0:00

This is the BBC. This

0:03

podcast is supported by advertising outside

0:05

the UK. Normally,

0:11

being a little extra might be a

0:13

bit much, but not when it comes

0:15

to healthcare. That's why UnitedHealthcare's health projector

0:17

guard fixed indemnity insurance plans, underwritten by

0:19

Golden Rule Insurance Company, supplement your primary

0:21

plan, so you manage out-of-pocket costs. Learn

0:24

more at uh1.com. I'm

0:30

thrilled to say we have a brand new live

0:32

episode to finish the series. It's

0:34

all about the life and music of Wolfgang

0:37

Amadeus Mozart. I was joined by the comedian

0:39

David O'Darketty, the historian Dr. Hannah Templeton, and

0:41

the BBC Concert Orchestra, all 54 of them,

0:43

and their conductor Gavin Sutherland, as we played

0:46

songs and music from Mozart's life, as well

0:48

as telling jokes and having a lovely time

0:50

learning about him. It's one of our best

0:52

ever episodes, and I'd love you to hear

0:55

it. You can find it wherever you get

0:57

your podcasts. Just type in, you're dead to me. Hello,

1:00

my name is Isabella Rosner.

1:03

I'm a new generation thinker on the scheme run by

1:14

the BBC and the Arts and

1:16

Humanities Research Council to share new

1:18

academic research. In this

1:21

episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast,

1:23

I'll be talking about how Quaker women

1:26

have changed black clothing and dour

1:28

bonnets for gold sequins and embroidered

1:30

nutmegs. Tear

1:59

checker. With me, Aurora, listen on

2:01

BBC Sounds. In

2:13

1683 or thereabouts, a

2:15

teenaged girl named Elizabeth Hall

2:17

sits in Hackney, embroidering. She

2:20

is hunched over, wrapping a

2:22

miniscule object with silk threads

2:24

encased in gold. The

2:27

egg-shaped object is just two and

2:29

a half centimeters wide. Elizabeth

2:32

tacks those gold threads down with

2:34

colorful threads, creating a

2:36

pattern of strawberries and stems. She

2:39

adds to each end of the object a

2:41

finishing touch, a tangled web

2:43

of gold sequins and coiled wire.

2:45

The precious token in hand

2:47

is an embroidered nutmeg, a

2:50

tiny treasure whose golden threads glitter

2:52

and whose stitched strawberries look good

2:55

enough to eat. Elizabeth

2:57

Hall has taken a rare commodity

2:59

worth more than its weight in

3:02

gold, treasured for its medicinal and

3:04

culinary uses, and rendered

3:06

it useless in order to exhibit

3:08

her needlework skills. She

3:10

was talented and wealthy enough to

3:13

embroider upon not one, not two,

3:15

but four nutmegs, which were the

3:17

most coveted luxury item in

3:19

17th century Europe. Elizabeth

3:22

embroidered her quartet of nutmegs near

3:24

the end of a thorough needlework

3:26

education undertaken in her pre-teen and

3:29

teenaged years. She

3:31

needleworked, amongst other things, a

3:34

tabletop box wrapped in lustrous silk

3:36

threads and full of secret compartments,

3:39

a striped rainbow trinket box and

3:41

one with gold and yellow checkerboard,

3:43

a purse just a

3:46

few centimeters tall shaped like a

3:48

miniature pair of bellows, and

3:50

a pair of garters for her mom. The

3:53

garters are woven with an inscription that reads,

3:56

Dearest Mother, I this do send,

3:58

As my love, which never shall end, while

4:01

I do live, I ever will

4:03

be, thy dutiful daughter, Elizabeth

4:05

Hall. Magnificently,

4:08

all of her opulent girlhood embroidery

4:10

and that of several generations of

4:12

her descendants survive in the

4:14

collection of Whitney antiques in Oxfordshire.

4:18

Elizabeth was a Quaker, part of

4:20

a religious group known for being

4:23

separated from the wider world and

4:25

for historically being zealously plain in

4:27

speech, dress, and behavior. Quakers

4:30

were and still are also called friends.

