By Keeley Hussain
A major new exhibition at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery is bringing long-overdue recognition to Mary Linwood, who grew up in Leicester, a textile pioneer whose intricate embroidered works once drew national fame but have rarely been seen in the last two centuries.
Mary Linwood: Art, Stitch, and Life brings together the world’s largest collection of her surviving pieces, alongside newly created work by freelance curator and textile artist Ruth Singer, who led the project after years of research.
“Mary Linwood was an 18th century and early 19th century woman from Leicester, and she was a professional embroiderer, which was incredibly unusual at the time,” Ms Singer said.
She explained that Linwood transformed what was traditionally a hobby for wealthy women into being a professional artist.
Ms Singer’s own fascination with Linwood began with their shared craft and hometown.
“I thought she was a really interesting person because she was the first ever professional textile artist, and knowing she was from Leicester, same as me. It was really interesting how she’s not that well known in Leicester.”
The exhibition has been years in the making.
“I started properly working on it in January 2024 and it opened in September 2025,” she said, noting the project took more than 18 months of intensive work.
Ms Singer said the exhibition’s relevance is rooted in how women’s textile work has historically been dismissed.
“Woman’s textile making is so often ignored or under appreciated and treated as a hobby and not important,” she said.
She argued Linwood’s legacy is not what it should be. ”She should be really famous, particularly in Leicester,” she said.
Visitors have reacted with surprise at the scale and realism of Linwood’s pieces, many being stunned by their size.
“People say, wow, I had no idea she was this talented and that textile embroidery could be this detailed and this much like painting,” Ms Singer said.
“Some of the pieces are huge, and took months, if not years to make.”
Displaying the fragile works carried challenges.
Pieces needed glazing, reframing, or specially built cases, especially those borrowed from the Bowes Museum.
“It is tricky to present textiles in a way that they’re still visible, but they’re still protected,” Ms Singer said, adding: “It’s been successful.”
For Ms Singer, the exhibition is personally significant. “It is really brilliant to be able to do that, and have them exhibited in the same place, it’s really special.”
She said the project will shape her practice long after the exhibition closes.
“I have a sketch book full of ideas. I definitely want to do more research about Mary Linwood. It is going to carry on feeding in for quite a long time.”
She hopes visitors leave with one message: that seeing Linwood’s art in person is vital.
“It’s really important to actually see these pieces in person, and understand the complexity and skill involved.”