“She who would refine the fabric:” Contexts for Reading the Embroidering and Writing of Florence Farr and Una Taylor

Abstract

Both Florence Farr and Una Taylor were Arts and Crafts embroiderers and writers whose work was published in John Lane’s avant-garde “Keynotes” series in the eighteen nineties. This essay identifies the contexts within which their work can be most helpfully examined, beginning with representations of embroidering in another of John Lane’s publications from the mid-eighteen nineties, The Yellow Book. Themes established through a consideration of this magazine’s visual and literary content are then related to the preoccupations of the Aesthetic movement as it emerged alongside the growing popularity of embroidery from the eighteen seventies onwards. Texts by Lucy Crane, Rhoda and Agnes Garrett and Janey Campbell are discussed as representative of the ongoing significance of “art embroidery” for the Arts and Crafts movement and a developing aestheticism. Against this background, Florence Farr and Una Taylor are considered as female embroiderers associated with the Morris family business whose literary works suggest both the questioning of established mores and a continued adherence to ritualism and medievalism. These apparently contradictory emphases can be seen as presaging early 20th century debates about the function of literature and embroidery.