4:34

From the early years, adherents

4:36

encouraged each other in meetings

4:38

and through printed literature to

4:40

follow specific guidance regarding plainness.

4:43

Friends were guided to send their children to

4:45

Quaker schools, to dress in

4:47

clothing free from lace, ribbons,

4:50

and unnecessary decoration, and

4:52

to refuse to take oaths and take off

4:54

their hats or bow to anyone. How

4:57

does Elizabeth's gobsmackingly opulent, very

4:59

decorative embroidery square with the

5:02

reputation that this group has

5:04

long had for being quiet,

5:06

radical, and insular? It

5:09

doesn't, and neither does almost

5:11

any embroidery made by Quaker girls

5:14

in 17th century London. Their

5:16

artwork from the 17th and 18th

5:19

centuries is shockingly vibrant and fancy,

5:21

very different from the simplicity and

5:24

lack of adornment people perceive as

5:26

being typically Quaker. When

5:28

it comes to the work of Quaker girls and

5:30

women's stitching, the work is worlds

5:32

apart from the word. In

5:35

my experience as a non-Quaker who studies

5:38

Quakers, I have found that

5:40

many people I meet in Britain think

5:42

that Quakerism is American rather than British

5:45

and that it doesn't really exist anymore

5:47

outside of the Quaker oats man. But

5:50

the story of Quakers begins here, in

5:53

the north of England in the mid-17th century, and

5:56

Quakers were much more influential in British history

5:58

than most people in England. people would think.

6:01

Though friends are not actually associated

6:03

with the Quaker Oats Company, Clark's

6:06

Shoes, Barclays Bank, Oxfam,

6:08

and Cadbury Fry and Round

6:11

Trees Chocolate all have

6:13

their roots in Quakerism. It

6:16

developed out of a time of

6:18

great religious and political turmoil in

6:20

England and within just a few

6:22

years became popular amongst London area

6:25

families of merchants and makers. Elizabeth

6:28

Hall came from one such family and

6:30

attended the first official Quaker

6:32

Girl School, Shacklewell. She

6:35

found herself in Hackney, the center

6:37

of girls' education in 17th century

6:40

England. Elizabeth's suite

6:42

of schoolgirl embroidery is an almost

6:44

exact match to the needlework suite

6:46

of Hannah Downs, Elizabeth's

6:48

classmate and close friend whose objects

6:50

are now housed in the Victoria

6:52

and Albert Museum. This

6:55

duo was part of a much larger

6:57

world of Quaker girls embroidering in and

6:59

around London. Though Quakers only

7:01

made up about 1.5% of

7:04

London's population at most, a

7:07

large number of surviving girlhood embroideries from

7:09

England in this period were made by

7:11

girls from these families. Many

7:14

are samplers, pieces of needlework made

7:16

by girls or young women to

7:18

practice or demonstrate stitches. Others

7:21

are workboxes, pictures or accessories

7:23

like girdles and pockets. You're

7:27

reminded of just how talented these stitches were

7:30

when you realize how young they were when

7:32

they made these objects. A

7:34

sampler by Christabel Ingram looks like it could be

7:36

the work of a professional, but

7:38

when I happened upon mention of

7:40

her birth several hundred pages into

7:42

Quaker vital records, I

7:44

realized that when she made her sampler

7:47

in 1705, she was just six years

7:49

old. And

7:51

these embroideries feel personal not only

7:53

because they usually include names and

7:55

dates, but also because you

7:58

can see how girlhood now resembles girlhood

8:00

then. Sisters

8:02

Margaret and Alice Jennings had a

8:04

fondness for stitching flower petals with

8:06

polka dots, and one of

8:08

Hannah Downs' daughters depicted clouds in the same

8:11

bubbly way I did when I was a

8:13

kid. Intertwined with

8:15

the skill and innate humanity present

8:17

in every stitch of Quaker needlework

8:20

is a shocking amount of ostentation. The

8:23

thread colors are hot pink,

8:26

highlighter yellow, and glistening silver.

