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Capturing Understanding of Women’s Embroidery Designs: A Methodology for Research and a Critique of Cataloguing Databases using the Example of Women’s Embroidery in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract Daughter of a merchant, the amateur designer and embroiderer Sarah Bland came from an upper-middle-class family. She made an album of a collection of drawn and printed designs between 1835 and 1854 that includes her original designs, patterns traced from magazines, and commercial, printed designs for Berlin wool work. This case study explores her kinship networks, social context and environment as well as perceptions of a woman’s role. It concentrates on Bland’s designs, both made and collected, and compares these to her botanical illustrations, made while she was staying at St Leonards-on-Sea on the south-east coast of England from 1835 to 1843. These pieces are now held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Museum’s database is discussed in relation to other systems to explore its potential for cataloguing such designs as well as its shortcomings. This article posits that art historical databases can be used to catalogue designs for embroidery with a method which is both sensitive to gender and socially contextual. This allows women’s history in relation to designs for embroidered textiles and dress to emerge.