Angel with Cymbals
Embroidered by Elizabeth Burden (1841 – 1924)
(Perhaps a fitting portrait of the embroiderer)
Elizabeth (Bessie) Burden was another of the women embroidery artists, the Morris Muses who worked with designer William Morris.
Morris Muse fabrics in a pattern named Brunswick Star
by Ruth Finley and Comfort magazine. BlockBase+ #3805.
In the 1930s the Grandma Dexter pattern company called it
Rolling Stone, a good place to start with a pattern
for Muse Elizabeth Burden.
As William Morris's wife's sister Bessie seems to have played an unusual role in the needlework partnership, designing her own panels with an emphasis on human (& angelic figures) rather than floral abstractions.
Elizabeth and younger sister Jane Burden Morris were born in Oxfordshire, England into a lower strata of the hierarchy of class-conscious Britain---the working poor. Censuses list father Robert Burden as a servant and a groom for horses in Oxford. With wife Ann Maizey Burden he had four children, Mary Ann, William, Elizabeth and Jane. Only the youngest two lived into adulthood.
Oxford, Near St. Ebbes Church
Jane's unusual beauty caught the attention of
William Morris's set of young artists. She and Morris married in 1859.
In 1865 father Robert died. Apparently Bessie had been living with him (mother Ann who lived until 1871 is unaccounted for) and at his death Bessie moved in with her younger sister, husband and two girls. Six years later the extended family moved to Queen's Square where their home shared the space with the company's retail shop.
Like the other muses Bessie embroidered for the shop but few of her pieces---patterns, kits or finished textiles----have been identified.
26 Queen Square by Amédée Forestier
published in William Morris: His Homes & Haunts, 1909
Elizabeth Burden's style: Three panels with design attributed to both Morris and Edward Burne-Jones,
exhibited in 1888 at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society.
The Royal School's exhibit at Philadelphia's Centennial Expo 1876
Two years later she was back teaching at the RSN in time to supervise the
school's display at America's centennial birthday fair, the
1876 Philadelphia Exhibition
Walter Crane is credited with design for this hanging
that is said to have been shown in Philadelphia. Embroiderer's
name unknown. Hanging's current whereabouts also unknown.
Candace Thurber Wheeler (1827–1923)
Bessie who relied upon this tapestry stitch was honored by
the school's renaming it the "Burden Stitch" in the RSN’s Handbook of Embroidery\
Lynn Hulsey, expert on Morris embroidery and Elizabeth Morris's biographer, has found comments that paint her as "a prickly professional who refused to compromise her standards, and who was less than adroit in managing her aristocratic employers" at the RSN: Director Lady Victoria Welby and the important Royal patron Princess Helena of Schleswig Holstein, Queen Victoria's daughter.
Lady Victoria Welby, Director of the Royal School
& Princess Helena, the major Royal Patron
"As to Miss Burden, I think her behaviour simply outrageous. I never read so cool or impertinent a letter. It shows she can have no ladylike feelings for no lady or decently educated person would have penned such a letter."
Miss Burden's skills, however, motivated the school to rehire her two years later despite her "behaving so badly," as RSN founder Madeline Wyndham recalled. "She is the only person who knows how to work the crewel work." And so Elizabeth resumed teaching. She did not stay long past the Philadelphia Exhibition and later in life moved on to Surrey, about 30 miles south of London, probably for a teaching position, where she died in 1924.
The letter episode was probably just one instance of her temperamental nature. Her brother-in-law
criticized her "troublesome & complicated accounts concerning designs, materials, & wages" while working for him. He'd earlier written a friend that living with her on Oxford Street was difficult:
"I have been a good deal in the house here - not alone, that would have been pretty well - but alone with poor Bessy. I must say it is a shame, she is quite harmless and even good, and one ought not to be irritated by her - but O my God what I have suffered from finding [her] always there at meals & the like!"
Souvenir of household harmony: In 1895 Morris gave Bessie a
three-volume set of Shelley's poetry printed by his Kelmscott Press.
Patterns for Muse Bessie Burden
Notes of Harmony
"At last by notes of household harmony
They quite forget their loss of liberty."
Shakespeare, Henry VI
A new design inspired by a 1930s pattern from Hubert VerMehren.
Here's a pattern for the fan & star: Notes of Harmony.
Or a four-patch dot. Any patchwork block finishing to 4-1/2" should fit in the 18" block.
And a floral for Bessie in applique or embroidery.
"Bloomsbury" drawn from a Royal School design.
Print this rather free-form pattern on an 8-1/2 x 11" sheet.
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