In 1918, the Nottingham Evening Post published a news article about a needlework set that had been stolen along with a gold watch, a gold brooch, and a pair of spectacles. The thief, once identified, attributed his action to intoxication and served a month in prison for this crime. But why was a needlework set considered worthy enough to be stolen alongside obviously costly items made of gold?

This needlework set is stored in a green leather case that is both portable and fashionable. Normally displayed in the Solarium at Dalnavert Museum, one of the most beautiful and artfully staged rooms of the Macdonald house, the case sits on the open shelf of the sewing table, exposed to light that is coming from the big window. Others artifacts displayed in this room - comfortable chairs, a bird cage, and tea cups, displayed alongside an impressive collection of houseplants – would have provided the perfect setting for the women of the household to spend time knitting, embroidering, and reading.

Inside the case, which is lined with a stiff, green satin-like material, each tool sits inside its segmented pocket, which makes finding and accessing a tool easy. There are, in total, seventeen items inside the case. They include two silk winders, multiple crochet hooks, a tatting shuttle made from French ivory, a metal thimble, small scissors, a bodkin needle, a spool of silk thread, and two needle cases. These tools were used for traditionally feminine pastimes, such as tatting, sewing, crocheting, and mending. The case shows signs of discolouration, and some parts of it are worn, which hints at its frequent use. The flaps on this case were used to close and secure the needlework set so that it could be carried. This set probably travelled a lot.

There are several expensive objects in it. The ivory tatting shuttle, though made of faux ivory, was a costly item. Notably, it was used to make an expensive and fashionable item: tatted lace, which was in great demand in the nineteenth century. Tools like a tatting shuttle were an investment for their users. Mary C. Beaudry, in Findings: the Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing, explains that needles were more expensive than pins, so they were owned in smaller numbers than pins. The quality of the materials used in a travel case as well as the quality of the tools themselves varied according to who owned it. Women who were in the higher social classes possessed fancier and more expensive needlework cases. It is very likely that the man who was caught stealing the brooch and other valuable items knew the worth of a well-made and well-stocked needlework case.

As Mary Baudry also notes, needles, in addition to being functional tools, were often personal items that had close associations with hands, fingers, postures, gestures, and sequences of motion, this in part because women were expected to keep their hands busy at all times. In the Victorian era, needlework was a skill that was taught to girls at schools. It was also a skill that was passed down between generations. As early as the seventeenth century, embroidery was an activity used to socialise young girls into feminine pursuits, and as time passed, it came to be associated not only with femininity but also with the privileges of an aristocratic lifestyle. Beaudry notes that women “used these ideologies and were used by them.”¹

Women’s needlework sets were portable because many Victorian-era women liked to take their needlework with them on visits to friends and family members. As the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel explained in 1893, some women of earlier eras carried their needlework tools to church every morning where, together with other women in their congregations, they embroidered “chasubles and altar cloths and worked wonderful hangings for the cold stone walls.”² Both for Victorian society and for the cultures of preceding eras, needlework helped to promote forms of womanhood that accorded with the religious and patriarchal values of the time. Of course, needlework also gave women valuable opportunities for creative expression and social connection. Needlework was also a gendered act of artful expression of labor as women from all age groups spent time learning and practising sewing.

Needlework took various shapes and forms, differing according to the class of the women who participated in these kinds of making. While needlework was a form of leisure for the upper class, working-class women were employed in “high-fashion dressmaking, millinery, gloving, and even bookbinding.”³ The industrialisation of sewing and the wide-spread use of sewing machines in the mid- nineteenth century changed the relationship between womanhood and needlework in certain ways. Despite the difference between classes, whether conducted in private or public, needlework was a gendered activity, and women were involved in every stage of it, from needle-making to embroidering. Notably, in the late nineteenth century, many associations were formed to help women, including privileged women, extend their private or domestic labour into the public sphere. The Needlework Guild of Canada was one such association. It was established in 1882 with the aim of collecting and distributing new handmade garments and household linens for adults and children in need.

It is interesting to note how items such as carefully and laboriously embroidered pillows and framed pieces of needlepoint defined a cosy Victorian home. The aesthetic of handcrafted clutter suggests aristocratic privilege and leisure yet, following the Industrial Revolution, these kinds of objects gained a presence in working-class homes. What is more, as a result of the same historical development, women were paid, albeit poorly, to do needlework tasks that were previously linked narrowly with leisure. The contrast between portable needlework sets used, on the one hand, to decorate the altar cloths of a church, and, on the other, by working-class women who worked long hours for a woefully small salary is a prompt for us to think about the different meanings a set of tools or a practice like lace making might have for different people in different circumstances. Doing so enriches our historical understanding not only of objects but of their owners.