THE SUBVERSIVE STITCH Embroidery and che Making of the Feminine ROZSIKA PARKERAcknowledgements Many people have enabled me to complete this book: The London Women's Art History Collective, in particular Denise Cale, Pat Kahn, Tina Keane, Griselda Pollock and Alene Strausberg prompted the initial research. Spare Rib published the article which led to the book; I ‘would like to thank members of the 1974 magazine collective: Rose ‘Ades, Alison Fell, Marion Fudger, Jill Nicholls, Janie Prince, Marsha Rowe, Ann Scott and Ann Smith, For their help and support in diverse ways I am grateful to Linda Binnington, Guy Brett, Anthea Callen, Jocelyn Cornwell, Penelope Dalton, Briony Fer, Susan Hiller, Maggie Millman, Kim Parker, Will Parente, Stef Pixner, Mich@le Roberts, Ann Scott, Alison Swan and Annmarie Turnbull Adrian Forty, Griselda Pollock, Margaret Walters and Michelene Wandor read the manuscript and offered invaluable comments. Finally, I cannot thank Ruchie Petrie enough for the generous editorial advice and encouragement she provided at each stage of the work, Foreword “Has the pen or pencil dipped so deep in the blood of the human race as the needle? asked the writer Olive Schreiner. The answer is, quite simply, no. The art af embroidery has been the means of educating women into the feminine ideal, and of proving that chey _ fave attained ic, bue it has also provided a weapon of resistance to the constraints of femininicy. “Tp this book I examine the historical processes by which embroidery became identified with a particular sec of characteristics, and consigned to women’s hands. By mapping the relationship between. the history of embroidery ‘and changing notions of wi our from the Middle Ages to the! y, we can see how the art became implicated in the creati ninity across classes, and that the dévelopment of ideals and feminine behaviour ‘determined the style and iconography of needlework. To know the history of embroidery is to know the history of women. ixIntroduction ‘At first sight embroidery practice is much as it was when The Subversive Stitch was first published, ewenty-five years ago. There ‘continues to be a huge diversity of practice under the heading of embroidery. Men and women stitch as craft, as art, as professionals and as gifted amateurs. Moreover, 1984 and 2010 have something in common: financial recession. Then I observed a revival of enthusiasm for embroidery as a ‘homecraft’ with the call for the homemade, the hand-made and the natural. Now the same holds ttue, The London College of Fashion in August 2009 reported that bookings for sewing, classes had increased by almost a third in twelve months. Yet there are detectable changes in embroidery practice, For a start, the context of the book has altered significantly. Today there is no longer a thriving political movement of women. I wrote the book under the impecus of Second Wave feminism. By righting the neglect of women artists and questioning the downgrading of art forms associated with women — like embroidery — feminist art and crafe historians revisioned many of the premises underlying the writing of Art History. Theory and history came alive for us and gathered new meanings. Passion and vibrancy characterised the work of both artists and academics. I feel fortunate to have been part of those times. Shortly after the publication of The Subversive Stitch, backlash against feminism set in. The political and psychological xi eee asceeeee eC seaSeeHeEHaseR cease alosses that accrued have been compellingly documented by, for example, Sheila Rowbotham, Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolf Headlines blated ‘When Feminism Failed’ and “The Awful Truth About Women’s Lib’. Typically, anti-feminism focussed on the bodies and beings of feminists. Ie was trumpeted that the fight for equality led to hair loss, worry lines, cellulite and above all infertility. A magazine feature was typically titled “The Quiet Pain of Infertility; for the success oriented it's a bieter pill’ while an ad for face cream inquired ‘Is your face paying the price for success?” Of course, nineteen-seventies feminists had no desire for ‘success’ under the contemporary social and political structures. Far from wishing to climb ‘the ladder’ we wanted to kick it away. Where embroidery was concerned, feminists of the time were described as rejecting and spurning women's traditional crafts and skills. The ambivalence we experienced in relation to embroidery — our understanding of the medium as both an instrument of oppression and an important source of creative satisfaction — was repeatedly mistepresented as blanket condemnation. Apparently we ‘dumped’ women's domestic art skills. The Feminist was represented as stitch-hating, sad, ugly and drastically devoid of humour. Feminism survived — in part by foregrounding a humorous face. Today a feminist magazine on the internet is, for example, satirically titled The F-Word, while exhibitions containing embroidery with feminist connotations are titled, for example, ‘Not Your Grandmother's Doily’. Bur what of