Stop 19. The Arts & Crafts:
Langdale Linen Industry and Ruskin Lace; the Coniston School of Wood Carving.
Langdale Linen and Ruskin Lace
Various pull-out display cabinets and drawers.
Pull out Cabinet 1:
2 Ruskin Lace chokers. Large Bertha Collar with Vandycked edge. Collar. Apron decorated with
Amelia Ars cut work. All hand-spun and hand-woven linen, made and worked by Mrs Elizabeth
Pepper, who took over the management of the Langdale Linen Industry in 1889 when Miss Marion
Twelves moved to Keswick.
Ruskin comment: ‘The real good of a piece of lace, then, you will find, is that is should show, first,
that the designer of it had a pretty fancy; next, that the maker of it had fine fingers; lastly, that the
wearer of it has worthiness or dignity enough to obtain what is difficult to obtain, and common
sense enough not to wear it on all occasions.’.
Pull out Cabinet 2:
St Cecilia: hand-spun, hand-woven Langdale linen, with cut-work and embroidered picture of St
Cecilia, the patron saint of music, reputedly based on a stained glass window in Westminster
Abbey; the Ruskin Lace insert featuring Glasgow School tulip motif; worked by Mrs Elizabeth
Pepper, and mounted over violet silk; c1900.
Love-in-the-Mist Scented Sachet. Celandine Pin-Cushion: hand-spun, hand-woven Langdale linen,
embroidered in naturalistic style by Mrs Elizabeth Pepper.
2 Edward VII Coronation Souvenir Scented Sachets/Pin Cushions, 1902. Hand-spun, hand-woven
Langdale linen, embroidered by Mrs Elizabeth Pepper.
Selection of Floss Silks: used by Mrs Elizabeth Pepper at Holme Ground, Tilberthwaite.
Doll: bisque porcelain head, composition limbs; dressed by HRH Princess of Wales (later Q
Alexandra), as a present for Mrs Elizabeth Pepper, who had visited Sandringham in order to teach
her and her ladies-in-waiting how to spin flax.
Pull out Cabinet 3:
3 lengths of Needlemade Lace. 2 lengths of Needlemade Lace (Reticella), on hand-woven linen,
worked by Mrs Elizabeth Pepper. Sampler: blue linen, Hedebo work. Sampler: hand-spun, handwoven Langdale linen, with pulled work decoration. Part of an unfinished Collar: showing Mrs
Pepper’s interest in developing Ruskin Lace away from Miss Twelve’s strict rectilinear designs into
rounded forms. 2 Pin Cushions: hand-spun, hand-woven Langdale linen, with embroidered and
needle-made lace motifs, over pink silk. Small Scented Sachet: hand-spun, hand-woven Langdale
linen, with embroidered and needlemade lace motifs, back and front, over gold silk. All worked by
Elizabeth Pepper.
Pull out Cabinet 4:
7 chair back covers worked on cream or natural ‘Glenshee Linen’ by Mrs Marjorie Dixon (nee Grant,
of Low Yewdale, Coniston), between 1972 and 2000. Mrs Dixon is the niece of Mrs Alan Coward,
who taught what was then known as ‘Greek Lace’, which has evolved since 1970, into what is now
known as ‘Ruskin Lace’, the technique demonstrated on the video by Mrs Elizabeth Prickett.
Pull out Cabinet 5:
Pair of embroidered slippers. Sampler: In Loving Memory of Our Dear Granddad Ro Pepper, Who
Died Jan 30th 1922. Aged 79 Years. In the sweet bye and bye we shall meet on that beautiful shore.
Interred at Holy Trinity Church Brathay, Feb 2nd High Arnside Coniston. Lizzie Nelson, age 13. 2
embroidered? panels with dandelions. Runner?
Pull out Cabinet 6:
Bottom left, Runner: worked on linen spun and woven by Mrs Alan Coward (nee Mary Redhead,
known as Mamie), who had her own workshop and out-workers; Mrs Coward taught what was then
known as ‘Greek Lace’ which evolved into what has now become, since 1970, ‘Ruskin Lace.
