In the early 20th century many artists began experimenting with the medium of embroidery, seeking to reform its use and style. Work for the V&A Documentation for Access project (which aims to improve the database records of the museum’s historic acquisitions) has uncovered the legacy of 20th-century embroidery artist Molly Booker through enhancing the cataloguing of a group of 247 ‘modern textiles’ given to the V&A in 1934 by the British Institute of Industrial Art (The BIIA). Part of this gift was an embroidery entitled South of France, worked in dense stem stitch in brightly coloured wool threads on a linen ground, and signed ‘M. Booker’ (Figure 1).
Existing cataloguing on the V&A database named the artist of South of France as ‘Molly Booker’, but provided no other information about her life or career. Further research has uncovered a partial history of an innovative textile artist whose work deserves to be better known.
Molly Booker (1906-1963)
A talented artisan who began experimenting with embroidery as a relief from designing repeating patterns for printed textiles, Molly Booker was part of a small movement of art embroiderers during the 1930s. Born Aileen Mary Booker to GP Charles Booker and his wife Ada, she lived with her parents and a few domestic servants at their Surrey home, Hillcroft, into her adulthood. The 1939 census records for the property list her as a freelance artist and London County Council teacher of embroidery and design, but also as ‘unemployed’. By the time of the census, she was also a published author.
Her book How To Do It: Embroidery Design, an instructional guide for embroiderers, was first printed in 1935. The book contains the only known photographs of Booker, which show her working on her embroideries. There are also images of her own works and design process, as well as historical embroideries and pieces by her contemporaries. A copy is held in the National Art Library. Booker strongly stresses her artistic principles in her writing, with a clear and emphatic prioritisation of design and composition over technical accuracy. While her pieces derived inspiration from painting techniques and conventions, she makes clear that her intention was not to replicate the medium, but to apply some of its principles to embroidery. This is reflected in the composition of her work and her framing of the medium as art rather than craft.
South of France is a perfect example of her approach. Its vibrant colours, dense stitching covering the entire ground, and pictorial composition are distinct from the work of other 20th-century embroiderers, such as Rebecca Crompton, whose pieces were informed by the Glasgow style developed by Jessie Newbery and Ann Macbeth and utilised negative space and abstract forms. Nevertheless, Booker’s South of France is rooted in the contemporary. Its figures are reminiscent of modern artists like Matisse, and they are clothed in a faithful depiction of contemporary fashion. For example, the beach cape worn by the woman on the far left of the composition (Figure 2) was a popular seaside garment at the time, and similar versions can be seen in British seaside advertising posters in the V&A collection (Figure 3).
Besides South of France, Booker’s other major works available in a public collection are three versions of Carnival, all of which are in the collection of the Glasgow School of Art (Figure 4). Made between 1932 and 1934, two years after South of France, all three versions of Carnival are stylistically similar to Booker’s earlier work, but derive more influence from the composition of traditional tapestries and large-scale historical scenic artworks.
Contemporary reception
Booker had a solo exhibition at the Lefevre gallery in London at the end of 1934 entitled Sewed Pictures. A highly respected commercial gallery, the Lefevre was also showing works by artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore around the same time. This acceptance and endorsement of her textile art by fine art establishments positions Booker alongside some of the most notable artists of the 20th century, supporting her presentation of her pieces as professional works of art.
Booker also took part in several group exhibitions in England and Scotland, most notably at the ‘8th Biennial Exhibition’ of the Modern Embroideries Society in Edinburgh in 1935, where she exhibited a selection of large-scale works. A newspaper review of this exhibition mentions her particular skill in depicting human figures, the painterly quality of her pieces, and her use of experimental materials such as feathers or beads to accentuate them. However, when she exhibited at the 1935 ‘Aberdeen Exhibition of Modern Embroidery’ at the Aberdeen Art Gallery, she received a less positive critical reception, with one reviewer describing her work as ‘pretentious and without any real artistic merit.’
Later life and legacy
Booker disappears from records around 1939, coinciding with the start of the Second World War. She resurfaces in January 1961, when, at the age of 55, she married David Edward Liddell, a painter, First World War veteran, and curator at the Watts Gallery. They lived together in a home in Knightsbridge, but, sadly, both would die just two years later. Molly Booker died in March 1983, and David Liddell in June. They are buried together in a plot in Putney Vale Cemetery.
Molly Booker’s life and legacy is just one of the hidden stories that the Documentation for Access cataloguing project has been able to uncover. This research reveals how detailed and accurate cataloguing in museum collections can help to return maker agency to objects, thereby bringing new meanings to them. Within the V&A collection, there are works by several other female embroiderers and textile artists whose lives are under-researched. Why not explore Art Nouveau-style embroidered bags by Maud Mills, or discover the elegant ecclesiastical embroideries of author and historian Eliza Dorothy Bradby?