other issues raised in the book? I identified the historical_hierarehical division of the arts into fine arts and craft as a major force in the marginalisation of women's work. ‘The movement co break down boundaries between different forms of creative expression, which gathered pace in the nineteen-seventies, has undoubtedly intensified. Some working in the crafts today refer to themselves as ‘craftists'. Craft magazine declared in 2008, “We now cake for granted the cross-pollination of arts and crafts.” And, in recent yeats, a number of exhibitions have displayed work by artists employing stitchery. The Museum of Arts and Design in New York mounted ‘Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting’ in 2006, followed by ‘Pricked: Extreme Embroidery’ in 2007. The latter included 48 artists who, in the words of the New York Times reviewer, ‘make another case for needlecraft without the “craft” In Britain there was ‘Cloth and Culeure NOW’, in which 35 artists from six countries used textile history to investigate the ae eee importance of cultural identity and cranscultural influences in their work. In 2008 ‘Banners of Persuasion’ (a visual arts commissioning organisation started by Christopher and Suzanne Sharpe) organised ‘Demons, Yarns and ‘Tales’, in which 17 artists were invited to explore a textile medium they didn’t normally work in. Also in 2008 “The Fabric of Myth” was organised at ‘Compton Verney. The exhibition explored the symbolic function of textiles in classical myth and their thematic influence on historic and contemporary art. It included the sculptor Louise Bourgeois, whose work I discuss below. Karen Rosenberg, reviewing ‘Pricked: Extreme Embroidery’, wrote ‘In the 70s artists who swapped their paint brushes for a needle and thread were making a feminist statement. Today, as both men and women fill galleries with crocheted sculpture and stitched canvas, the gesture isn’t quite so specific." Many pieces exhibited were primarily concerned with the formal possibilities of embroidery and new materials, but there were, nevertheless, powerful feminist pieces, for example Christa Maiwald’s party dresses for little girls embroidered with images of male world leaders. The exhibition also showed the work of a number of men, suggesting that embroidery practice seems to have become significantly less gender specific. I use the word ‘seems’ because it could be thar the Internet is revealing previously hidden male embroiderers. Jamie Chalmers, for example, runs a website which functions as a resource for contemporary embroidery, featuring international textile artists, many of whom are men. He says, ‘I's not always easy being a Manbroiderer, people sometimes can’t get their head around the fact thae I'm six feet tall and yet I like stitching. Buc I'm not too fazed. I know how much I enjoy it and I just want to help other people share chat experience.” Thanks to the Women's Liberation Movement, there is a greater flexibility in what is considered natural or normal behaviour for men and women, yet the associations of embroidery with femininity, eriviality and domesticity still need to be warded off by the term ‘manbroiderer’ — and by the build of the stitcher, There are real differences between work employing embroidery to comment on the condition of women in the seventies and work produced in later decades influenced by Second Wave feminism. A comparison of the work of the earlier Se issumees sa eeeeeefeminist artists described in The Subversive Stitch to Tracey Emin’s mote recent sewn work is telling, Seventies artists employed embroidery as a medium with a heritage in women’s hands, and thus as mote appropriate chan male-associated paint for making feminist statements. Kate ‘Walker comments (see page 211), ‘Embroidery was one technique among many which could be combined in new ways to create forms of art truer to our skills and experience.’ Taking the format of the sampler, the sayings she stitched were deliberately defiane, not compliant: ‘Wife is a Four Letter word’ (Illustration no 102) She said of her sampler, I have never worried that embroidery’s association with femininity, sweetness, passivity and obedience may subvert my work's feminist intention. Femininity and sweetness are part of women’s strength...Quiet strength need not be mistaken for useless vulnerability.’ Catherine Riley, who trained as a textile artist, parodied the emotions associated with needlework ~ purity and chastity — and revealed che limitations they imposed. In an exhibition of hee art in 1980 all the pieces were worked in shades of white, conjuring up and cutting across the way whitework embroidery creates the image of women as pure, sexless, spiritual and sensitive. Illustration No. 106 ...In Tin displays the word ‘Sex’ spelled out in bone-silk and flowers, and contained in a white sardine tin, beautifully mounted and framed in pure white. Other feminist artists explored the relationship between embroidery and class. Margaret Harrison assembled examples of traditional needlectaft and contemporary doilies ‘made in the factory by working-class women and sold back to them’, highlighting the process of de-skilling working-class women since the industrial revolution, For those who saw themselves as feminist artists, embroidery was the perfect medium to give form to consciousness-raising. The ‘Women’s Liberation Movement employed the slogan ‘The personal is the political’. Steeped in the personal, yet shaped by the political, embroidery displayed the power of the political on personal life, as well as the political implications of personal relationships. Tensions between traditional expectations of feminine reticence and lived female sexuality were stitched on samplers — for example, Kate Walker's ‘Wife is a Four Leteer word’, described above. The constraints of feminine ‘purity and chastity’, associated with the construction of femininity, were challenged but not with viv See aaa the aim of achieving masculinity. Nineteen-seventies feminists categorically did not wish co exchange the frying pan of the feminine scereotype for the fire of the masculine stereotype. Embroidering the personal as political was, above all, intended to challenge the subordination and oppression of women. Feminist artists were part ofa thriving political movement, whereas today’s embroiderers, most notably Tracey Emin, are working in a very different time, I'd like to be able to claim Emin as che daughter of seventies feminism — the daughter we would have wanted. But it’s not thac simple, She is the complex product of che confluence of her personal history with celebrity culture, and of the evolution of art practice under the impact of nineteen-seventies feminism. ‘There are two major ways in which her work differs from her “foremothers’. Nineteen-seventies feminists eschewed celebrity and leadership in favour of collectivity, whereas Tracey Emin is undoubtedly a celebrity. The number of features that have been written abou her is quite extraordinary. But, pethaps more importantly, while nineteen-seventies feminists and Tracey Emin equally use the fact that embroidery, during the ewentiech century, had become increasingly categorised as the ‘art of personal life’, Tracey Emin employs embroidery as the prime ‘medium of personal life not to proclaim that the personal is the political, but that the personal is the universal. “Tracey Emin reveals intimate details from her personal life to engage the viewer with her expressions” of universal emotion,’ read, the ‘commentary on her work in the Saatchi Gallery. Tracey Emin has nevertheless been described as ‘reviving an approach chat was previously practised by feminists in che "70s. Like nineteen-seventies feminists, Emin employs traditional sampler technique with the incorporation of words. Her most famous stitched work was the embroidered tent, ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995", in which she sewed onto the cent walls all che people's names, including her grandmother and her teddy bear. Peering into the tent was a powerful experience. Sadly, it was destroyed in the Momart ‘warehouse fire. Her other embroidered work includes ‘When I ‘Think About Sex’, appliquéd with the words ‘Drunk’ and ‘super Bitch’. In another piece the words “There is no fucking peace’ are spelt out against floral rectangles which re-inforce the tension beeween the message and the medium.On her website Emin describes herself as producing ‘autobiographical art’ with the following statement: ‘Her confessional subjects include abortion, rape, self-neglect, and promiscuity expressed with che help of gloriously old-fashioned looking, hand-sewn appliqué leeeers. Her dad quite likes sewing, because it reminds him of his mum.’ Embroidery as ‘gloriously old-fashioned’ highlights the harsh and painful nature of the contemporary subject macter. The sewing dad saves stitchery from the triviality associated with femininity, ‘That it reminds him of his mum reminds us chat Emin is displaying a ‘cosy’ domestic art in a professional setting, breaking the boundary between the private, the personal and the public ~ both psychologically and formally. Second Wave feminists wanted an end to the inhibition and shame that limited women’s lives ~ exemplified by the bowed head of the embroiderer. We wanted women to be free to express a broad spectrum of affects and ways of being without the fear of being shamed. While nineteen-seventies feminists asserted the power of fernale sexuality, Tracey Emin exhibited it. She achieved a glorious shamelessness with her taboo-breaking embroidery. But the conventions of sexual difference are not so easily overcome. Her work is received not as evidence of the diversity of women’s work, extending what is accepted and expected of women. Tellingly itis, praised as ‘feminine and ballsy’. Nineteen-seventies feminists wanted women artists and women’s traditional media to receive the recognition they richly deserved. With Tracey Emin — thanks in pare to the machinery of the new celebrity culture ~ the aim appears to be achieved. Yee so often in the past we have scen the phenomenon of the Token ‘Woman, raised, praised and soon forgotten — leaving the status of women unchanged. Ie remains to be seen whether Tracey Emin's success will have an impact on the position of women in the arts. Believing that only the transformation of the seructures of art practice itself would truly improve things for women, nineteen- seventies feminists invented new ways of making and showing art. In Chapter 8 I describe ‘Feministo’: during 1975, women began exchanging are works through the post, setting up a visual dialogue about their lives as housewives and mothers. They utilised whatever materials they had co hand and whichever domestic skills they possessed, including embroidery. They wanted an end to competitive individualism fostered in the institutions associated fee eee Gasser with the fine arts, while avoiding idealisation of the domestic sphere. ‘We both celebrated the area of domestic creativity and “women’s world” and exposed it for its paucity,’ commented participant Phil Goodall. In the same year a group of six women artists cook over a house in Lambeth, London and created the installation ‘Housework’, exposing ‘the hidden side of the domestic dream’. The ground-floor rooms dealt with the emotional expectations bound up with marriage. A bride in traditional white gown, standing in an all-white environment with chocolate-box landscapes and collages of Princess Anne’s wedding decorating, the walls, stretched out her arms to welcome an unseen groom, In 2007, following in the footsteps of seventies feminists, 2 group of 12 people calling themselves ‘Leftovers’ took over a condemned house in London's Hampstead. Their declared intention was not to challenge the constraints, nor to highlight the creative possibilities of the domestic sphere, but to ‘democratise creativity’. Whereas seventies feminist alternative exhibition spaces had been women-only, ‘Leftovers’ involved men and women. Anyone could exhibit anything in the house. A spirit of anarchy informed the project. The desecration of the domestic provided a creative energy. Yet there were echoes of the nineteen-seventies: Lydia Samuels exhibited sewn pictures on the staircase, depicting people enjoying their food. In the medium associated with reticence and restraint, she stitched people eating with unselfconscious relish, refusing the self-denial of the diet. (See, on the cover, one of her sewn pictures, ‘Naomi Eating’). Twentieth- century feminists challenged the constraints on female desire. ‘Twenty-first century feminists depict desire in action. The historical association between embroidery, collectivity and political protest is evident in the recent world-wide movement of Craftivism. The term was coined in 2003 by Betsy Greer to designate work that combines craft and activism. She comments, ‘I make international anti-war cross stitch... juxtaposing the masculine “war” with the feminine “craft”.’ The London Craftivist Collective was formed by Sarah Corbett in 2009. Crativist protest banners, exhibited in public spaces, display stitched slogans challenging, for example, capitalism, global poverty and injustice. In 2010 the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol mounted ‘Craftism’, an exhibition of 14 projects intended ‘to question, disrupt or replace the dominant models of mass culture and consumerism’Pethaps the artist whose work has done most to restore fabric and stitching to their place within ‘high art’ is Louise Bourgeois. Had she frequently employed embroidery and fabric prior to 1984, I would have allocated a large section of the last chapter of the book to her work. Here I can do litele more than signal her importance. Born in France in 1911, she has spent most of her working life in the USA. During the mid-1990s, having established herself asa successful sculptor employing conventional materials ~ marble, bronze and wood — she began increasingly to work with fabric, Whereas Tracey Emin’s use of embroidery and fabric highlights the disjunccure between imposed femininity and lived female sexuality, Louise Bourgeois’ work brings out the deeper meanings of textiles’ evocation of women. In het work fabric is associated directly with female sexuality, the unconscious and the body. Familiar with psychoanalysis, she explores the infantile roots of female sexuality in the family through her own history, which was closely tied to textiles, as het parents ran a tapestry restoration busin Occasionally Louise Bourgeois utilises the craditional employment of embroidered words: an installation of 1997 which involved hanging garments, included a white coat embroidered fon the back with the words The Cold of Anxiety is very real. The serength of her work lies in her ability co use fabric co convey psychological processes. The stitches themselves convey meaning, Linda Nochlin has commented on the ferocity of the bad sewing, wich large, awkward stitching, far from the tradition of professional tapestry making." Often employing tactile fabrics like terry towelling to create stuffed, sewn figures, she explores relationships, with couples having