8:29

While most non-Quaker girls who

8:31

made tabletop boxes included perfume

8:33

bottles with pewter tops, Hannah

8:35

Downs' bottles have silver tops that

8:38

were engraved with flowers. And

8:40

both she and Elizabeth Hall covered

8:43

the back of their boxes with

8:45

strips of multicolored floral damask. The

8:48

exact type of fabric Quakers were

8:50

repeatedly instructed not to use or

8:52

wear. There is nothing

8:55

here that our 21st-century eyes

8:57

would consider plain. This

9:01

conspicuous and mysterious splendor is

9:03

not limited to needlework nor

9:05

to 17th-century London. In 1717,

9:08

a 9-year-old Nottingham Quaker named Rachel

9:13

Reckless stitched her sampler. Though

9:16

it features fewer images than its

9:18

London Quaker counterparts, it's still

9:20

brightly colored and filled top to bottom with

9:22

stitching. Though Rachel's branch

9:25

of the family stayed in England, other

9:27

branches crossed the Atlantic and made their

9:29

home in Pennsylvania, America's Quaker

9:32

colony. Her first cousin

9:34

once removed, Anne Reckless

9:36

Emlin, was a descendant

9:38

of a branch that

9:40

emigrated and became part

9:43

of Philadelphia's Quaker elite.

9:45

In 1757, 40 years after

9:47

Rachel embroidered her sampler, Anne

9:49

made an object exclusive to Philadelphia

9:52

area Quakers in the 18th century.

9:55

Anne, likely pregnant with her seventh

9:57

child, sits in her mansion and

10:00

polishes a shell. It

10:02

is one of thousands that have been

10:04

collected or sold in Philadelphia for art-making

10:06

purposes, with some coming from

10:08

local shores like the Delaware River and

10:11

American South, and others from

10:13

faraway waters like the Caribbean Sea

10:15

and Indian Ocean. Anne

10:18

Reckless Emlyn glues this polished, dappled

10:20

brown and white shell inside a

10:22

deep wooden box, taller than it

10:24

is wide, that has an open

10:26

front that later gets glassed. The

10:29

shell sits at the center of a

10:32

flat-topped mound covered in other shells of

10:34

all shapes and sizes, as

10:36

well as artificial coral she made

10:38

herself from twigs and resin. On

10:41

top of the mound, which appears suspended in

10:44

the middle of the box, she

10:46

will place a tiny brick house. The

10:49

structure is made of cardboard, and the

10:51

bricks are hundreds of tiny pink shells.

10:54

At the top of the house is a sort of

10:57

signature, reading A.E. 1757. In the doorway she

10:59

will place

11:02

the smallest of wooden figures, a

11:05

fashionably dressed woman holding a fan. Surrounding

11:08

the house and the mound on which it

11:11

will sit are painted cardboard stairs,

11:13

an alabaster dalmatian with hand-painted

11:15

spots and fellow alabaster sheep

11:18

and ducks, trees

11:20

made from soft wool, a

11:22

miniature folly, and two

11:24

silk-clad wax women in wide

11:26

skirts. The box's

11:29

interior walls are laden with flowers

11:31

made from pink, purple, and white

11:33

shells. Inside this wooden

11:35

box, which is about two feet tall,

11:38

is a scene of idealized pastoral

11:40

life. Anne is

11:42

crafting a confoundingly luxurious world

11:45

within a world. I

11:48

call these wooden boxes, like the

11:50

one in which Anne Reckless Emlyn is

11:52

building her miniscule universe, wax

11:54

and shellwork shadow boxes. We

11:57

know of only seven such objects in

12:00

public collections in the United States, all

12:03

of which were made by 18th century

12:05

girls and women in the Philadelphia area.

