Provenance
The Artist's Family
Note: After the war, in 1947, Kessell was commissioned to complete needlework designs for the Needlework Development Scheme, a collaborative initiative between education and industry, which sought to promote and improve British embroidery design. Although the scheme had a large and current selection of embroideries in a number of styles, foreign examples represented the collection's best needlework. With the intention of expanding the number of British works, Kessell was chosen to create experimental designs for hand and machine work that could be interpreted by British embroidery artists. Kessell’s designs were inspired by the Bauhaus and abstract artists like Sophie Taeuber-Arp. The designs were considered particularly "progressive" and proved difficult to reproduce. Machine results were considered more successful than those produced by hand. Although few art schools were accomplished enough to adopt the designs, Bromley College of Art was one that did manage to do so.