All other pieces in this showcase are worked by Mrs Marjorie Dixon (nee Grant), the niece of Mrs
Alan Coward. There were made between 1972 and 2000, and have been deposited at the Ruskin
Museum via Mrs Elizabeth Prickett, who can be seen demonstrating in the video.
Same cabinet?
Top right, Ruskin Lace Sampler: worked by Mrs Doris Franks of Jarrow, whose interest in Ruskin
Lace developed over many years of family holidays at Elterwater, given in her memory by her
family.
All other pieces in this showcase are worked on ‘Glenshee Linen’ – 28 threads to the inch or 12 to
the centimetre.
Bottom right, Mat: this piece is NOT Ruskin Lace: true Ruskin Lace is worked directly into or on to
the fabric: this piece is correctly identified as needlelace in the Ruskin technique.
Pull out Cabinet 7:
Selection of Linen decorated with Ruskin Lace and other cut-out work and counted-thread-work
technique produced at the Keswick School of Industrial Art (KSIA).
After running the Langdale Linen Industry based at St Martin’s, Elterwater, for over 5 years, Marion
Twelves moved to Keswick in 1889 to join Mrs Rawnsley at the new KSIA. Marion Twelves hoped to
enjoy greater independence in Keswick. The Guild of St George helped her to purchase Porch
Cottage and, in 1894, she established her own flax-spinning and linen-weaving industry which she
ran into the 1920s. She devoted 35 years of her life to Ruskin’s precepts.
Pull out Cabinet 8:
Ruskin Lace is a combination of drawn-fabric work, cut-linen work and needlepoint lace.
The technique, which was devised and evolved by Marion Twelves in the mid 1880s, is based upon
building up the design over a square which has been cut from the linen fabric. The lacemaker
mounts the pattern area on to dark leatherette cloth, then surrounds it with a border of 4-sided
stitch; some of the warp and weft threads of the original fabric are kept as the first crossbars; next
come the lines of the basis grid for the pattern, rather as a spider spins its web; finally, the pattern
is worked in buttonhole stitch, which can be individual to the embroiderer.
The strict discipline of RUSKIN LACE is rectilinear, worked in a closely confined framework and a
monotone colour scheme.
The book, Ruskin Lace & Linen Work by Elizabeth Prickett, gives instruction and catalogues the
patterns.
Table Cloth: Langdale linen with Ruskin lace panels; made by Miss Briggs.
Child’s Smock Dress: believed to be of locally grown, spun and woven linen, with yoke, collar, cuffs
and lower skirt embroidered with cut work; produced at Keswick.
Pull out long drawer 1: Cushion cover and threads
Pull out long drawer 2: pattern book: made by Mrs Shuttleworth of Coniston as a pupil aged about
11, at the school at the beginning of 20thc, threads
Pull out drawer 3: cushion, hand-spun, hand-woven local linen, spun by Mrs Fisher of Keswick,
spinner for Miss Marion Twelves, lined with sold silk; laced with hand-made cord and tassels, inset
with Ruskin Lace.
File: Ruskin Lace and Linen Work
This display cabinet, and the bases of the 2 adjacent cabinets, feature the products of the Langdale
Linen Industry, which was established at Ruskin’s instigation.
Credit is usually given to Albert Fleming, a companion of the Guild of St George, Ruskin’s somewhat
utopian organisation for the re-instatement of the ideal life lived through the guild system in the
Middle Ages.
Her anonymous obituary in The Westmorland Gazette, 11 November 1893 (almost certainly written
by either W G Collingwood or Herbert Bownass) records that Miss Susanna Beaver ‘with Ruskin’s
advice, planned and fostered the first carving classes at Coniston in the earliest days of that
movement. It was she, also, who provided the hand-spinning and weaving in Langdale, with the
help of Mr Albert Fleming, who in 1887 edited a collection of Mr Ruskin’s letters to her, under the
title of Hortus Iclusus...
