Price: £500 | $680 | €580
Ref N°: 9235
Three large fruit? motifs emerging from leady sprays above smaller poppies, with foliage and leaves and decorative motifs, in shades of crimson, pink, soft brown, bronze, green and blue shades of 'Art Silks', worked on a natural undyed Tussur silk ground,
13 x 37 in; 34 x 94 cm actual embroidery
17 x 41 in; 44 x 105 cm mount
Very very good.
dye, print,stitch. Textiles by Thomas and Elizabeth Wardle. Brenda King p 37-39.
All images and text © meg-andrews.com 2026
This highly decorative piece is in ten glorious colours. 'Indian Poppy' was also known as 'Papavar'. Designer unknown. Using Thomas Wardle's 'Art Colours' on imported Indian undyed hand woven Tussur silk the embroidery is of a very high quality so was almost certainly worked by his wife's Leek Embroidery Society.* It is good to see on the edges of this piece the un-embroidered printed silk. This was clearly a much larger piece, possibly a hanging.
Elizabeth Wardle who formed The Leek Embroidery Society also produced a replica of the Bayeux Tapestry (actually an embroidery) in 1885, now in Reading Museum. The original can of course be seen in the British Museum for the next few months.
From the collection of the late Brenda King.
See my ARTICLE:meg-andrews.com/articles/The-Leek-Embroidery-Society/4/1