#votingright

[democracyunderground]

MARCH ON WASHINGTON - VOTING RIGHTS 

MARTIN LUTHER KING - JOHN LEWIS 

[harvardfineartslib]

Mary Lowndes (1857–1929) was a British stained-glass artist active in the women’s suffrage movement in Britain. The activists in this fight were called suffragettes and they fought for women’s right to vote in public elections under the banner “Votes for Women.”

The suffragettes used art and design as a strategic communication tool to further the movement’s message. In 1907, Lowndes established the Artists’ Suffrage League (ASL) with mostly female professional artists, illustrators, and engravers. She used her skills as a stained-glass artist to create the bold and beautiful banners. What was unique about her banners was her insistence on using needlework to produce them, thus utilizing what was considered “lowly, feminine skills” to create beautiful work and to send powerful messages.

The photograph shows the members of the ASL with their banners during the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies procession of June 13, 1908. The two images below show how Lowndes developed her designs in watercolor before the banners were sewn. (from “The Art of Feminism: Images that Shaped the Fight for Equality, 1857–2017”, pp. 38-41.)

Lowndes also wrote a guide entitled Banners and Banner-Making in 1910 to help suffragettes create their own banners: "you do not want to read it, you want to worship it. Choose purple and gold for ambition, red for courage, green for long-cherished hopes ... It is a declaration." (from Wikipedia)

The art of feminism : images that shaped the fight for equality, 1857-2017 Helena Reckitt, consulting editor; written by Lucinda Gosling, Hilary Robinson, and Amy Tobin; preface by Maria Balshaw; foreword by Xabier Arakistain. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2018 272 pages: illustrations; 29 cm English ISBN : 1452169926 SBN : 9781452169927 HOLLIS number: 99153727319403941