W G Collingwood’s portrait of Miss Susanna Beaver of the Thwaite is displayed on the inward facing
screen of the block of 2 cases across the NW corner of the museum.
The Langdale Linen Industry was run by Mrs Elizabeth Pepper and her mother, Mrs Heskett,
both pupils of Miss Marion Twelves. The Pepper family farmed Holme Ground and Tilberthwaite
farms, and were famed for their Herdwicks and Northern Dairy Shorthorns. The farm’s Clydesdales
also worked in the Hodge Close and Tilberthwaite slate quarries with the Pepper men and sons-inlaw, Thomas Nelson and Robert Fell. The women made butter to sell at market with eggs, honey
from their own hives, jams and jellies, meat – linen and lace.
Ruskin told Marion Twelves that the linen industry was, ‘the best practical outcome of my industrial
art teaching’.
The Langdale Lace Industry was born at Easter 1884 when the first piece of lien was taken off the
loom. The early linen cloth was very coarse – like sacking- and had limited sales appeal.
Ruskin advised decoration, and supplied Marion Twelves with a number of sketches of the lace
collars and ruffs which featured in the portraits painted by his beloved Venetian painters, Titian,
Tintoretto and Veronese. Marion Twelves found a way of imitating this bobbin lace through a
judicious mixture of cut-work, drawn-thread and needle-lace techniques. Ruskin was so pleased
with the results that, when shown them on his 75th birthday, 8 Feb 1894, he gave Marion Twelves
permission to use his name and motto in connection with the industry: Keswick and Coniston were
authorised to term their products Ruskin Linen and Ruskin Lace.
Elizabeth Pepper was a very accomplished embroideress and she directed her skills towards the
depiction of flowers and foliage in a naturalistic manner inspired by Ruskin – as can be seen here in
her Dandelion design, and her Easter Daffodil bed-spread. Small Celandines, Violets and sprays of
Love-in-the-Mist decorate pin cushions and handkerchief sachets, and more stylised shamrocks can
be found on the jewel box. Mrs Pepper also painted the Clematis screen.
She experimented with natural and chemical dyes to tint the linen, and used natural and écru yarns
to decorate bleached linen.
She also took Marion Twelves rectilinear and very geometric cut-work, drawn-thread and needlelace techniques into a freer, more organic directions best exemplified by the Saint Cecilia panel
(design based on a stained glass window in Westminster Abbey), which also demonstrates a
knowledge of Jessie M King and the Glasgow School.
Elizabeth Pepper displayed the products of the Langdale Linen Industry at the South Kensington
Arts and Crafts exhibitions, and regularly attended such ‘block busters’ as the Japan exhibition in
1910. These exhibitions widened her horizons and encouraged her to diversify the Langdale Linen
Industry, to maintain viability. Diversification embraced bobbin lace, tatting, crochet and beadwork,
the latter inspired by a display of American Indian bead and quill work seen in London. Lace or
crochet collars, cuffs or bracelets, and beadwork, necklaces and bracelets, soon became popular
souvenir purchases by the walkers who stopped for refreshments at Tilberthwaite and Holme
Ground farms. Postcards were the cheapest souvenir of all – and an excellent advertisement.
Elizabeth Pepper’s visits to London meant her return with clockwork toys – beetles and a splendid
porter – for ‘best’, for her elder grandchildren, Robin and Abigail Nelson, and various treasures – a
musical box, an ostrich egg reminiscent of the colour and texture of linen, Japanese woodcuts – for
the family home.
The Langdale Linen Industry stand at the London exhibitions attracted royal interest. Mrs Pepper
was requested to teach the Princess of Wales’s (later Queen Alexandra) Ladies-in-Waiting to spin
at Kensington Palace, and later to teach some girls at Sandringham. Q Alexandra gave Mrs Pepper
the doll – which she had dressed herself – as a token of thanks and affection.