Written by We’ve been making great progress on the digitisation. In January we started on larger pieces in Bays 4 and 5, which involved changing the room around to gain access to the shelving. An early piece to shoot was “The birth of Venus” a needle felted piece that is now on display at Discover Bucks in the Beryl Dean Gallery as part of our “On a grand scale” exhibition, as Nina, our curator saw it and wanted it for the exhibition.
On 21st of January we completed shooting 3000 pieces with Punto in Aria by Paddy Killer (EAMEG.1992.4) – note the stitching related items in the details of her piece. It is lovely – and a stunning colour of blue.
Here is an after shot – showing everything wrapped and stored more neatly, as we finished these 2 bays at the end of March. It is very satisfying to see the shelves better organised and everything wrapped to protect from dust etc.
Shown in the featured picture for this post (see above) is one of the largest pieces– a 2.5 SqM quilt – Anthea is posing for a sense of scale!
We still have some larger pieces that need to be shot lying on a floor to do, however this requires a bit more space so we will organise this in the coming months.
We are now back on boxed items – starting with boxes of historical items by century – 18th, 19th, wartime etc.
We have costume boxes to do, and some individual topics. We will then progress to accessioning recent donations with a plan to digitising them once they are recorded.
I have organised the next load to Art UK, currently there are 770 pieces on there and this load is just over 300 which means over 1000 pieces will shortly be available on Art UK.
We will be sharing more information on progress, and behind the scenes shots in a special talk after the Guild AGM in July.
Tickets for the talk can be obtained here: EG THREAD TALKS: Anne Haigh: Digitising the Embroiderers’ Guild Collection Tickets, Sat 12 Jul 2025 at 14:00 | Eventbrite
Anne Haigh, Trustee
Note: Two of these images are ‘behind the scenes’ photos taken by Anne Haigh and not the finished photos from the photographer.
For details of the project, see our earlier news post: Digitising the Embroiderer’s Guild Collection