Constance Howard (artist)

Howard was born in Abington in Northampton to Mildred Annie Abbott and Arthur Howard, a school teacher.^[1] From the age of ten she began taking weekly classes at the Northampton School of Art and subsequently won a scholarship that allowed her to attend full-time when she turned 14.^[1] From 1931, Howard was a student at the Royal College of Art in London where she was taught by both Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden.^[1] After graduating in 1935, Howard taught at the Cardiff School of Art where she established a course in dress design.^[1] During World War II she taught at the Kingston School of Art where she and her students embroidered maps for the RAF.^[1] In December 1945 Howard married the sculptor Harold Wilson Parker and gave up teaching but began exhibiting with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.^[1]

Howard returned to teaching in 1947 on a part-time basis with embroidery classes at Goldsmiths in south-east London.^[3] In 1950, Howard designed a large textile hanging for the country pavilion of the Festival of Britain exhibition in London.^[4] The Country Wife was completed by Howard and her students, who included Mary Quant, and depicted the activities of the National Federation of Women's Institutes.^[5] In 1953, Goldsmith's established a separate department of embroidery and in 1958 Howard became its head of department.^[1] In 1964, embroidery and textile design became a main subject area for the diploma in art and design at the college.^[4] As well as traditional embroidery skills, Howard encouraged the use of new techniques, including several of her own invention, and the production of wholly abstract designs often with unconventional materials.^[4] Howard also became an examiner and ran classes for the Embroiderers' Guild and undertook lecture tours to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.^[4]

Howard retired from Goldsmiths in 1975 but continued to exhibit, give guest lectures and wrote several books on the textile arts, notably her four-volume work Twentieth-Century Embroidery in Great Britain which was published between 1981 and 1986.^[3] Howard was awarded the MBE in 1975 for services to Art Education^[6]: 198 and in 1980, Goldsmiths opened the Constance Howard Gallery alongside a textile resource and research collection which contains Howard's own archive and lifetime collection of textiles.^[2][3]

Works by Howard are held by Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and are in the British Council collection.^[1][3][7] She designed ecclesiastical works for Lincoln Cathedral and Makerere University in Uganda and produced 200 kneelers for the College Chapel at Eton College.^[4]

• Design for Embroidery from Traditional English Sources, 1956
• Inspiration for Embroidery, 1966
• Embroidery and Colour, 1976
• Textile Crafts, 1977
• The Constance Howard Book of Stitches, 1979
• Twentieth-Century Embroidery in Great Britain, 4 volumes, 1981-1986.^[3]