Ann Macbeth (1875-1948)
, was born at 41 Chorley Old Road, Little Bolton, Lancashire, on 25 September 1875, the eldest of the nine children of Norman Macbeth, a mechanical engineer, and his wife, Annie MacNicol. Her grandfather was the portrait painter, Norman Macbeth RA. She attended a dame-school in St Anne's, whither her family had moved, and was influenced by her parents' active support of the local church. (Though Scottish Presbyterians, they attended a Congregational church, there being no Presbyterian church nearby.) Owing to a childhood attack of scarlet fever, Ann had the use of only one eye. In 1902, while still a student, Ann Macbeth joined Jessie Newbery as a teacher in the embroidery department of Glasgow School of Art. That year she won a silver medal at the Turin Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa, and a silk cushion she had worked with the floral attributes of the four countries of Britain was presented to Queen Alexandra in commemoration of the coronation. She taught needlework, embroidery, and appliqué, and from 1909 to 1912 also taught metalwork and bookbinding. About 1911 she succeeded Jessie Newbery as head of the embroidery department at Glasgow School of Art, where she had become a member of the school council in 1908. Like her teacher, she made and embroidered her own dresses and also executed fine works of embroidery such as
The Sleeping Beauty (1902; Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries) and a pictorial work,
Elspeth (1904; priv. coll.). Her works often incorporate panels of figures worked on satin. Their ‘billowing elongated skirts with … decorated borders are romantic but still functional’ (Swain, ‘Ann Macbeth’, 8). She was a fine draughtswoman and an influential teacher at her Saturday classes for teachers run by the school. Macbeth reached a wider public with a series of lectures across Scotland, England, and Wales. Her books included
Educational Needlework (1911, with Margaret Swanson),
Embroidered Lace and Leatherwork (1924), and
Countrywoman's Rug Book (1926; repr. California,
c.1990). Over a long period examples of her work were on exhibition at Miss Cranston's tea-rooms in Glasgow. She designed for Liberty's and Knox's Linen Thread Company, and embroidered a frontal for the communion table of Glasgow Cathedral. Fra Newbery praised ‘her very practical outlook’ and noted of her work ‘how stuffs, plain, yet of sound quality and good colour could be beautified by the addition of embroidery and other decoration’ (ibid.). She was awarded diplomas in art from institutions in Paris, Tunis, Ghent, Budapest, and Chicago. In 1928 she retired to
Wordsworth Cottage, Patterdale, Westmorland, where she ‘was quickly recognized by her long flowing cape, her skirt possibly vivid scarlet and emerald green, wearing long necklaces’ (Ives, 6). Ann Macbeth died, unmarried, at 8 Eden Mount, Carlisle, on 23 March 1948. As a foreword to Anne Knox Arthur's
Embroidery Book (1920) she wrote: ‘One may embroider poems, another may embroider prayer and praises for her church, another may beautify a woman's garments or sing a little song in stitches for a baby's robe’ (ibid.). Her embroidery of
The Nativity is in Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery; that of
The Good Shepherd remains in
Patterdale church.
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