Tapestries
Godiva Tapestry
$30
Flower Tapestry
$30
Description: Veronica Franco, poet and sex worker. Franco learnt the profession of a cortigiana onesta from her mother and shared in her brother's education by a private tutor. By the 1570's she became involved with one of the most prestigious literary circles in the city. In 1575 she published her first of two volumes of poetry, she also collected works for anthologies and published books of letters. In her poems she celebrated her sexual expertise and defended herself and other women who were verbally and physically abused by men. Her 1580 book Lettere familiari a diversi included letters to Henry III of France and Jacopo Tintoretto, the painter. In 1580 Franco was charged with witchcraft by the inquisition, accused by her son's tutor, her ...
Description: Trung Trac and Trung Nhi. In 1st Century B.C. Vietnamese woman had equal rights to men and were able to be clan rulers, own businesses, inherit property, and have multiple husbands. Then in 111 B.C. Vietnam was conquered by the Han dynasty of Imperial China which imposed taxes, laws, and also a patriarchal system that reduced the role and status of women in society. Born in a rural Vietnamese village, into a military family, The Trung sisters grew up studying warfare and learning to fight. In 40 AD they raised an army of 80,000, with both male and female generals, and lead the first national uprising against the Chinese. In a series of victories they took 65 citadels and crowned themselves kings. They established court in Me-Linh and wer...
Cats Tapestry
$30
Description: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett. journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist, and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. On a train in 1884 (80 years before segregation ended in the USA) she refused to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and was dragged out of the car by the conductor and two men. She then sued the train company and won but the verdict was overturned by the Tenassee Supreme Court in 1887. After researching and documenting lynchings she published a pamphlet "Southern horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases" finding that black people were lynched for being drunk in public, not giving way to whites, not paying debts etc with little evidence for the claim that black men were lynched for sexually assaulting white women. S...
Description: Julie d'Aubigny, a 17th-century swordswoman and opera singer. She learned dancing, reading, drawing, and fencing alongside the pages her father trained and dressed as a boy from a young age. Around 1687, d'Aubigny became involved with a man named Sérannes and the pair fled to Marseille after he killed a man in an illegal duel. On the road south they made a living giving fencing exhibitions and singing in taverns and at local fairs. While travelling and performing d'Aubigny dressed in male clothing but didn't conceal her gender. On arrival in Marseille, she joined the opera company run by Pierre Gaultier. She later became involved with a young woman and when the girl's parents sent her to the Visitandines convent in Avignon. d'Aubign...
Description: Princess Ruth Luka Keanolani Kauanahoahoa Keʻelikōlani, a member of the Kamehameha family, she served as Royal Governor of the Island of Hawaiʻi, on the Privy Council of Kamehameha III, and from 1855-57 in the House of Nobles. She retained many traditional Hawaiian religious practices and insisted that she be addressed only in Hawaiian, and while she understood English she required non-Hawaiian speakers to use translators. Her estate became the endowment of the Kamehameha Schools.
Description: Empress Wu Zetian, The only woman in over 3,000 years of Chinese history to rule China in her own right At the age of 14 she entered the palace as a junior concubine of Emperor Taizong. After his death in 649 she married his son, Emperor Gaozong, instead of retiring to a nunnery as was the custom. She removed her rivals within the palace, Empress Wang and the Pure Concubine, gained the position of empress for herself and eventually established herself as her husbands equal sitting in audience with him behind a screen but on a throne that was equal in elevation to his own. After Gaozong’s death she retained power as the dowager empress until in 690 when, at the age of 65, she ordered the last of her sons to abdicate and took the thr...
Description: Lucy Hicks Anderson. Born in 1886, at a young age Anderson informed her parents she was a girl, insisted on wearing dresses, and called herself Lucy. Her mother took her to see a doctor who encouraged her to raise Lucy as a girl. At 15 she left school and began working as a domestic worker. Marrying her first husband at age 34 they moved to Oxnard, California where Lucy worked as a nanny and cook, winning prizes in cooking competitions and catering events for the wealthy. She bought a boarding house and opened it as a brothel, also selling liquor during prohibition, and was arrested twice for possession of liquor. In 1944 she married her second husband, Reuben Anderson, a soldier. After cases of venereal disease were traced back to her b...
Mermaid Tapestry
$30
Mickey Tapestry
$30