sex, women giving birch and figures conveying pain and vulnerability. Louise Bourgeois says of herself, “My feminism expresses itself in an incense interest in what women do. But I'm a complete loner. Ic doesn't help me to associate with people, it really doesn’t help me. What helps me is to realize my own disabilities and express them.” Scrutinising her own experiences led to works wich an obvious feminist content. Take, for example, ‘Femme Maison’ of 2005, an image she had earlier explored in various materials. A stuffed, headless female corso lies on its back covered with a patchwork quile. Emerging from the rorso is a house. The piece a Sera evokes women’s isolation and incarceration in the home as well as suggesting the significance of women as the foundation of the home, while the inclusion of patchwork celebrates, though ambivalencly, women’s traditional medi Particularly powerful are her recent fabric heads. Taking the template of the portrait bust in stone or bronze, Louise Bourgeois reworks the form in patched-together fabric: capestry, towelling, ticking or pink bandages. The medium of personal life well conveys internal conflict, age, pain and doube. ‘The psychoanalyst Melanie Klein (whose work Louise Bourgeois knew) considered creativity to be driven by the ‘unconscious desire to make reparation — specifically co the mother for descructive attacks motivated by infantile ambivalence. We can speculate on the unconscious processes that may have led Louise Bourgeois to turn to stitching in her old age. She wrote, ‘When | was growing up, all che women in my house were using needles. I have always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage, It's a claim to forgiveness. It is never aggressive, it's not a pin.” Her work, to my mind, associates stitching not only with reparation but also with aggression and destruction. A theme that recurs in The Subversive Stitch is the dual face of embroidery. Historically, through the centuries, it has provided both a weapon of resistance for women and functioned as a source of constraint. It has promoted submission to the norms of feminine obedience and offered both psychological and practical means to independence. Colette describes observing the latter process in her daughter. She writes, *...she is silent when she sews, silent for hours on end...she is silent, and she — why not write i¢ down the word that frightens me — she is chinking.”” Psychoanalytic theory provides a way of understanding how creativity fosters thought. The psychoanalytic theorist W.R.Bion described the process of ‘containment’ occurring between parent and child, and between analyst and patient. The parent and clinician take in the formless fears and raw experience of the child and patient, make sense of them and return them in a form that can be chought about. Psychoanalyst Margot Waddell has related Bion’s theory of ‘containment’ co the experience of the artist and the art work. She writes that ‘the art object promotes and expands mental capacities by offering a shape and containingstructure for che transformation of emotional experience into recognizable form." ‘The processes of creativity — the finding of form for thought — have a transformative impact on the sense of self. The embroiderer holds in her hands a coherent object which exists both outside in the world and inside her head. W.R.Winnicott’s theory of mirroring helps us understand how the experience of embroidering and the embroidery affirms the self as a being with agency, acceptability and potency. Winnicote developed his theory of mirroring in the context of the mother-child relationship. The child sees in the mother's face a reflection of him or herself, mediated by the mother’s feelings of love and acceptance. The embroiderer sees a positive reflection of herself in her work and, importantly, in the reception of her work by others. ‘The containing and mirroring function of embroidery, with the associated capacity for thought and self-esteem, is evident in the work produced under the aegis of Fine Cell Work, a chatity established in 1997. Following a tradition begun by the cighteenth-century prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, che charity provides skills and embroidery materials for men and women in prisons throughout the United Kingdom. Volunteers deliver material co prisoners, who carry out the work in their cells. The embroidered cushions, bags, cases, quilts and wall hangings are then sold, with money going to the prisoners. Sam, who embroiders in Wandsworth, writes, 1am learning a new skill which I did not think possible, I also know that people do care about me and what I do because otherwise why would people take an interese in my fine cell work, I now believe what others think about me makes a real difference to how I conduct myself.” Embroidery promotes and reflects a richer, more meaningful internal world, which is in turn substantiated by che reception of the work in the outside world. Sam found chat the reception of his work changed both his relationship to himself and others. Dee describes how the processes of embroidering promoted the capacity to think, as well as confirming her sense of agency and the ability to love and feel loved. She writes, put many hours of love and concentration into the commission, As I saw it grow I became more and more excited. Ie was never Per eee far from my mind at all times. 