Study for Elizabeth R. from "The Dinner Party"

This study for Elizabeth R., or Queen Elizabeth I (British, 1533–1603), shows Chicago’s early idea to embroider a sentence around each woman’s plate. She eventually shifted away from this literal encapsulation of the subject’s history, moving to more symbolic representations articulated in embroidered runners; this change is among the reasons the project expanded from a solitary endeavor to one that required a workshop of collaborators. To support ongoing work on The Dinner Party from 1974 to 1979, Chicago traveled the U.S. on promotional speaking engagements, selling her early studies and test plates to raise funds. As a result, there are few extant studies from this early stage in the work’s development; this study for Elizabeth R. is a rare exception.