Valerie Meachum offers up an intricate, one of a kind needlepoint based on a Dante Gabriel Rossetti portrait of Lizzie Siddal. Available at etsy.com.
The hand-embroidered inscription on the linen border refers to a letter to the artist’s sister, the poet Christina Rossetti, in which he mentions a black silk dress Lizzie had recently made for herself and calls her a “rara avis in terra,” quoting the Satires of the classical Roman poet Juvenal, who wrote of “a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan.”
