Queering the Subversive Stitch : Men and the Culture of Needlework

The history of men's needlework has long been considered a taboo subject. This is the first book ever published to document and critically interrogate a range of needlework made by men. It reveals that since medieval times men have threaded their own needles, stitched and knitted, woven lace, handmade clothes, as well as other kinds of textiles, and generally delighted in the pleasures and possibilities offered by all sorts of needlework. Only since the dawn of the modern age, in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, did needlework become closely aligned with new ideologies of the feminine. Since then men's needlework has been read not just as feminising but as queer.

In this groundbreaking study Joseph McBrinn argues that needlework by male artists as well as anonymous tailors, sailors, soldiers, convalescents, paupers, prisoners, hobbyists and a multitude of other men and boys deserves to be looked at again. Drawing on a wealth of examples of men's needlework, as well as visual representations of the male needleworker, in museum collections, from artist's papers and archives, in forgotten magazines and specialist publications, popular novels and children's literature, and even in the history of photography, film and television, he surveys and analyses many of the instances in which “needlemen” have contested, resisted and subverted the constrictive ideals of modern masculinity.

This audacious, original, carefully researched and often amusing study, demonstrates the significance of needlework by men in understanding their feelings, agency, identity and history.

“Joseph McBrinn adds immeasurably to [needlework] literature through an unprecedented focus on men who sew. His richly researched and engagingly written narrative shows how various formations of modern masculinity have found expression through this medium. Queering the Subversive Stitch is at once a major scholarly contribution and a moving story about men's lives.” —Glenn Adamson, Yale Center for British Art, USA

“But for the fact I couldn't put this book down, I would have taken up a needle and thread and started sewing. McBrinn takes us on an astonishing journey through the needlepoint and embroidery of nineteenth century sailors, Hollywood film idols, trade unionists and those in mourning at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Over 80 images show us men at work with their needles on deck, at home, in groups and in public; they illustrate the gamut of that work – from the floral and religious to the activist and tenderly homoerotic. This is very far from a niche history – it stiches together countercultures and elites, histories of masculinity and sexuality, and queer and gender theory. And McBrinn does this deftly – developing sophisticated, incisive arguments about the history, status and meaning of men sewing with wit and an enviable light touch.” —Matt Cook, Birkbeck, University of London, UK