Lynn Hulse will discuss her forthcoming handbook on the Arts and Crafts designer-maker May Morris (1862–1938). May described design as ‘the very soul and essence of beautiful embroidery’ and ranked it chief among the four elements that make a piece of needlework truly ‘artistic’. Drawing on her substantial corpus of designs in the Ashmolean Museum, Lynn Hulse will explore May’s approach to translating a sketched idea into a finished piece of embroidery, contextualising her work within the artistic developments of needle-art that were taking place in the years leading up to and during her lifetime.

Dr Lynn Hulse is a textile scholar and practitioner specialising in embroidered furnishings for the domestic interior in Britain and Ireland, c.1860-1920. She is co-founder of Ornamental Embroidery, which runs workshops, study tours and lecture programmes in museums, art galleries and historic houses across the UK. Lynn has published widely on the development of art embroidery and is the editor of May Morris: Art and Life (2017) and The Needles Excellency: English Raised Embroidery (2108). Her monograph Reviving the Art of Embroidery: Lady Victoria Welby (1837–1912) and the Founding of the Royal School of Needlework will be published early next year.