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Rose Mabel Lewis of Greenmeadow, Tongwynlais, designed and made this banner. She was the President of the Cardiff and District Women’s Suffrage Society. Rose led the south Wales section in the Great Suffrage procession in London on 17 June 1911. She walked in front of her banner with 40,000 other men and women who took part in the procession from Whitehall to the Albert Hall. The dragon attracted a lot of attention - ‘Here comes the Devil’ was the greeting of one group of onlookers.
Tab top style banner, to be hung from a pole threaded through nine tabs along the top. It is made from cream silk satin with a white cotton sateen backing. The front is decorated with a large red wool dragon motif with a laid cord outline of black silk (3-ply, Z-twist). Black silk embroidery details and metal thread embroidery (probably silver gilt) used for the claws, teeth, wings and barbs on the dragon's back. Laid-and-couched metal thread embroidery also used for inscription which reads CARDIFF.AND.DISTRICT above the dragon and to outline the inscription along the bottom: TROS.RHYDDID (sic) in bardic-style script. Along the bottom edge is a red, white and green silk fringe, it is hand-stitched to the front side of the banner with red cotton thread. Twisted silk cords hang from either side of the banner at the top edge, curled into rosettes at the top with a tassel at the lower end also red, white and green silk over four wooden moulds. The cord including tassels has a drop of 189cm. There are black lines visible on the red flannel of the dragon - probably from drawing onto the fabric before cutting out. Satin ground fabric: The satin fabric is used width-ways. The silk warps run horizontally while the thicker cotton wefts are vertical. No selvages are noticeable along upper or lower edge, therefore the original width of the woven fabric must have been wider than 125cm. Fringe: The fringe extends from a warp-faced, narrow woven ribbon (c. 6mm wide) with green, cream and red silk warps with the fringe itself consituting the weft. Strands of the fringe are not twisted but knotted together. The length of the fringe is 6.8cm long. The sequence is: twelve green, six cream and twelve red strands. Rope: The rope is constructed from smaller ropes of red, white and green floss silk covering a cotton core (3-ply, S-twist). Each smaller rope is made up of 3-ply, S-twist. Tassles: The tassles consist of silk floss applied ove rthree separate wooden moulds. The centre one (covered with a base of cream floss silk) is also covered with a net structure made from red silk cord. Another part of the tassle is covered with green floss silk and then covered with cream silk cords which alternate between being S-twist and Z-twist. There is a fourth wooden mould on the inside, hidden by the fringe. Tabs: Tabs are 11-12.2cm wide. Spaces in-between the tabs are 9cm wide. Each tab is 6.5cm in height. The tabs are lined with self fabric but this is aligned at 90° to the outer fabric.