20 Facts About Ann Macbeth

Ann Macbeth was a British embroiderer, designer, teacher and author.

Ann Macbeth was a member of the Glasgow Movement where she was an associate of Margaret MacDonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and many other 'Glasgow Girls'.

Ann Macbeth was an active suffragette and designed banners for organisations supporting women's suffrage, such as the Women's Social and Political Union.

Ann Macbeth's father was Norman Macbeth, a mechanical engineer, and her mother was Annie MacNicol.

Ann Macbeth came from an artistic background: her uncles included the artists Robert Walker Macbeth and Henry Macbeth-Raeburn and her paternal grandfather was the portraitist Norman Macbeth.

Newberry might have been the bolder of the two designers, although Ann Macbeth embroidered panels more extensively with expressive stitching.

Together with the educational psychologist Margaret Swanson Ann Macbeth published the textbook Educational Needlecraft in 1911.

Ann Macbeth elevated the status of home dressmaking and encouraged women to create their own individualistic clothing.

Ann Macbeth brought designed dresses within reach of women with modest means by advocating the use of "humble materials" such as cotton, linen and crash.

Ann Macbeth considered the silks and satins most popular with the previous generation of art-embroiderers to not only be more costly, but 'really less artistic'.

From 1920 onwards Ann Macbeth taught handicrafts at the Women's Institute and participated in programmes to alleviate local economic hardship.

For Liberty, Ann Macbeth provided Art Nouveau-style embroidery designs that featured in the firm's mail order catalogues until the outbreak of the First World War.

Ann Macbeth's designs were sold by Liberty as iron-on transfers for the embroidery of dresses and furniture.

Ann Macbeth remained a visiting lecturer at the Glasgow School of Arts until her retirement in 1928.

Ann Macbeth decorated china and fired her own china in a kiln she had built herself.

Ann Macbeth devised a simple method of rug-weaving which was published in her book Country Woman's Rug in 1929.

Ann Macbeth argued that machines would democratise design and that craftworkers who understood the workings of machines could achieve high artistic quality.

Ann Macbeth designed and embroidered a frontal for the communion table of Glasgow Cathedral.

Ann Macbeth published six books on embroidery: Educational Needlecraft, The Playwork Book, School and Fireside Crafts, The Country Woman's Rug Book, Needleweaving, and Embroidered Lace and Leatherwork.

Ann Macbeth produced several designs for jewellery some of which appear as illustrations in books by Peter Wylie Davidson.