Figs. 8-15. Embroidery On Paper.Rainy Day Pastimes For Children. 1910.

Figs. 8-15. Embroidery on paper. Rainy day pastimes for children. 1910.

Don’t tell me embroidery is relaxing.

“By the eighteenth century embroidery was beginning to signify a leisured, aristocratic life style — not working was becoming the hallmark of femininity.” (The Subversive Stitch, Rozsika Parker, 1984: 11)

Women’s work as an oxymoron: if women do it, it cannot be work. Women cannot work, so anything a woman does cannot be work. Therefore, embroidery, actually called ‘work’ by women, cannot be classified as work. It is instead, a leisure pursuit -- assuming one is not paid for it. And one cannot be paid for it because it is not work, cannot be work if it is produced by an upperclass woman. To try and pay her for it -- for her to try and sell it would be to undermine her husband’s fragile masculinity by implying he cannot support her. But all of this is to say nothing of the women who did do embroidery as work, as a living, who did sell their labour. 

I think this is one of the reasons I get irritated by people telling me it must be so relaxing to sew. I don’t find it relaxing. It is work. It is labour and it is my job. I don’t tell other people that their work, their job, the thing they do everyday must be ‘so relaxing’ because that would be an absurd assumption to make. Maybe they do find it relaxing. Or maybe they enjoy it, but don’t find it relaxing because actually it’s hard work and concentration. But it is not my place to assume these things, and of all the questions one could ask about another’s job, whether it is ‘relaxing’ is a strange place to start. What are people implying when they tell me I must find embroidery relaxing? That it’s easy? Unskilled? Requires no concentration? That it’s not work. 

Some people find embroidery relaxing because they do it as a hobby. They do it as a thing which is not their job. Just as some people take up wood-carving as a hobby. But do people tell the professional carpenter that their job must be relaxing because it is considered by others to be a hobby? 

Don’t tell me my job is relaxing. Don’t tell me my job isn’t work. 

Yarisal & Kublitz - Anger Release Machine, 2008

“Experience the most satisfying feeling when a piece of China breaks into million pieces . All you have to do is insert a coin, and a piece of China will Slowly move forwards and fall into the bottom of the machine, breaking, and leaving you happy and relieved of anger.”

According to Rozsika Parker (The Subversive Stitch), since the Victorians associated (or re-associated?) embroidery with women and femininity we have had to argue that what we do is art rather than craft. Women were arguing that embroidery was art in the 17th century. We’re still having to argue for it now. 

Men don’t have to argue anywhere near as hard when they engage in textile work to have it presented as art, because ultimately it is still the case that in much of western society, the same piece of work is primarily considered art or craft depending on the gender of the maker. 

Good luck with the firings, it looks amazing. :O

Coming to life

This afternoon I am giving a talk at UCL about the Stitched Iliad. It is open to the public, if you happen to be in London at around 4.00pm