Featured: Embroidery Machine
Charlotte Farrant – Guild Graduate in 2025 – talks about the Codification of Stitch
Charlotte graduated with a degree in Hand Embroidery from the Royal School of Needlework. She says:
The Codification of Stitch explores the question: ‘Can you encapsulate a person’s individuality, compelling and remarkable life, into a garment?’
Examining “semiotics of colour” and how, combined with fashion choices, it influences the social acceptance of an adventurous woman, with a vivid life full of diverse activities, exploring the ambiguity between heritage and future innovation.
Growing up with a love of mechanics and art, I look to the ‘unconventional’ for inspiration. Researching underrepresented women throughout history led me to Anne Lister and her passion for disregarding expected societal norms of upper-class Victorian women. Anne’s innovative and explorative heritage deserves to be told.
Nicknamed ‘Gentleman Jack’, Anne wore men’s clothes, was infamous throughout Halifax, Yorkshire, travelled the world, was a social enigma, collected taxes whilst running Shibbden Hall, and sank numerous coal mines on her land.
Discovered in 1887, Anne’s treasured diaries (written in code) were deciphered; however, thought to be too explicit, Shibbden Hall’s walls became the diaries’ guardian and were not re-discovered until 1967, telling stories of her love affairs with other women and her intrinsic career character traits.
After developing a coding system for embroidery, every stitch on her coat represents a letter of her iconic phrase, ‘I am not made like any other I have seen, I dare believe myself to be different from any other who exists.’
All work featured by Charlotte Farrant