Latest news with #embroidery
Arab News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Atlas of World Embroidery'
Author: GILLIAN VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD Embroidery is one of the world's most widely shared forms of creative expression—and one of its most varied and diverse. It can be found in every region, yet its visual languages, themes, and techniques vary greatly: Some are marked by unique styles and others show influences from neighboring cultures. 'The Atlas of World Embroidery' examines many distinctive embroidery styles and traditions found across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia.
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gaza refugee artist in Paris embroiders 'pain' on canvas
In her new Paris home, Palestinian artist Maha Al-Daya pulled a needle and thread through material as news for war-torn Gaza blared in the background. "Before the war I used to embroider for happy occasions, but today I stitch away my pain," said the 41-year-old visual artist, who also paints. Daya, her husband and three children -- aged eight, 15 and 18 -- are among several hundreds of Palestinians to have been granted a visa to France since the Gaza war broke in October 2023. Stitch after stitch, Daya embroiders impressions of the war on to drab-coloured material. In one work, she has stitched red thread over most of a map of Gaza to show areas ravaged by now more than 21 months of war. In another, Daya has sewn the Arabic words "Stop the genocide" in black wool. Rights groups, lawyers and some Israeli historians have described the Gaza war as "genocide". Israel, created in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust of Jews during World War II, vehemently rejects the accusation. - From wedding dresses to war - Palestinians have for centuries painstakingly sewn long black dresses and adorned them with stark red embroidery, in designs still worn today in rural areas and at weddings or other celebrations. But today Daya is using it to highlight the suffering of two million Gazans in the latest Israeli bombardment campaign against the besieged Palestinian territory. Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, leading to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Of the 251 people taken hostage that day, 49 are still in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead. Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed 58,895 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. Humanitarian groups say Gaza's population is facing famine-like conditions. In April this year, Daya met French President Emmanuel Macron to show him her work when it was exhibited at the French capital's Arab World Institute. She says she gave him an embroidery bearing the words "Where are we going to go now?" "Everybody is always saying this because we're always being displaced," Daya said. - 'Just a few days' - Daya and her family lived through six months of conflict in Gaza before they were able to escape the Palestinian territory. Just days after the war started, she and her children fled their home in Gaza City -- and its flowered balcony -- with just some clothes stuffed into backpacks. "I thought, it's just for a few days, we'll be back," she said. "We had no idea it would last for so long." They found refuge with friends of a nephew in the southern city of Khan Younis -- people they had never met before but who were incredibly kind to them, she said. But in mid-December, bombardment hit that house, gravely wounding two of her nephews, one of whom had to undergo an amputation. They then lived in a tent for four months. "The cold was unbearable. In winter, rain would come inside," she said. But they had heard of a Cairo-based agency that could put their names on a list so they could leave via the crossing point with Egypt for a fee of $4,000 a person. A Bethlehem artist raised the funds to pay in exchange for future works by her and her husband, also an artist. - 'Difficult to find peace' - In Cairo, she started embroidering. Her husband picked up a paint brush again. "We were like birds who had been freed from their cage," she said. A non-profit set up to help Gaza artists called Maan helped her apply for PAUSE, a French government programme for researchers and artists in need. Her application was accepted by Sciences Po and the Paris-based branch of Columbia University. After nine months in Egypt, the family landed in Paris. Daya started attending French courses in the morning and embroidering in the afternoon. In the evening she joins her family in the university residence where they now live. Yaffa, eight years old, Rima, 15, and Adam, 18, are back in school. "When I arrived here I was happy," she said. "But at the same time, there's a sort on internal pain. While there's still war over there, while people are dying, it's difficult to find peace." rka/ah/jh/giv
SBS Australia
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
Stitching stories and the feminist revival of Greek embroidery in Melbourne
Born in Australia to Greek parents, her mother from Corfu and her father from Katerini, Sonia Zymantas grew up straddling two cultures. 'There was always embroidery in the house,' she recalls. 'It was part of the women's culture." But Sonia avoided the needle and thread. 'I wasn't aspiring to be a housewife,' she told SBS Greek. LISTEN TO But years later, with daughters of her own, the symbolic weight of the needlework found its way back to her as empowerment. Sonia facilitates workshops that use embroidery not only to honour heritage, but to subvert it. What emerges from these sessions is more than textile art but a quiet kind of resistance, a feminist act. Embroidery by participants in a workshop by Sonia Zymantas that took place in June 2025 at the "Demokritos" Labor Union hall in Melbourne / SBS Greek: Panos Apostolou
