Mary Annie Sloane’s pencil drawing depicts a professional embroidery studio at the turn of the Twentieth century. Nine women are seated around a table with a woman seated on her own. The workers wear white pinafores and cuffs to keep their work clean.
The location of the workshop is unknown, however it is is annotated with the names of the workers: Miss Wells, Miss Cook, Mrs Forsythe, Mrs Lindus, Head, Underwood, Appleby, Knight, Lynes, Buckingham. Sloane’s address at Montague Mansions, Crawford Street, London is written on the reverse, where she lived from 1896-1901. The artist was a close friend of May Morris, and a member and Honorary Secretary of the Women’s Guild of Arts that May Morris founded in 1907. The pair travelled to Florence and Majorca, and Sloane drew several pencil portraits of may, now in the WMG collection. Sloane took over the lease of May’s house at 8 Hammersmith Terrace in London, after she moved permanently to Kelmscott Manor.
