Speeches
Friday, 28 February 2025
The Embroiderers Guild Biennial Exhibition
I am delighted, as Patron, to join you today for my first official engagement with the Embroiderers Guild.
It is particularly pleasing to do so in your Diamond anniversary year, and to open the biennial exhibition.
Your kind invitation gave me an opportunity to look again at a piece of embroidery I completed in year six at school in the 1970s.
While doing something for the first time is often a challenge, I felt a sense of satisfaction at its completion.
So much so that I keep it on my dressing table at Government House.
The experience gave me an insight into the skill that is required for embroidery, and, for the purposes of today, an admiration for the work of Guild Members in your biennial exhibition.
My appreciation of embroidery grew when I saw the Bayeux Tapestry while backpacking in Europe in the 1980s. I was captivated by the intricate needlework that told the story of the Norman conquest of Britain.
And that is the magic of embroidery, it is not only a demonstration of great skill but is the creation of something beautiful that will last for generations.
Since then, I have appreciated the needlework skills in many other pieces, among them a 19th Century needlework sampler by then 9-year-old Susanna Pilgrim, a relative of famed explorer and navigator Captain Mathew Flinders and the tapestry marking the Centenary of Women’s Suffrage in State Parliament.
Friends
I congratulate the Guild on your 60th Anniversary. That’s 60 years of fostering creativity and appreciating excellence, of sharing ideas and camaraderie.
It is also pleasing that you have nine country branches across the State.
Such a bringing together of people, both young and young at heart, over decades has only been possible through the commitment to and love of this art form shown by successive committees and members. Thank you for what you do.
I know many people have been long-time members of the Guild, and I was pleased to write to one of your founding members, Mrs Anne Elson in November last year, recognising her 60 years of membership and dedication to the craft. And she is still stitching!
Thanks must also go to the family of another founding member, Peg Saddler, for supporting the most outstanding original embroidery prize, given in her memory.
I congratulate all members whose impressive work is represented in the exhibition.
I trust that everyone who comes to view the exhibition will agree that they are indeed seeing “glorious threads”.
I have great pleasure in declaring your exhibition – your diamond jubilee exhibition - open.