In her book Needlework as Art, published in 1886, Marion Alford poured scorn on stumpwork. She derided the 17th-century raised embroidery as ‘mostly very ugly’, and ‘childish’, finding the ‘ignorance of all rules of composition’ and ‘absence of any sort of style’ to be ‘ridiculously bad’. Needless to say, modern-day fans of stumpwork don’t agree with Lady Alford’s critique.
Didie Inglis Hall, an embroideress who makes stumpwork inspired by antique examples, admires its colourful
