Time Travel Tuesday: Rebecca Crompton

Image via The Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um.

Rebec­ca Cromp­ton was an artist that worked in embroi­dery. Her exper­i­men­tal designs used trans­par­ent fab­rics and raw edges. She was inspired by the embroi­deries of the Aus­tri­an col­lec­tive the Wiener Werk­stätte, whose designs were dis­played in the first pub­lic exhi­bi­tion of the Embroi­der­ers’ Guild in Novem­ber 1923.

In the 1930’s she com­bined hand stitch and machine stitch­ing, as well as mix­ing fab­rics and thread. This exper­i­men­tal approach was crit­i­cized by tra­di­tion­al embroi­der­ers, but Rebec­ca went on to cre­ate some beau­ti­ful works that even today look contemporary.

She is quot­ed as say­ing, “extreme neat­ness in design is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good thing artistically.”

Infor­ma­tion via The Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um.

Rebec­ca often worked in mono­chro­mat­ic, as seen below. Images via F+T Flickr.