@historyunlaced.bsky.social
PhD candidate at Queen’s/Durham, working on gift exchange, dress, and sociability in mid-19th century Britain! she/her
Reconciliation means working together, every day.
30.09.2025 21:20 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0The story published with the engraving in the British Workman reveals that Jack, the embroiderer, was working on the sampler as a Christmas gift for his mother at home. This ship-bound, masculine expression of gift labour is an exciting prospect for my continuing work on dress gift exchange!
02.12.2024 15:15 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0It is a relatively well-known fact that sailors could sew. But this almost domestic scene of the embroiderer and his crewmate, working on a sampler of a design he found within a men’s periodical, challenges our assumptions around needlework, femininity, masculinity, and male homosociability.
02.12.2024 15:15 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A British sailor on the HMS Black Prince works on an embroidered sampler, a Christmas present to his mother, while his crewmate watches on. The design is his own adapted version of one previously published in the British Workman. ‘Jack’s Christmas Present.’ The British Workman, no. 156 (2 December 1867): 141, © The British Library Board (LOU.LON 23,) In McBrinn, Queering the Subversive Stitch, Bloomsbury Visual Arts (2021): 5.
First mini 🧵
I’m currently researching masculine expressions of needlework in the mid-Victorian period, and was struck by this engraving Joseph McBrinn includes in his introduction of Queering the Subversive Stitch: Men and the Culture of Needlework.
Excited to continue my tradition of creeping on my timeline and rarely posting on this app!
14.11.2024 16:49 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
