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embroiderer, was born of English parents, Frederick William Field and Hannah ('Annie’) née Cutler, at Rutherglen, Victoria, and grew up an only child in rural Australia. Her life work was embroidery, and when she died in 1985 she left behind her a legacy of excellence and an enormous body of work which ranged from exquisite lacy Richelieu mats and Hedebo tablecloths to Elizabethan blackwork cushion covers and tiny flower trimmed felt rabbits. She began to sew as a rather solitary small child who preferred making dolls clothes to playing games with friends. She was educated at convent schools in Rutherglen and Temora (NSW), where she studied both books and piano with characteristic dedication.

What might have been disaster struck when Roma was 17 and she became ill. Confined to bed off and on for the next 15 years of her life, with periods in hospital and sanatorium, Roma turned her undivided attention and very strong will to the serious study and practice of embroidery. Gathering to her what little scattered information she could find about the topic, and depending to a large extent on mail ordering for periodicals, patterns and instructions, as well as for materials and threads which were unavailable in Australia in the early part of the twentieth century, she experimented and persevered with different stitches and materials, slowly obtaining command of a range of traditional European embroidery skills. While her work is in itself of quite extraordinarily fine quality, the number of techniques at which she excelled is equally exceptional.

Roma began to enter competitions during this period of her life. She was very often successful and found the prize money a boon as it enabled her to plunder the mail order catalogues anew for different materials and threads with which to work and experiment. Ultimately, she exhibited widely in Australia, as well as in London, Denmark and Holland. Her most notable overseas success was probably the exhibition held in the 1920s by the Old Bleach Linen Company of Randaltown in Ireland at which, among a wide international field, Roma won second and fourth prizes with her two entries. The piece which won second prize (a medal, a silver cup, a goodly sum of money and a precious parcel of linens) was a Hedebo table cloth.

Roma Field’s dedicated focus on embroidery gave her long life purpose and direction and attracted a wide range of friends with similar interests. She met many through the societies she joined: the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW, the Industrial Arts Society, and the Country Women’s Association for which she helped found a Handicrafts Committee. She travelled for the CWA committee throughout New South Wales in the 1930s and 1940s, teaching the wide range of handcraft skills at her disposal. They included glove and toy making, cane seating and leather work as well as needlework and embroidery.

When she met Margaret Oppen, founder of the Embroiderers Guild of NSW in 1957, Roma Field was invited to join the new committee and to teach. Her long-term involvement with the Guild was thus under way, leading her from committee member to life member, trustee and president. She continued to teach, always in a voluntary capacity, until shortly before she died, and she frequently served as a judge at country shows, as well as twenty nine times for the Royal Easter Show in Sydney between 1940 and 1978. In June 1981, she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for service to the community.

Writers:

Sumner, Christina

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011