From the Present to the Past: The Glasgow Art Club and the Royal School of Needlework

The Glasgow Art Club website, in the list of past events and exhibitions, includes the Royal School of

Needlework Open Day, which was held on Saturday the 22nd of June, 2024.

 

The School first started teaching Day Classes at the Club in 2011, followed by the RSN Certificate and Diploma

in Technical Hand Embroidery in 2012.

 

For a number of years, I was aware that two of Glasgow’s eminent art collectors and patrons were part of a

wider movement to establish a branch of the Royal School of Art Needlework – as the organisation was known

at the time – in the city, in the 1870s. I began to research this in more detail, in the summer of 2024.

 

To the best of my knowedge, no one has undertaken much, or any for that matter, research into the branch in

Glasgow. Its first location was in St. Vincent Street, and its second home was in Bath Street, at number 137.

 

To date, there is no mention of the Glasgow School in the Royal School of Needlework page, on Wikipedia, or

the organisation’s own website: Royal School of Needlework The Art of Hand Embroidery (royal-needlework.org.uk)

 

 

 

George Fairfull-Smith, September 2024.