Queering the Subversive Stitch: Men and the Culture of Needlework

by Joseph McBrinn

Overview

The history of men's needlework has long been considered a taboo subject. This is the first book ever published to document and critically interrogate a range of needlework made by men. It reveals that since medieval times men have threaded their own needles, stitched and knitted, woven lace, handmade clothes, as well as other kinds of textiles, and generally delighted in the pleasures and possibilities offered by all sorts of needlework. Only since the dawn of the modern age, in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, did needlework become closely aligned with new ideologies of the feminine. Since then men's needlework has been read not just as feminising but as queer.

In this groundbreaking study Joseph McBrinn argues that needlework by male artists as well as anonymous tailors, sailors, soldiers, convalescents, paupers, prisoners, hobbyists and a multitude of other men and boys deserves to be looked at again. Drawing on a wealth of examples of men's needlework, as well as visual representations of the male needleworker, in museum collections, from artist's papers and archives, in forgotten magazines and specialist publications, popular novels and children's literature, and even in the history of photography, film and television, he surveys and analyses many of the instances in which “needlemen” have contested, resisted and subverted the constrictive ideals of modern masculinity.

This audacious, original, carefully researched and often amusing study, demonstrates the significance of needlework by men in understanding their feelings, agency, identity and history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472578044
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/08/2021
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Dr. Joseph McBrinn is currently Lecturer in History of Design and Applied Arts at Belfast School of Art of the University of Ulster in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. His recent research centres on the intersection of masculinity and craft. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Modern Craft and the editorial advisory board of the Irish Arts Review.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements

1. “Only sissies and women sew”: an introduction
2. Needlework and the creation of masculinities: “the prick” of patriarchy
3. “Killing the angel in the house”: Victorian manliness, domestic handicrafts and homosexual panic
4. “The mesh canvas”: amateur needlecrafts, masculinity and modernism
5. Masculinity and “the politics of cloth”: from the “bad boys” of postmodern art to the “the boys that sew club” of the new millennium
6. Conclusion: “Men who Embroider”

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This book pricks your creative imagination. It will enable you to unpick and weave the history of men's needlework and it will encourage you to pay a little more attention to those queer and subversive stitches.” —Textile: Cloth and Culture

“A comprehensive study of men who turned to needlework ... [McBrinn's] present-day analyses are the liveliest, unpicking long-held notions of femininity and masculinity within the field of cultural production.” —Elephant Magazine

“An insightful, humorous, yet poignant and empathetic exploration of the history of men in the field of embroidery.” —Book Threads

“McBrinn's book marks an urgent intervention in the field of craft studies and it will be an essential text for those interested in the history of needlework and masculinity ... it will also become an important starting point for scholars looking to explore much wider, more diverse and inclusive approaches to investigations of queerness and craft in the future.” —Art History

“I devoured this in one sitting ... McBrinn has drawn together such a readable history of this hitherto overlooked subject, which not only demands to be recognised alongside Rozsika Parker's, but prompts fresh discourse on men's history in needlework.” —Embroidery

“McBrinn's sensitive, enlightening and expansive consideration of the relationship between masculinities and embroidery is a great success in its own right. In bringing to light the work and experiences of marginalised male needleworkers he surely achieves his aim, not just to be 'amusing and interesting', but also challenging and constructive.” —Textile History

“[A] thoughtfully fluid theorization of masculinity, homosexuality and subcultures, as well as class and race, into a nuanced analysis grounded in fascinating textual and visual primary sources.” —Journal of Design History

“Joseph McBrinn adds immeasurably to [needlework] literature through an unprecedented focus on men who sew. His richly researched and engagingly written narrative shows how various formations of modern masculinity have found expression through this medium. Queering the Subversive Stitch is at once a major scholarly contribution and a moving story about men's lives.” —Glenn Adamson, Yale Center for British Art, USA

“But for the fact I couldn't put this book down, I would have taken up a needle and thread and started sewing. McBrinn takes us on an astonishing journey through the needlepoint and embroidery of nineteenth century sailors, Hollywood film idols, trade unionists and those in mourning at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Over 80 images show us men at work with their needles on deck, at home, in groups and in public; they illustrate the gamut of that work – from the floral and religious to the activist and tenderly homoerotic. This is very far from a niche history – it stiches together countercultures and elites, histories of masculinity and sexuality, and queer and gender theory. And McBrinn does this deftly – developing sophisticated, incisive arguments about the history, status and meaning of men sewing with wit and an enviable light touch.” —Matt Cook, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

From the Publisher