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Across
the GenerationsNovember 2002
In response to your comment about the significant role of cloth in our lives, I am writing about a significant shawl. I did my City & Guilds in Creative Embroidery, followed by an Art Foundation course, after I had chanced upon an exhibition by a local college. This may not be unusual, but the reason I took the plunge was the memory of a shawl embroidered by my grandmother who had died when I was a child. I had worn it for discos as a university student without a further thought, but seeing the exhibition had jogged my memory. I asked my father for more information and discovered that my grandmother had embroidered the shawl as a final piece in her City & Guilds course in the early 1930s. It had been selected for an exhibition at the V&A to which my father, aged 10, was dragged (he is now 80). Apparently Queen Mary, who was interested in the decorative arts, had wanted to buy it, but my grandmother refused to sell - something about the amount of time it had taken to make. However, when the exhibition went on tour around the country, the shawl was stolen from the train and was never recovered. The shawl I have is a copy she made, with just one of the original four corners worked. My grandmother taught all forms of embroidery, lace, tailoring and the like in the Frizinghall area of Bradford, especially after the war when 'make do and mend' was popular. Her name was Annie Carpenter (née Hardcastle). Should anyone be able to shed any light on the exhibition in question or remember her as a person or her work, I would be interested to hear from you.
Anne Ward
AWtextiles@aol.com