience, modesty and thrift. Many in authority feared that increasing female employment outside the home was eroding domestic skills. Therefore, as the provision of elementary education expanded, needlework gained ever-greater prominence in the girls’ curricula for state-funded schools. ……
In Fors Clavigera Ruskin challenged industrialisation and the Victorian capitalist economy, proposing instead the formation of ‘a neo-medieval agrarian community’ for which the fine needlework produced at Whitelands seemed eminently suited.
For the more pragmatic Stanley, in contrast, needlework was a cornerstone of female working-class morality and domestic economy. ‘Ability to repair skilfully’, she wrote, ‘is an accomplishment which every girl and woman should earnestly covet, if they wish to be thrifty, useful, respectable, and respected members of society.’
[From https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/16943/1/Remedy%20for%20Rents.pdf]
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