She can’t have a key…’

Hand embroidered print protest

This piece was made after reflecting on my Grandmother’s memory of her 21st birthday. As was the custom at the time, her widowed mother wanted to give her a door key to their home. When she asked her sons what they thought, they replied, ‘She can’t have a key, she’s only a girl’. Granny’s mother deferred to their opinion as men, and sadly Granny was not given a key. The memory of this casual misogyny echoed throughout her life, and as a child in the 1970’s I was horrified to hear of the double standards she had endured. I used a traditional pre-printed design on a vintage linen tray cloth as the base, stitched into it using inherited embroidery silks, then screen printed the phrase before adding the tiny beads to finish off. It felt satisfying to use traditional techniques and materials to protest prejudice, whether that reflects the 1930s or in society today.