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Marian Stoll, (nee Buck) (1879-1961) Artist, Embroiderer

Born Waterbury, Connecticut. Studied art and met her husband at the newly founded Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Married H. Leon Stoll, whom she later divorced, he died in a flu outbreak in 1918.

American newspapers report Marian Stoll as the first woman to climb Mount Winkelturm in the Austrian Tyrol. She studied Applied and Industrial Art in Munich and Vienna. During the First World War she worked with the Red-Cross Agence International des Prisonniers de Guerre in France.

She arrived in Oxford in the 1920’s where she remained until 1928 when she moved to Paris. She lived in Greece in the early 30’s and returned to America in 1935 where she remained until her death in 1961.

Clients included: Siegfried Sassoon, Auldous Huxley, John Masefield. Lytton Strachey, Lady Gwendolyn Churchhill. Delphine Turner, Mrs Poole, Mrs Bishop, Mrs Harris, Lady Asquith, Lord Henry Bentinck and The Duke of Portand.

Exhibited - Walker Gallery, London. in 1923. Oxford Arts Club, Oxford, November - December 1925 Albright Art Gallery, Buffelo, New York -October.1928 Victoria and Albert Museum. 1932. Arden Gallery, NewYork. 1940

Also exhibited: Chicago, Brussels, Paris, Scotland and Vienna.

Museum Collections - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Philadelphia Museum of Art:
Accession numbers, 2001672 / 2001673 / 2003330 / 2003331
The Letters:
In 1923 she met Ottoline Morrell who became friend and supporter of her work. The letters and excerpts are mostly written in 1923 and are an intimate correspondence with names of clients and descriptions of work, material, circumstances and prices.

The Studio Magazine and Vogue articles are discussed and the Embroiderers Guild exhibition. The letters cover criticism of literature current at the time; Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf and Proust. She makes friends with American students at Oxford many who go on to be significant Art Historians and academics back in America.

There are three letters from Paris describing her success in Europe and one from Woodbury Connecticut when she eventually returns to America in 1935.

Letter No.1
Letter No.2

Original copies of letters are in the Harry Ransom, Humanities Research Centre University of Texas.
Marian Stoll was a childhood friend (possibly second cousin through his maternal grandparents Bucklin) of Alexander Woollcott. Her letters to him are far more familiar and flirtatious. He also is helping her out with clients and contacts.

He introduces her to Eleanor Roosevelt and through Woollcott she is published in” Life” magazine. He uses his influence to arrange exhibitions of her work in U.S. which are detailed in her letters These are delightful in a different way from the Ottoline Morrell letters but still erudite thoughtful and honest. They reflect intellectual and domestic detail of there day.

Letter No.1
Letter No.2

Original letters at Houghton Library, Harvard University.
References:
Day, Lewis, ‘The Art of Needle Work’, Batsford Ltd,1926 pg 95.
Koch, Alexander, ‘Stickerien und Spitzen’, Darmstadt, 1926.
Hogarth, Mary, ‘Modern Embroidery’ The Studio, 1933, pg 23.
Brown Harbeson, Georgiana, ‘American Needlework: The History of Decorative Stitchery and Embroidery from the Late;16th to the 20th Century’, New York, 1938, pg 185.
Howard, Constance, ‘Embroidery in Great Britain:To 1939’, Batsford Ltd, 1981, Pg 157.
Gardiner Troy,Virginia, ‘The Modernist Textile’, Hampshire, 2006, Pg, 110.
Rayner, Ruth, ‘The Studio Magazine’, Jan 1924, Pg 18.
Waterhouse, Ellis, ‘The Studio Magazine’, September 1927, Pg 168-173.
Letters of correspondence between Lady O. Morrell and Mrs M. Stoll, 1923-1935,
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas.
Letters and Correspondence between Alexander Woollcott and Mrs M Stoll. Houghton Library, Harvard University.
 
 
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