Why Sewing is Art

Detail of the Prestonpans Tapestry taken from Textile Research Centre Leiden.

This is a scene from the Prestonpans Tapestry. It depicts a battle that took place in 1745; it was made in 2010.

Does that surprise you? Probably. We tend to think of embroidery, and of sewing in general, as quaint, outdated, not to be taken seriously. But in fact, sewing has never been taken seriously as an art form, and it should be.

Women's work

Part of the reason it has never been taken seriously is simply because it has never been confined to an elite group. It has always been a necessary part of the lives of even the poorest people, and it is traditionally considered “women’s work.” (Most—though not all—of the embroiderers who worked on the Prestonpans Tapestry are women.) It’s not that sewing is a mere craft and not an art, and therefore it was consigned to women; rather, sewing was consigned to women, and therefore it was considered a mere craft. But it’s 2019, so let’s take another look. Are there any other reasons not to consider sewing an art?

Obviously not all sewing is art, and not all artistic sewing is great art. Mending a garment is as pragmatic as painting a house wall (although both can be done with neatness and elegance). The average cross-stitch design has, perhaps, the artistic value of the average napkin doodle. But, by the same token, the Prestonpans Tapestry has the artistic value of any gallery painting.

Functional objects

When we move away from tapestry and embroidery to aspects of sewing such as garment design and construction, things get a little more complicated. There is a qualitative difference between a sewn object and a painting or symphony: most sewn objects are functional (garments, furnishings), while most paintings are, apparently, not.

A valid question would be, why does our definition of “fine art” exclude functional objects? We could probably circle right back into classism here, but I don’t think that would completely cover it. There really is a qualitative difference between, e.g., sculpture and architecture, between objects that have a use and objects that don’t. What is very hard for me to see, though, is why objects that have a use should be considered somehow lesser. If you need to make a distinction between the “decorative arts” and the “fine arts,” go right ahead—as long as this distinction is analogous to that between painting and music, between different types of equally valid artwork.

The special beauty of sewing

Indeed, the decorative arts can have a kind of elegance not available to the fine arts, precisely in the appropriateness with which they fulfill their function. A beautiful garment that is also amazingly comfortable, a beautiful building that is also exquisitely livable, a beautiful dish that is also incredibly useful—the external constraints of human bodies, needs, and uses don’t limit these artworks, they prompt extraordinary design that has a beauty all its own.

A further reflection: the boundaries between functional objects and other objects are sometimes much blurrier than they initially seem. Take a mural (I’m looking at one right now). It’s a painting; it’s primarily decorative, right? But it also functions as being a wall. Sure, you could have the wall without the painting—and we could all wear burlap sacks every day. But what fun would that be? The art isn’t in the fact that you put paint on a wall or cloth on a body; it’s in the way you do it and the beauty of the result.

I’m not saying that my sewing projects are the equivalent of the Sistine Chapel ceiling; they’re more the equivalent of a painting of a horse that a relative did at a community arts class, and now you have to keep it around because your relative did it. But that’s not because sewing isn’t art. It’s just because I’m not all that good at it yet.

(...Well, as to that, you’ll have to judge for yourself when I post pictures of my work!)