Studio: international art (27.1903)

The Work of Ann Macbeth

companionship with Penelope and find them-
selves at home in the company of those
Mediaeval artists, whether ecclesiastical or lay,
whose needles have made history and whose
efforts are to be met with in the sacristy of the
church, among the treasures of the castle and
house, or more fully given to the world as
forming part of the collections of our various
museums. But we have in these latter days
lost sight somewhat of that traditional use of
the needle which in not very remote days
brought a personal element to bear upon the
beauty of household surroundings. The do-
mestic supply that existed so fruitfully has been
supplanted by the art needlework emporium.
Formerly no young girl's education was judged
to be completed until she had worked her sampler
and had thus added her share to the accepted
"table .mat" designed by ann macbetii tradition of needlework, and carried it a generation

embroidered by ci.ara bbntlev farther on. For the sampler was a purely tradi-
tional piece of art needlework, whose stitches and
of the needle is not solely confined to the manu- ornament were a heritage transmitted from mother
facture, or even the decoration, of garments, and to daughter; it was rarely ugly, oftentimes was
in the hand of the woman it makes its appeal in very beautiful, and bore on its face a standard of
poetry and has its place in art. As the plough to artistic value that makes it to-day one of the
the peasant or the pen to the writer, so the needle sought-for treasures of the antique collector. And
lives in our sentiments as a personal effect of the the skill thus attained by the young worker was
woman—part of her physical belongings, as it were, an abiding one, and her needle found employ-
and without which life would be incomplete, and ment in a hundred ways that to-day are either
the world a loser of a form of art which
is almost coeval with the existence of
mankind. And the needle bears with it
a dignity of labour that, if it be not greater
than the plough, is yet one that puts it into
the same category of absolute necessities.
For man, if he cannot live without the
plough, can equally as little do without the
labour of the needle. And, to make an-
other comparison, much of the poetry
which comes from the pen is not for
a moment to be compared with those
harmonies of form and colour which owe
their origin to the art of embroidery—the
art by instinct of the woman. And this
'nstinct, whether primitive or inherited,
remains with some women as a constant
quantity — an artistic expression ever
seeking outlet. And among such artists
is Miss Ann Macbeth, whose works illus-
trate this article. With no one is the
association of the needle and the hand
more close or the results more precious
than with her, and she may fairly be said

' ' 3 . "table mat in satin designed by ann macbeth

to belong to that class of workers who claim embroidered by clara bentley