Whether dressed in Ottoman-style robes, or draping Chinese embroidery around their homes, 19^th and 20^th century women were keen to collect and consume the world through textiles. Curating their homes to display global needlework, middle and upper-class British women were vital actors within the colonial ecosystem of museums, dealers, and fragmented textiles.

‘Embroidering Empire’ examines how these women engaged with ideas of coloniality through the needlework they collected, with a specific focus on the collection of the Royal School of Needlework. Established in 1872, the RSN has developed a large and highly-specialised collection of global embroidery, collected by aristocrats, female travellers, artists and students. This provides an opportunity to investigate how networks estabished through the British Empire enabled women to collect embroidery, with a particular focus on colonially-adjacent countries such as Greece, China, and Persia.

A primary aspect of my research involves analysing and cataloguing a book of textile fragments, collected by the 1890s traveller Georgina Annie Grove. Exploring Europe and South Asia with her Brigadier-General husband, Georgina collated fragments of needlework ranging from the 7^th to the 19^th century. This book mirrors both the spaces of the Victorian woman’s wardrobe, home, and of national museums, making it an ideal entry point for questioning how women saw themselves as agents of Britain’s colonial project. In addition to object-based research, I frequently consult archives of antique dealerships, travel journals, and commercial ephemera. Each fragment, scrapbook, and catalogue illuminates British women’s material understanding of the Empire, and their place within these wider networks.