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Panel
Frances Mary Templeton - Enlarge image
Panel
- Place of origin:
England, Great Britain (made)
- Date:
ca. 1892 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Frances Mary Templeton (embroiderer)
Leek Embroidery Society (designer)
Sir Thomas and Arthur Wardle Ltd. (maker) - Materials and Techniques:
Embroidered silk with coloured silk and gold threads
- Credit Line:
Given by Miss A. T. Anderson
- Museum number:
T.38-1953
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 125c, case 2
This is a panel of Leek Embroidery in silk worked by Frances Mary Templeton in 1892. The Leek Embroidery Society was founded by Elizabeth Wardle (1834-1902), wife of Thomas Wardle, the silk dyer and printer of Leek in Staffordshire. The style was formed to take advantage of the skills of local embroiderers and was adopted throughout Britain.
This example was said to have been embroidered by Frances Mary Templeton from Helensburgh in Scotland whose brother-in-law owned the firm of Anderson & Robertson. This firm produced the silk used by Thomas Wardle for his printed silks and for the ground of Leek embroidery.
Leek embroidery (as it became known) involved embroidering over the top of printed textiles produced in the Wardle factory. The style demanded a high standard of workmanship and a clever interpretation of the complex designs. The style is characterised by the use of toning pastel silks highlighted with Japanese gold threads.
This example is worked in satin and stem stitches, with laid and couched thread. The pattern of this embroidery shows the influence of early 18th-century printed chintzes of the type made in South India on the Coromandel coast. It is also similar to embroideries worked in India during the second half of the 19th century for the western market. These became very popular in England and were sold through fashionable shops such as Liberty's.
