Throughout the nineteenth century embroidery in Britain was dominated by a single technique, cross- or tent-stitch in wool on canvas. The original source for canvases and wool for this type of embroidery had been Germany and it became known as Berlin woolwork. Patterns were readily available and designs could be reproduced with minimum skill.
In the 1850s, when he was in his early twenties, William Morris began designing embroideries inspired by medieval examples. His dense flowing designs contained trees, flowers and figures as well as simple repeating patterns. Such designs were produced commercially by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company (later Morris and Company) from the late 1860s. When Gimson moved to London in 1886 he regularly visited the firm’s shop, next door to Sedding’s office at 227 Oxford Street. He described the shop to his elder brother, Sydney, recently married and setting up home in Leicester, as
Arts and Crafts embroidery, then known as art needlework, were characterised by the use of limited number of strong motifs with well-emphasised lines. Designers and needleworkers were encouraged to study fine old examples in churches and museums. Gimson collected photographs of Elizabethan, Persian and Indian embroideries from the South Kensington Museum and sketched details of embroidered and woven textiles on his travels in Italy and France. These served as inspiration for his designs together with his drawings from nature. He often chose traditional English flowers such as cowslips, pinks, dog roses, honeysuckle and sweet pea. During the 1890s and 1900s Gimson produced embroidery designs that were worked by his sisters Maggie and Sarah, by Phyllis and Nellie Lovibond, the sisters-in-law of Sydney Gimson, and by Evelyn Bankart, the wife of George Bankart. He liked the restraint of white-on-white embroidery for domestic work and often used this combination for tablecloths, table runners and table linen.
After about 1905 Gimson’s increasing reputation as a designer of furniture and metalwork, the day-to-day pressures of employing craftsmen and running workshops, the increasing commitments of his female relatives and friends (making them less available to embroider his designs), and possibly his wife’s growing interest in the craft of weaving, led to his virtual abandonment of embroidery design. His contribution alongside those of other Arts and Crafts designers, pioneered an reappraisal of embroidery which continues to influence and inform contemporary work.
‘. . . a treasure house for anyone furnishing. [Morris] is now making two pieces of tapestry designed by himself and his friend B. Jones only £250 each. Try and persuade a rich friend to buy them.’
Gimson saw and admired some of the firm’s finest embroideries and bought lengths of printed fabric. His friend William Lethaby recalled their student travels:
‘. . . on going to his lodgings I found he had brought with him large pieces of Morris chintz as an easy way of “having something to look at” in his sitting room.’
His half-sister Sarah Gimson worked an embroidery from a kit sold by Morris and Company and in 1890 Gimson was given the job of making a frame in the form of a fire screen to hold it. At the same time he was beginning to design embroideries himself. He wrote to Sarah:
‘I have not done Maggie’s design yet. I began one in cross-stitch but the mere drawing of the diagram would be a fortnight’s work so that I must give it up. I will do one for outline stitch with a little filling in here and there.’