Rebecca I'Anson

Rebecca Maria and Jessie Cowley I’Anson were born in the isolated mid-north of colonial South Australia, their mother, Jessie Rebecca was skilled at fine needlework and taught this to her two daughters, Rebecca Maria and Jessie Cowley from the tender ages of four and three years, respectively. Beginning with fine, needlepoint-lace borders, their instruction progressed through all facets of whitework embroidery and needlework. Such skills were then taught to young girls, to be used as leisure pursuits if wealthy or otherwise, to provide a living.

The mother was widowed at an early age and put her skills and those of her young daughters to use, teaching, designing and making fine needlework in country Kadina. Moving to the city of Adelaide about 1920, the three lived in a tiny, row-cottage and supported themselves by giving classes in and from commissions for a range of needlework: d’oyleys and handkerchiefs to tablecloths and bedspreads. The discipline and patience required for fine needlework they saw as “a form of character building which could help equip a girl for life”.

A recurring motif in some of their finest needlework was the Sturt’s Desert Pea, Clianthus formosus, (now Swainsona formosa) the state floral emblem of South Australia and which was said to have been discovered by the maternal uncle of Jessie snr, Joseph Cowley who was a member of Charles Sturt’s expedition of 1844-46 to inland Australia and a source of great pride in the family.

This handkerchief was commissioned as a wedding handkerchief, incorporating the bride’s initial and the Sturt’s Desert Pea in the fine, needlepoint-lace border. Needlepoint lace requires fine, linen threads, is painstaking and time consuming compared with other handmade laces but its compound of stitches, or points, produces a fine but a strong lace, traditionally used for the very-best trousseau linen, wedding and christening gowns but was gradually superseded by inexpensive, machine-made laces of little strength or durability.

Judith Heaven

August 2025