Lady Marian Alford (1817–1888) edited The Handbook of Embroidery (1881) and wrote a history, Needlework as Art (1886), both works in association with her patronage of the Royal School of Needlework. Additionally, as an accomplished amateur artist, she contributed illustrations to two books and spent 15 years decorating with her own work the studio-house she designed. Her home exemplified the principles of taste that she expounded in her treatise: “variety without redundancy; grace without affectation; simplicity without poverty; and choice of the appropriate to ensure a harmonious and serene composition” (Alford, 31). Her precepts echoed those of art and social theorists Pugin, Ruskin, and Morris in that form came before function, medieval methods were superior to industrialized production, and art needed democratizing.
At home, known as an intelligent and dignified conversationalist, her guests were members of social, political, intellectual and creative elites. She made...