12:08

Ann's example sits on proud display

12:10

in a Pennsylvanian mansion called Stenton,

12:13

which is now open to the public. All

12:16

but one of the shadow boxes known

12:18

to survive were made by Quakers. And

12:21

while some of the shadow boxes show

12:24

pastoral landscapes, others depict scenes from the

12:26

Bible or the Odyssey. We

12:29

know from genealogical records and surviving

12:31

teacher's account books that the earliest

12:33

three boxes were made by adult

12:35

women in a home. The later

12:38

three boxes were the work of

12:40

teenage girls who were taught shell

12:42

arrangement and wax modeling as part

12:44

of a comprehensive education that positioned

12:46

them as appealing candidates for marriage,

12:49

potential wives and mothers who

12:51

had demonstrable taste, artistry and

12:53

wealth. It seems

12:55

that the sole purpose of these boxes, adorned

12:58

with a panoply of shells and

13:00

rosy-cheeked wax figures, was

13:02

to show off a girl or

13:04

woman's artistic skill and abundance of

13:06

time and resources. Elizabeth

13:10

Hall did not embroider her nutmegs in

13:12

a vacuum. Ann Reckless

13:14

Emlyn was not the only Quaker woman

13:16

to assemble a wax and shellwork shadow

13:19

box. The needlework, waxwork

13:21

and shellwork they made in

13:23

the 17th and 18th centuries

13:25

were unaffected by decade after

13:27

decade of Quaker leaders advocating

13:29

for friends to steer clear

13:31

of unnecessary embellishment in all

13:33

things. Surviving

13:36

objects tell a very different story

13:38

to what has been written by

13:40

and about friends. It's

13:42

only in recent years that scholarship has

13:45

started to assess the aspects of Quaker

13:47

history that don't align easily with the

13:49

guiding principle of being in the world

13:51

but not of it. Historians

13:54

frequently talk about women lurking in the

13:56

margins in the archives, far less visible

13:59

than men. They're usually

14:01

right about this, but not in the

14:03

case of Quaker women. Female

14:06

friends actually were writing and being

14:08

written about frequently in journals, letters

14:10

to each other, and published pamphlets

14:12

and books. It's just that they

14:14

were not writing about their handiwork. They

14:17

almost never wrote about the needlework,

14:20

waxwork, and shellwork they spent so

14:22

many hours creating. Even

14:25

when individuals are front and center in

14:27

the written record, we need to look

14:29

to their stuff, to the literal fabric

14:31

of their lives. It

14:33

may only give us a window on

14:35

a life of wealth and privilege, as

14:38

the objects owned, made and used by

14:40

those less well-off survive far less frequently.

14:43

But the fact that these Quaker

14:45

girls and women producing these opulent

14:47

objects were affluent and belonged to

14:49

a religious group predisposed to preserving

14:51

things, both documents and goods, adds

14:54

vibrant color to our understanding of Quakerism.

14:59

Just because Elizabeth Hall embroidered a

15:01

nutmeg and Anne Reckless Emlyn clothed

15:03

her wax figurines in spittle-field silk

15:05

does not mean that they were

15:07

misbehaving Quakers. Evidence,

15:09

like account books that illustrate devout

15:12

Quaker Deborah Morris bought her niece

15:14

silver garter buckles, green velvet, and

15:16

at least nine wax babies for

15:19

a shadow box, shows

15:21

that their identities as pious

15:23

friends and fashionable early modern

15:26

women coexisted peacefully. Like

15:28

me and you, humans of the

15:30

past were walking contradictions. We

15:33

may never know exactly how these Quakers

15:35

made sense of the difference between their

15:38

decoration and their dogma. We

15:40

can't time travel to understand how

15:42

they justified these discrepancies, but

15:45

we can wonder at their exquisite

15:47

gold stitches and sparkling mica glitter,

15:50

which complicate the idea that Quakers

15:52

were simply plain. Hello,

15:58

I'm Greg Jenner. If you're dead to

16:01

me, we are the comedy show that takes

16:03

history seriously and I'm thrilled to say we

16:05

have a brand new live episode to finish

16:07

the series. It's all about the life and

16:09

music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I was joined

16:11

by the comedian David A Doctor Teeth, the

16:13

historian of the Hannah Templeton, add the Bbc

16:15

Concert Orchestra all fifty four of them and

16:17

the conductor Gavin Subtle and as we played

16:19

songs and music from Mozart's life as one

16:21

is telling jokes and having a lovely time

16:24

learning about him, it's one of our best

16:26

ever episodes and I'd love to hear it.

16:28

You can find it wherever you get your

16:30

podcasts. Just type in, Get that to me?