Wigtown Wednesday | Clare Hunter ~ Embroidering Her Truth

Wednesday 16 March
7PM (GMT), hybrid

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Clare Hunter will be discussing her startlingly original take on the life and time of Mary Queen of Scots. Embroidering Her Truth reveals how the doomed monarch incorporated textiles and fabric into creating an image of martyrdom and relaying hidden messages to her supporters and allies.

At her execution, Mary wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as the Catholic symbol of martyrdom.

In sixteenth-century Europe women's voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency. From her lavishly embroidered gowns as the prospective wife of the French Dauphin to the fashion dolls she used to encourage a Marian style at the Scottish court and the subversive messages she embroidered in captivity for her supporters, Mary used textiles to advance her political agenda, affirm her royal lineage and tell her own story.

About Clare Hunter

Clare Hunter has been a banner-maker, community textile artist and textile curator for over twenty years and established the community enterprise NeedleWorks in Glasgow. Her first book, Threads of Life, won the Saltire First Book Award, was a Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month and a Radio 4 Book of the Week.

Supported by Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022