The Public and the Private Face of Fashionable Domestic Embroidery in 19th Century Canada

Dr. Salahub’s research investigated the ROM’s collection of 19th century Canadian domestic  embroideries that have traditionally been dismissed as a private feminine activity. Her investigation views them as cultural documents of decorative art used to demonstrate bourgeois femininity in Victorian Canada, and as a portal through which women were able to enter and discuss public life, culture, and ideas. She suggested that in Canada, fashionable domestic embroidery was not merely a passive occupation—one imposed upon middle-class women as a means of inculcation of social expectations—but was also a sophisticated means by which women negotiated a path within the public, traditionally held to be male, sphere.