1 puzzled, imagined different colours, stitches. All in all I am proud of this piece. The appreciation I got from everyone is the value of this hard work for me." ‘The parallel between women historically stitching in the home and those stitching in captivity is obvious. Bue there is a significant difference. Both prisoners and domestic embroiderer find psychological growth and release in creativity, both benefic from the power of positive mirroring provided by the work, but the prisoners are paid for their work. Paul in Wandsworth describes how the money will enable him at Christmas to ‘send ‘our postal orders to my daughters so they will know I still think about them’. James in Wynor says, ‘I bought myself a nice pair of shoes with some of the money I made and I'm keeping as much as I can by for getting out." However, Ron in Wandsworth highlights the aspect of embroidery that has, so to speak, kept women and prisoners sitting still and in place over the centuries: ‘Lfind the quality work soothing,’ he says, adding, ‘I am saving for my release." T wish I could end with an unqualified celebration of the recent history of embroidery. Change, however, is slow and uneven. Consider che fact that many of the beliefs that fired feminist embroiderers in the late twentieth century were also central tenets of the Arts and Crafts Movement that began in the late nineteenth century. They too wanted an end to the divide beeween fine and decorative arts. They too believed in the transformative power of the arts not only on society but also on the lives of the practitioners. Art was to be more like work and work more like art, while William Morris concluded that the transformation of art practice was finally dependent upon social revolution. Similarly, Second Wave feminism, with its condemnation of the denial of female desire and critique of domestic relationships, repeated the insights of the earlier suffrage movement. Yet while similar issues are re-visited — as I hope I have indicated in this brief introduction — both feminism and embroidery continue to evolve, although tracing a pattern of progress which is less suggestive of a straight line than a spiral. Rozsika Parker13 4 15 16 7 Notes Sheila Rowbotham, A Gentury of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the United States, London: Viking, 1997. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, New York: Crown, 1991. Naomi Wolf, The Beauly Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women, New York: Bantham, Doubleday, Dell, 1990. Crafe, 214, Sept/Oct. 2008, Karen Rosenberg, ‘Needling More Than Feminist Consciousness’, New York Times, December 2009. Ibid Fine Cell Work, Newsletter, 2009. Craft, 214, Sept/Oct. 2008, Kate Mikhail ‘Off the Wall: Mosaics with a Message’ Observer ‘Magazine, 7 February 2010. Linda Nochlin, ‘Old-Age Style: Late Louise Bourgeois’, in Louive Bourgeois, New York: Rizzoli, 2007, Interview wich Donaly Kuspit, 1988, in Charles Hanson and Paul Wood, Louise Bourgevis, Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. J. Gorovoy and P. Tabatabai, Lovie Bourgeois Blue Days and Pink ‘Days, exhibition catalogue, Fondazione Prada: Milan, 1997. Colette, Earthly Paradise, London: Secker and Warburg, 1966 .205. Margot Wadell, “The Containing Function of Ar’, unpublished paper, 2009. Fine Cell Work archives. Names have been changed Ibid, Ibid, Ibid Ibid. 1: The Creation of Femininity Needlework is the favourite hobby of two percent of British males, about equal to the number who go to church regularly. ‘Nearly one man in three fills i football coupons, in an average month, or has a bet.! ‘The Guardian was no doubt confident that its coverage of the 1979 Government survey, Social Trends, was eye-catching, and that this opening sentence was guaranteed to amuse by its incon- gruity. The unspoken assumption implied by the juxtaposition of male needleworkers and churchgoers is that these men are pious, prim and conformist. Real men gamble and fill in football cou- pons; only sissies and women sew and swell congregations. Sixteen years later nothing much has changed. Social Trends revealed that the greatest difference between men and women was in sewing and knitting. Thirty-seven percent of women, but only two percent of men, had done some in an average week in the three months before they were interviewed for the survey. The sexual division that assigns women to sewing is inscribed in our social institutions. A late-1970s’ report ona large suburban primary school praised the diligent, pioneering teaching practised by the staff. ‘Two photographs illustrated science teaching methods: in one, a small group of boys were shown unselfcon- sciously engrossed in a ‘wave power machine’; in the other, two