About

Hi!! I’m Rebecca, 28, and I run Girdle of Venus from my living room in Leicestershire.

I started Girdle of Venus because I wanted to make history something people could wear, hold and experience. I've loved medieval art has since I was a child. Years later, I thought embroidery might bring those stories back to life.

I make one of one hand embroidered textile pieces, specialising in Sacred Hearts, using velvet, beads and metallic thread. My work is inspired by medieval art, religious imagery and historical symbolism. Everything is made by hand in one place. No production line, no repeats.

Manifesto

The hearts were NEVER going to be the end goal. I want to make handbags, clothes, jewellery, beginner embroidery kits, ridiculous things you absolutely don't need but are compelled to own. I want to keep learning old techniques, make things slowly and give historic symbolism a life outside of museums/ books/ Pinterest boards.

At the moment, I make every piece myself alongside working a full time corporate job. So like the best bits of medieval manuscripts, most of this happens in the margins: evenings, weekends, annual leave... this is IT for me. 

I design the pieces, research the references, embroider them, stitch them together, photo them, make the website, film the videos, pack your orders and take them to the post office. It is an unhinged amount of work. I also LOVE it!!!!

I'm a working class artist and I care silly amounts about building something creative that could eventually become my actual living. Every order makes that possiblity less distant. The money I make from my embroidery goes straight back into materials, equipment, new ideas, saving towards the bigger things I want to do...

The bigger plan

My absolute dream is to bring making and history together.

I want to run embroidery workshops that are basically history field trips.

The vision: spending the day somewhere beautiful and very very very old. You learn about the building, the people who lived there, the things they left behind. We find a detail in that history (a carving? a flower? a piece of jewellery? a symbol?) and sit down together and make something inspired by it. You leave knowing something you didn't know that morning, with something you made with your own hands. 

I think slowness is important. We live in a world obsessed with optimisation and speed and mass-production. I would quite like to spend an afternoon in a castle painstakingly embroidering something instead ^ . ^

Heritage sites, hello!!!

One of the things I'd LOVE to do is work directly with heritage sites, museums and historic houses to create collections based on their own histories. Things that could only belong to that place: a motif from the ceiling, a symbol hidden in a portrait, a plant from the garden, something weird in the archive that deserves more attention. 

I've already had a teeny weeny glimpse of what that could look like. I made pieces inspired by Anne Boleyn and took them with me to Hever Castle, her childhood home. Seeing something i'd researched and made within the history that inspired it made me go 'oh. THIS. I wanna do THIS.'

So heritage organisations: I would very much like to access your archives.

Eventually?

I want to learn from craftspeople who know a lot more than I do. I want to collaborate and make ambitious, impractical things. I want people who thought history wasn't really for them to find an unexpected way into it. 

The most important goal is to help keep handmade crafts alive!! 

It's still early days but it's starting to feel like it could be something very special. 

Thanks for being here while I find out <3