Pictorial Embroidery in England: A Critical History of Needlepainting and Berlin Work

(Paperback)

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The little-known art of Berlin Work was once the most commonly practiced art form among European women. Pictorial Embroidery in England is the first academic study of both pictorial Berlin Work and its precursor, needlepainting, exploring their cultural status in the 18th and 19th centuries. From Enlightenment practices of copying to the development of an industrial aesthetic and the making of the modern amateur, Berlin Work developed as an official knowledge associated with notions of cultural and scientific progress. However, with the advent of the Arts and Crafts movement and modernist aesthetics, Berlin Work was gradually demoted to a craft hobby. Delving into the social, cultural and economic context of English pictorial embroidery, Pictorial Embroidery in England recovers Berlin Work as an art form, and demonstrates how this overlooked practice was once at the centre of cultural life.

Reviews

Brilliantly situating embroidery in the paradoxical age of industry, Desnoyers encourages us to rethink assumptions about elite and amateur practices A necessary read for anyone concerned with questions of gender, capitalism and aesthetics in the emergence of modern disciplines. * Tai Smith, University of British Columbia, Canada *
This cogently-argued reassessment of 19th-century pictorial embroidery, fine art and commerce reveals how the art of needlepainting and the subsequent practice of Berlin work involved issues of image production, industrial manufacture, education, cultural value and social mobility. Desnoyers enables us to view this history of embroidery with new understanding. * Victoria Mitchell, Norwich University of the Arts, UK *

Author Bio

Rosika Desnoyers is an artist and holder of a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.