Embroidery as Voice

For centuries, embroidery was dismissed as women's busywork. But textile art was often the only creative medium available to aristocratic and middle-class women. Mary, Queen of Scots spent her imprisonment stitching panels filled with symbolic animals and plants — coded messages about her captivity and her claims to the English throne.

The Bayeux Tapestry — despite its name, an embroidery rather than a woven tapestry — tells the story of the Norman Conquest. Traditionally attributed to Queen Matilda, it was more likely made by teams of English women in professional workshops. Either way, textile was the medium through which women shaped a historical narrative.