Special Award 2024

In 2024 the Textile Society awarded £7,368 to three outstanding projects through its Museum, Archive & Conservation Award, releasing an extra £2,368 of funding in response to the high number of exceptional applications.

The Textile Society trustees are delighted to announce a further Special Award of £2,000 for the Quaker Tapestry Museum to conserve, display and research their nationally significant collection of embroidered samplers. Their application to the Museum, Archive & Conservation Award met the Society’s ambition to fund projects with a strong educational remit that increases access to a collection. Additionally, embroidered samplers have featured heavily in enquiries received this past year so clearly are of great interest to the membership and the wider textile community.

The Museum’s conservator Alison Lister ACR of Textile Conservation Ltd has developed a pragmatic and cost-effective method of conservation for display that has allowed extra samplers to be incorporated within the scope of the funding. A report on the conservation work will feature in Text 2025.

Evidence of the Museum’s desire to build relationships with external specialists can be seen in Text 2024. Samplers, Medallions, Pin Cushions and Pinballs: Quaker Needlework and the Myth of the ‘Ackworth Style’ by Esther Rutter and Isabella Rosner explores the history of needlework and knitting in the society of Friends, with fascinating insights to the international spread of embroidery and knitting skills and techniques including the rare and less well-known Quaker medallion samplers. A further article on the educational reach of the project by Francesca Vine, curator of the Quaker Tapestry Museum will appear in Text 2025.