NEEDLECRAFT AND DECORATIVE ARTS
_She wrought all Needleworks that Women exercise,
With Pin Frame or Stoole all Pictures Artificiall,
Curious Knots or Traits that Fancy could devise,
Beasts, Birds, or Flowers even as things Naturall._
--_Epitaph of Elizabeth Lucar. Church St. Michael, Crooked
Lane, London, 1537._
Human nature was the same in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries as to-day; waves of devotion to some special form of
ornamentation either for the household or the wardrobe swept over
families, neighborhoods, communities; when we reach the days of
newspapers we find in their columns some evidence of the names and
character of these decorations. In 1716 Mr. Brownell, the Boston
schoolmaster, advertised that at his school young women and children
could be taught "all sorts of fine works as Feather-works, Filigree,
and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new way, Turkeywork for
Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new fashion Purses, flourishing
ishing and Plain work," The perishable nature of the material would
prevent the preservation of many specimens of feather-work; but very
pretty flowers for head-dresses and bonnets were made of minute
feathers or portions of feathers pasted on a firm foundation in many
collected shapes. This work may have been suggested by the beautiful
feather flowers made in many of the South Sea Islands; perhaps an
old sea captain brought some home to his wife or sweetheart as a
gift. The sober colors of many of our home birds would not make so
brilliant a bouquet as the songless birds of the tropics, especially
the millions of the various parrot tribes; still an everyday New
England rooster has a wealth of splendid glistening color, while
blue jays, red-headed woodpeckers, yellow birds, and an occasional
oriole or scarlet tanager could furnish beautiful feathers enough to
waken the ire of an Audubon Society.
Painting on glass was an amusement of more scope. In England it was
all the mode, and some very quaint specimens survive; simpering
beauties, flowers, and fruit were the favorite subjects. Coats of
arms, too, were painted on glass, and handsome they were. It is not
possible to state exactly the position which the study of armorial
bearings and significations had for two or three centuries. It
seemed to bear relatively the same place that a profound study of
literature has to-day--the pastime and delight of cultured people.
We have been amused for a few years past at the domination of color
in literature; every book title had a color word, as _The Red
Robe_, _Under the Red Lamp_, _A Study in Scarlet_, _The Red Badge
of Courage_, etc. This idiasm--as Mr. Ingleby would call it--has
extended to music, and even into scientific suggestion and medicine;
but this attributing unusual qualities to colors is nothing new.
In the Cotton Manuscripts, a series of essays on music six hundred
years old, the relation between music and color, especially in coat
armor, is given; for instance, "fire-red" was the most malignant
color in arms, and only third in benignity in music. All gentlefolk
were profoundly wise as to the meaning of colors in coats of arms,
etc., and their influence on the character and life of the persons
bearing the arms.
This interest in the study of heraldry wavered in intensity but did
not die till the days of a new nation; and we find from the middle
of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century that
young girls in the families of gentlefolk paid much attention to the
making of coats of arms. Those painted on glass were the richest in
color and the most satisfactory, but embroidered ones were more
common. The choicest materials were used, the drawing was carefully
executed, and the stitches minute. It is interesting to note that
the laws of the herald were strictly regarded in the setting of the
stitches. In _azure_ the stitches were laid parallel across the
escutcheon; in _gules_, perpendicular; in _purpure_, diagonally from
right to left, and so on.
[Illustration: Jerusha Pitkin's Embroidery and Frame]
Here is shown an unfinished coat of arms of the Pitkin family which
belonged to Jerusha Pitkin, who was born in 1736. The frame upon
which the work is stretched, the manner in which it is mounted,
the hand-made nails that fasten it, the way the work is outlined,
are all of interest. The needle still is thrust in the black satin
background where it was left by girlish hands a century and a half
ago. Colored silks, gold bullion and thread to complete this work
have been preserved with it. The embroidery is on black satin,
and is lozenge-shaped, as was the proper shape of a hatchment or
mourning emblem; and it is possible that this work was begun as a
funeral piece, commemorative of some Pitkin ancestor.
Such funeral pieces were deemed a very dignified observance of
respect and mark of affection. They had as successors what were
definitely termed "mourning pieces," bearing stiff presentments of
funeral urns, monuments, drooping willows, and sometimes a bowed and
weeping figure.
