Socialist banner

Details

Date: c.1890s
Dimensions: 168 x 91
Object Type: textile
Material: painted and embroidered silk
Catalogue number: F432
Maker: Unknown
Credit notes: Presented by Mr Peter Jacobs, 2009. Conserved with the assistance of The Kathy Callow Trust, 2012.

This banner by an unrecorded maker is an extremely rare survival; most have perished through repeated use on street demonstrations and marches. The design, painted on silk, is copied from Burne-Jones illustration to Morris’s socialist fiction, A Dream of John Ball. The inscription (embroidered in gold silk) ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman’ is an attack on the class system.