Though Hesse’s career spanned little more than a decade, her work has remained popular and highly influential. On the one hand, the enduring fascination with Hesse derives from her remarkable “life of extremes.” But Hesse’s work, itself, was very much part of an equivocal and unique era in history, when artists were seeking new modes of expression in the aftermath of Abstract Expressionism.
Ringgold’s work as an artist, an activist, and an educator has influenced both the art world and communities beyond the art world. Her founding or co-founding of many arts organizations focused on issues faced by women of color has created many opportunities for those artists.
Delaunay’s textile designs extended the range of her influence into fashion, home decor and the theater. Her ability to introduce art into regular life by creating and wearing clothing, and living in spaces that were of her own design, can be seen as an early form of performance art, inspiring contemporary artists such as Marina Abramovic.
From 1901 to 1904 Amy was matron of the boarding hostel at her old high school; a friend, Bessie Spencer, was headmistress. On 30 August 1907, at Napier, Amy married Francis (Frank) Hutchinson, a sheepfarmer from Rissington; the marriage was childless. The homestead on Frank’s farm, Omatua, had been unoccupied, except by bees, for years. Amy and Frank restored the house and garden, and Omatua became known as a place where visitors found an ‘opportunity for intellectual conversation’.
Agnes Addison entered a small community where mothers would be the customers for her future business venture. Within a year the Addison family had purchased a second cottage in Hamilton Street, in Hokitika’s government office district. Nearby Revell Street was infamous for its many hotels, saloons and miners’ gatherings, and against this environment Agnes Addison won a reputation as a teetotaller and a woman of high moral standards.
Considered essential to the American Revolution, Betsy Ross is credited with sewing the first United States flag. A symbol of patriotism, Ross is often celebrated as the woman who helped George Washington finish the design. Although there is no historical evidence that she created this flag, her story has made her a national icon.
Sophia Frances Anne Caulfeild was a British writer and needleworker who wrote about religion and needlework, and frequently worked with Blanche Catherine Saward.
In 1882 she and Blanche Saward had their Dictionary of Needlework published. The work was available in six volumes and its full title was The dictionary of needlework : an encyclopaedia of artistic, plain, and fancy needlework dealing fully with the details of all the stitches employed, the method of working, the materials used, the meaning of technical terms, and, where necessary, tracing the origin and history of the various works described. Their encyclopedia attempted to describe all aspects of needlework, with 800 woodcut illustrations and more than 528 pages of alphabetical entries. The section on embroidery alone was 24 pages long. This work was aimed at the fashion for needlework and it competed with Thérèse de Dillmont’s Complete Encyclopedia of Needlework published in 1884 and Weldon’s Practical Needlework which was published in monthly parts from 1886.
Caulfeild also had a book of poetry published in 1870, and in 1887 published The Lives of the Apostles, their contemporaries and successors.
In 1884 needleworker Thérèse de Dillmont left the embroidery school that she had started with her sister Franziska and moved to France, where she wrote her Encyclopedia of Needlework (1886) The book, which has since been translated into 17 languages, pulled together thousands of textile designs from many countries including Egypt, Bulgaria, Turkey and China. She later owned several shops in European capitals and was considered “one of the most important pioneers in the international and multicultural enterprise of hobby needlework in the late nineteenth century”.