After the death of Washington, mourning designs deploring our
national loss and significant of our affection and respect for
that honored name appeared in vast numbers. Framed prints of these
designs hung on every wall, table china in large numbers and variety
bore these funereal emblems, and laudatory and sad mottoes. As other
Revolutionary heroes passed away, similar designs appeared in more
limited numbers, and the reign of embroidered "mourning pieces"
may be said to begin at this time. Washington--so to speak--set the
fashion. Familiarized with the hideous Apotheosis pitcher, or the
gloomy Washington's Tomb teacups as set on a festal board, special
mourning embroideries did not seem oversad for decorative purposes,
and soon no properly ambitious household was without one. They
were even embroidered when the family circle was unbroken, and an
empty space was left yawning like an open grave for some one to
die. Religious designs were also eagerly sought for. The Tree of
Life was a favorite. A conventional tree was hung at wide intervals
with apples, bearing the names of various virtues and estimable
traits of humanity, such as Honor, Modesty, Silence, Patience, etc.
The sparse harvest of these emblematic fruits seemed to indicate
a cynical belief in scant nobility of nature; but there was hope
of improvement, for a white-winged angel assiduously watered the
roots of the tree with a realistic watering-pot. The devil, never
absent in that day from art, science, or literature, also loomed in
blackness beneath the branches, but sadly handicapped from activity
by being forced to carry a colossal pitchfork and an absolutely
unsurmountable tail of gigantic proportions.
These mourning pieces were but decadent successors of the
significant heraldic embroideries of earlier days. We passed through
trying days in art, architecture, and costume in the first half
of this century; and it was not until we revived the older forms
of embroidery, and the ancient stitches, that we rallied from the
blight of commonplaceness and sentimentality which seemed to spread
over everything.
[Illustration: Lora Standish's Sampler]
The most universal and best-preserved piece of embroidery done by
our foremothers was the sampler. These were known as sampleths,
sam-cloths, saumplers, and sampleres; the titles were all derived by
apheresis from _esampler_, _exampleir_.
The sampler "contrived a double debt to pay" of teaching letters
and stitches; it was, in fact, a needlework hornbook, containing
the alphabet, a verse indicative of good morals or industry, or
a sentence from the Bible, the name and date, and some crude
representations of impossible birds, beasts, flowers, trees,
or human beings. Though the sampler's reign in every American
household was in the eighteenth century and the earlier years of
the nineteenth, it was the direct successor of the glories of
needlework of English women of earlier years, which was known and
admired on the Continent as _Opus Anglicanum_. The chief excellency
of English needlework has even been closely associated with a high
state of social morals. In Elizabeth's day Englishwomen still loved
needlecraft. Shakespeare, Sidney, Milton, Herrick, all refer to
women's samplers. In a collection of old ballads printed in 1725 is
"A Short and Sweet Sonnet made by one of the Maids of Honour upon
the death of Q. Elizabeth, which she sewed upon a Sampler of Red
Silk":--
"Gone is _Elizabeth_ whom we have loved so dear,
She our kind Mistress was full four and Forty Year,
_England_ she govern'd well not to be blamed.
_Flanders_ she govern'd well, and _Ireland_ famed.
France she befriended, Spain she had toiled,
_Papists_ rejected, and the _Pope_ spoiled.
To _Princes_ powerful, to the _World_ vertuous,
To her _Foes_ merciful, to subjects gracious.
Her Soul is in Heaven, the World keeps her glory,
Subjects her good deeds, so ends my Story."
In the licentious days of King James and King Charles there is
little record of women's needlework in court or country, but the
Puritan women, the virtuous home makers, revived and encouraged all
household arts.
There is no doubt that as a rule the long and narrow samplers
are older than those more nearly square. These ancient samplers,
especially the few bearing dates of the seventeenth century, are
much finer in design, more closely worked, and better in execution
than those of later date. The linen background is much more closely
covered. They have more curious and varied stitches. Occasionally
they are of minute size, but four or five inches long, with
exquisitely fine stitches.
