by Sarah Maddison
My second ‘Passionate Woman’ for the exhibition is the amazing Elizabeth Shrewsbury, perhaps better known as Bess of Hardwick. She was a most remarkable women who became the richest woman in England during the Tudor reign. There is no doubt that she married well – four times in all – but her strength really lay in her entrepreneurial ability to make her money work for her and to make the most of any situation. She built Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, described as more glass than wall, at a time when glass was prohibitively expensive. Her solution was simple – set up her own glass workshop. She had great power and influence through her personal wealth, something few women enjoyed at this time, and at one point owned a number of great houses including Hardwick and Chatsworth. While married to Edward Shrewsbury she also became the jailer of Mary Queen of Scots for some 15 years through her friendship with Elizabeth I. Together they created unique textile art much of which survives today. She raised her own children and her stepchildren with independence and strength – she was the Chatelaine of many houses so it seems entirely appropriate to create an artwork and give Bess her own – hers has Hardwick, an all seeing Elizabethan eye, four portraits for four husbands, keys for her houses, her needlework scissors, some blackwork and of course her very own purse for all that money – a true woman of substance.
PS. Meant to say the thimble was my grandmother’s and also that one portrait is empty as no picture of her first husband exists.
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The Alchemist's Needle 