ABC News
10-07-2025
- General
- ABC News
Children's embroidery reveals lost voices from Australia's early colonial history
Two hundred years ago, a 10-year-old Scottish girl named Margret Begbie threaded her needle. Carefully and precisely she stitched the finishing touches on a piece of embroidery that had occupied her for weeks: a grand house surrounded by birds and trees, great sailing ships and tiny soldiers. But the place she had stitched wasn't Scotland. It wasn't in Europe. It wasn't even a place Margret had seen with her own eyes — so why was she embroidering it? In tiny crosses of woollen threads Margret etched out the words "Botany Bay" above her intricate design. Before colonisation, Kamay — later dubbed Botany Bay by Captain Cook — was a vital waterway for the Gameygal, Bidjigal and Gweagal clans. Not long after Arthur Philip founded a penal colony on its shore in 1788, Botany Bay sparked curiosity in the minds of Britons back home. "The flow of objects, images and descriptions from New South Wales back to Britain formulated an imagined idea of the new colony and the people who lived there," National Museum of Australia curator Laura Cook says. Looking at Margret's work, you would be forgiven for thinking that the information about Australia flowing back to Britain was a bit inaccurate. Rabbits, dogs, peacocks and Scottish heraldic lions populate the landscape in Margret's embroidery, with not a single native animal to be seen. What's more, the piece is framed in Scotch thistles. But to understand why Margret Begbie's "Botany Bay" looks so un-Australian, we need to take an even closer look. In her 2020 book, Needlework and Women's Identity in Colonial Australia, historian Lorinda Cramer points out that although needlework was widely considered a "natural ability" of women and girls in the 19th century, it was in fact a skill that had to be learnt. Girls as young as five were encouraged by their mothers, nannies and teachers to make embroidery samplers to practise their stitching and showcase the variety of decorative motifs they had mastered. The embroidery by Margret Begbie at the National Museum of Australia is one such sampler — and she wasn't the only Scottish girl practising by stitching scenes of Botany Bay. A similar embroidery signed by Euphemia Doieg in 1814 can be found at the National Museum of Scotland, suggesting that there may have been a popular pattern being passed around and copied in this period. The other motifs in Begbie's sampler were likely also copied at the instruction of her tutor. Peacocks, trees and Georgian-style houses were all popular designs in early 19th century embroidery samplers, explaining why so much of Margret's "Botany Bay" piece looks more like an idyllic British countryside scene than coastal New South Wales. Additionally, as curator Laura Cook points out, the "established and industrial character" of the wharf does not align with images and descriptions of Botany Bay from the period, leading her to suggest that it is possible the scene shows ships departing for Botany Bay, rather than arriving. It's easy to imagine that girls' education in the 19th century was confined to "feminine" skills like sewing and cooking. But some of these surviving embroidery samplers reveal that women's education wasn't always as restricted as we might assume. For one, the repeated alphabets seen in many of these samplers suggest the girls who made them were literate. What's more, a trend that arose over the late 18th and early 19th centuries saw women embroidering maps of the world, broadening their geographical knowledge. One particularly fascinating example is a map at the Australian National Maritime Museum depicting the voyages of Captain Cook, thought to have been made by his widow, Elizabeth. Ten-year-old Margret's scene of Botany Bay may have been inspired by the geographical trends in early-19th-century embroidery. Perhaps she based her design on descriptions of the new colony that had made their way back to Britain. Perhaps she had a family connection to Australia or heard stories of Botany Bay firsthand. Or perhaps, as Lorinda Cramer suggests, Margret was instructed to stitch this scene as "a powerful moral lesson" about "the consequences of bad conduct which could result in transportation, perhaps for life". The names of women artists often get buried in history. But embroidery samplers are one place where you can find countless names of women and girls from the past whose lives go otherwise unrecorded. My family happens to have our own precious heirloom embroidery sample, stitched by 13-year-old Elizabeth E Fowler in 1847 — my great-great-great grandmother. Elizabeth's sampler was left behind at her birthplace in England when she and her new husband emigrated to Australia in 1854. By sheer luck, her sister's descendants contacted my mother when they found the sampler in an attic and generously gifted it to her for Christmas in 2022. Works like those of Elizabeth and Margret are often the only records we have left of these women. Not only do they provide a glimpse into their education and everyday lives, but they also show how connected British women and girls were with information and knowledge from across the sea.
