Wanganui River Embroidery

Wanganui River, about 1880

This embroidery was made by Alice Clapham about 1880. We don't know anything about Alice, or Mrs Murray's school where the work was embroidered. We do know that the school was in Thorndon, an inner city suburb of Wellington, New Zealand.

Design
This piece stands apart from the more formal, decorative and colourful kinds of embroidery such as Berlin woolwork which were popular from the mid to late Victorian period. These fashionable styles of embroidery employed patterns - sometimes hand coloured - that could be purchased or copied from the many books and journals devoted to women's craft available at the time.

The Wanganui River embroidery departs from usual conventionalised needlework designs of the Victorian period in that it treats its subject in a naturalistic manner. The scene, familiar in 19th century New Zealand photography, may have been copied directly from a photograph, a practice not uncommon at this time for artists working in other media such as print making and marquetry.

Technique
Alice Clapham has used subtle, naturalistic embroidery silks as well as other materials in a careful and expressive way. For example, the tiny feathers are attached in a manner resembling traditional Maori feather kahu (cloaks) and more 'woolly' chenille thread has been used to depict the grassy bank of the river.

Significance
'Wanganui River' is significant as an unusually early example of embroidery with New Zealand subject matter. Te Papa's collection includes another similar embroidery, by Maud Brown, which is also associated with Mrs Murray's school.