Design Card
Date
1875-1922
Level of description
Item
Extent and medium
Dimensions 153mm X 245mm
Person
Creator
Royal School of Needlework: Created by the Royal School of Art Needlework as miniaturised versions of designs. Original designs were miniaturised and either traced or copied onto 'Design Cards' which were sent out to clients for next day approval. This was part of the work of the 'Painting Room' sometimes referred to as the Paintroom, the department responsible for all design and draftsmanship.
Image, Selwyn: Selwyn Image (17 February 1849 – 21 August 1930) was a designer associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement. He designed across multiple media, and is particularly known for his stained glass windows, but also designed furniture, embroidery and illustrated books. He contributed designs over a number of years to the Royal School of Art Needlework. He was also the seventh Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford from 1910 to 1916.
Image, Selwyn: Selwyn Image (17 February 1849 – 21 August 1930) was a designer associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement. He designed across multiple media, and is particularly known for his stained glass windows, but also designed furniture, embroidery and illustrated books. He contributed designs over a number of years to the Royal School of Art Needlework. He was also the seventh Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford from 1910 to 1916.
Scope and content
The Musicians by Selwyn Image. The design card records a design worked by the Royal School of Art Needlework (c.1879) with some small differences in the V&A object T.121-1953 (https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O89275/the-musicians-panel-selwyn-image/).There is another copy also worked by the RSN at the Wilson Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum. (https://agmlib.cheltenham.gov.uk/Details/collect/24263) It was previously thought by scholars to be a combination of figures by Edward Burne-Jones and decorative detail by William Morris but, as this contemporaneous design card from the Royal School of Art Needlework shows, it is by Selwyn Image.
Motifs include: female figures in classical dress and child 'putti' angel musicians playing instruments (lutes, pipes, flute, lyre, sheet music) oak trees, wildflowers forest.
The note on the design card suggests that it could be used as an embroidery for a piano back.
Inscribed with: 'All The Singing . All The Delight . All The Passion'
E W Godwin in an article on the RSN's 1879 winter exhibition entitled 'A note on needlework' printed in The British Architect, 12 December 1879, p. 229: '...we have to congratulate to Rev. S. IMAGE on his very excellent figure composition, in illustration of music. The subject is a wood, in which are four damsels and two or three small angels, all in outline; the wing of one of the angels is so nervously good in drawing, that it makes us regret more time was not spent over the angel's face.' The panel is illustrated in an article on Image published in The Ladies Field, 4 November 1899, pp. 380-82.
References: See The Royal School of Needlework Handbook of Embroidery, 1880 (East Molesey, Royal School of Needlework, 2010) in Lynn Hulse's introductory essay on. p. 66, note 235.
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O89275/the-musicians-panel-selwyn-image - please note that the reference card for this design card has at the time of writing been referenced in error as D1/500. It is in fact D1/5.
Motifs include: female figures in classical dress and child 'putti' angel musicians playing instruments (lutes, pipes, flute, lyre, sheet music) oak trees, wildflowers forest.
The note on the design card suggests that it could be used as an embroidery for a piano back.
Inscribed with: 'All The Singing . All The Delight . All The Passion'
E W Godwin in an article on the RSN's 1879 winter exhibition entitled 'A note on needlework' printed in The British Architect, 12 December 1879, p. 229: '...we have to congratulate to Rev. S. IMAGE on his very excellent figure composition, in illustration of music. The subject is a wood, in which are four damsels and two or three small angels, all in outline; the wing of one of the angels is so nervously good in drawing, that it makes us regret more time was not spent over the angel's face.' The panel is illustrated in an article on Image published in The Ladies Field, 4 November 1899, pp. 380-82.
References: See The Royal School of Needlework Handbook of Embroidery, 1880 (East Molesey, Royal School of Needlework, 2010) in Lynn Hulse's introductory essay on. p. 66, note 235.
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O89275/the-musicians-panel-selwyn-image - please note that the reference card for this design card has at the time of writing been referenced in error as D1/500. It is in fact D1/5.
Transcription
Piano Back S Image
Reference code
D1/005
© Royal School of Needlework