Times
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Bayeux Tapestry to return to UK for the first time in 900 years
The Bayeux Tapestry could finally be coming home after the British Museum won the tug-of-war to display the most famous embroidery in the world. The 70m-long artwork depicting the Norman Conquest a millennium ago is to be lent by France next year in exchange for some of Britain's greatest archaeological discoveries. The Sutton Hoo treasures and the Lewis chessmen are among the objects representing the four nations of the UK that France will be lent in exchange for the Bayeux Tapestry, it was announced on Tuesday. The planned display of the tapestry from September next year in the British Museum is likely to be one of the most popular paid-for exhibitions in the country's history and follows years of diplomatic wrangling. In 2018 Theresa May, the prime minister, along with Matt Hancock, the culture secretary, announced before a UK-France summit that the tapestry was to be put on display in Britain in 2022. May said Britain and France's 'shared history' was reflected in the planned 2022 loan. A deterioration in diplomatic relations, the Covid pandemic and the fragility of the embroidery — French officials said at one point that Britain would need to repair 10,000 holes and remove 24,000 stains before it could travel — scuppered the 2022 plans. On Tuesday, however, the government said that Sir Keir Starmer and President Macron had agreed to a 2026 loan during the latter's state visit. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said: 'The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most iconic pieces of art ever produced in the UK and I am delighted that we will be able to welcome it here in 2026. This loan is a symbol of our shared history with our friends in France, a relationship built over centuries and one that continues to endure.' • Mystery appendage fascinates Bayeux Tapestry historians When the 2018 loan was mooted the British Museum began vying with other institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Battle Abbey, which is the site of the Battle of Hastings, and Historic Royal Palaces, which runs the Tower of London, for the opportunity to host an exhibition featuring the embroidery. It is understood that conservation advice that the tapestry should be displayed straight, rather than turned to fit gallery dimensions, gave the British Museum's long Sainsbury gallery an advantage. The museum said it had not been told of any conservation concerns and that the tapestry was fit to travel. Nicholas Cullinan, the museum's director, said on Tuesday that it was 'hard to overstate the significance of this extraordinary opportunity' and that the tapestry was 'one of the most important and unique cultural artefacts in the world'. He said: 'This will be the first time the Bayeux Tapestry has been in the UK since it was made, almost 1,000 years ago,' adding that the museum was 'delighted to send the Lewis chessmen and some of our treasures from Sutton Hoo — the greatest archaeological discovery in Britain — to France in return.' With Sutton Hoo representing England and the Lewis chessmen Scotland, the museum is looking for additional objects to lend to museums in Normandy that would be representative of the other two home countries. • Enfant terrible of French art chosen to recreate lost Bayeux panel The Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts William, Duke of Normandy's 11th-century conquest of England and defeat of Harold Godwinson is widely accepted to have been created in Britain after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Its 58 scenes, 626 characters and 202 horses have been on show at the Bayeux Museum in France since the early 1980s. It is due to close for a two-year renovation from September this year. The British Museum exhibition, which will not be free, is due to be held from September 2026 to July 2027.
