Jessie Newbery

Design for an embroidered panel by Jessie Newbery. The Studio vol 12

Jessie Newbery (28 May 1864 – 27 April 1948) was a Scottish artist and embroiderer. She was one of the artists known as the Glasgow Girls. Newbery also created the Department of Embroidery at the Glasgow School of Art where she was able to establish needlework as a form of unique artistic design. She married the director of the Glasgow School of Art, Francis Newbery, in 1889.

Early life and education Born Jessie Wylie Rowat in Paisley, she was the daughter of Margaret Downie Hill and William Rowat, a forward-thinking shawl manufacturer. A visit to Italy when Newbery was aged 18 stimulated a lifelong interest in textiles and other decorative arts. She enrolled as a student at the Glasgow School of Art in 1884.

Work and career Sensim Sed cushion cover of embroidered linen with silks, designed and embroidered by Jessie Newbery ca 1900. The stitches emphasise the simple structure of the design. The colours, texture, lettering and stylised rose is characteristic of the Glasgow School. The cushion cover is inscribed with a Latin poem that remarks upon the passage of time and encourages daily work.

Newbery became an accomplished and original embroideress, though embroidery was not formally taught at the Glasgow School of Art. The profile of embroidery was raised at the school through the work of the "Four" – Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Herbert McNair, Frances Macdonald and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh – who all designed embroidery as part of their decorative schemes. Newbery started the first needlework and embroidery class at the school in 1894. Newbery was noticed for embroidery designs that were quite different from the output of the Royal School of Art Needlework. Her works had a hint of seventeenth-century crewel-work and her designs featured floral forms with angular stems and a strong decorative quality. She is credited as the inventor of the angular Glasgow rose, which has been likened to a cabbage. She also imported the new Glasgow style lettering into her embroidery designs.

Students who took part on her embroidery classes did so as an extra subject, or because they hoped to earn a livelihood as professional embroidery workers. At the turn of the century the Scottish Education Department issued guidance which envisaged embroidery as an important part of the national school curriculum. Hence women teachers attended Newbery's classes as part of their teaching qualification.

Newbery was careful in her choice of colour and materials. She preferred to use a lighter palette than was traditional, focusing on light purples, greens, blues and pink. and included additions like beads, ribbons and card as well as contrasting hemming,

Support for women's suffrage Newbery was an active member of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists. Along with sponsoring many friends and students for membership, she also provided exhibition and studio space for women artists. She was keen for women to have more of a place in society, and was an active member of the Women's Social and Political Union, organising the "Arts and Curios" stall at the Grand Suffrage Bazaar held at St Andrews Halls, Glasgow in 1910. She helped to make materials for related movements, such as the suffrage banners, along with Ann Macbeth,

Newbery did continue to create her own work and showed her embroidery in exhibitions, including one at the Louvre, Paris.

Newbery died in Corfe Castle, Dorset, where she and her husband, Francis Newbery, had gone to live after retirement.