[Illustration: Fleetwood-Quincy Sampler]
Two ancient samplers are here depicted. One shown on page 327 was
made by Lora Standish, the daughter of a Pilgrim Father, and it is
now at Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth. The interesting and beautiful sampler
known as the Fleetwood-Quincy Sampler has such perfect stitches
that both sides are alike. It bears the names Miles and Abigail
Fleetwood, and the date 1654. It has been in the possession of Mrs.
Henry Quincy and her descendants since 1750. There is little doubt
that the Miles Fleetwood of the sampler was the brother or nephew
of Charles Fleetwood who married Anne Ireton, eldest daughter of
great Cromwell. A splendid piece of Anne Fleetwood's embroidery
was recently exhibited in the Kensington Museum. It was scarcely a
sampler for it bore a curious design in applique work of a lozenge
formed by four right-angled triangles, each of a different bit of
rich brocade of gold and silver figures on amber or pink ground; all
worked together with curious vines and stitches. Miles Fleetwood
clung to the royal cause, and thus fell into the obscurity hinted
at in the sampler verses:--
"In prosperity friends will be plenty,
But in adversity not one in twenty."
In the older samplers little attention is paid to the representation
of things in their real colors; a green horse may balance a blue
tree. And as flat tints were used there were few effects of light
and shade, and no perspective. Distance is indicated by a different
color of worsted; thus the green horse will have his off legs worked
in red. This is precisely the method used in the Bayeux Tapestry and
other antique embroideries.
Sampler verses had their times and seasons, and ran through
families. They were eagerly copied for young friends, and, in a
few cases, were "natural composures"--or, as we should say to-day,
"original compositions." Ruth Gray of Salem embroidered on her
sampler a century ago:--
"Next unto God, dear Parents, I address
Myself to you in humble Thankfulness.
For all your Care and Charge on me bestow'd,
The means of learning unto me allowed.
Go on! I pray, and let me still Pursue
Such Golden Arts the Vulgar never knew."
To show the extent to which those lines could be transmitted
let me state that they are found on a sampler in Dorchester,
Massachusetts, worked in 1802, one in Waltham, Massachusetts, one
worked in 1813 in a seminary in Boston, one in Medford, one worked
in 1790 in Salem by a young girl of ten, another in Lynn, on an
English sampler in the Kensington Museum, and in the diary of that
Boston schoolgirl, Anna Green Winslow, dated 1771.
There were certain variants of a popular sampler verse that ran
thus:--
"This is my Sampler,
Here you see
What care my Mother
Took of me."
Another rhyme was:--
"Mary Jackson is my name,
America my nation,
Boston is my dwelling place,
And Christ is my salvation."
The doxology, "From all that dwell below the skies," etc., appears
on samplers; and these lines:--
"Though life is fair
And pleasure young,
And Love on ev'ry
Shepherd's Tongue,
I turn my thoughts
To serious things,
Life is ever on the wing."
Another rhyme is found with varying words in some of the lines:--
"Young Ladyes fair when youthful minds incline
To all that's curious, Innocent, and fine
With Admiration let your worke be made
The various textures and the twining thread
Then let your fingers with unrivalled skill
Exalt the Needle, Grace the noble Quill."
Some of the verses are as short as the scant but sweet English words
on the sampler of Katherine, the wife of Charles II.:--
"21st of Maye
Was our Wedding Daye."
A sampler in the Old South Church in Boston has this inscription:--
"Dorothy Lynde is my Name
And this Work is mine
My Friends may have
When I am Dead and laid in Grave
This Needlework of mine can tell
That in my youth I learned well
And by my elders also taught
Not to spend my time for naught."
[Illustration: Polly Coggeshall's Sampler]
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was high fashion to
have mottoes and texts carved or painted on many articles where
they would frequently catch the eye. Printed books were then rare
possessions, and these mottoes, whether of vanity or piety, took
their place. Perhaps inscriptions on various pieces of tableware
and drinking utensils were the most common. Specially beautiful and
interesting early examples are the sets of "beechen roundels" known
to collectors; that is, sets of wooden plates or trenchers carved
with mottoes. Women dexterous of the needle embroidered mottoes and
words on articles of clothing. Whole texts of the Bible are said to
have been inscribed on the edges of gowns and petticoats.
"She is a Puritan at her needle too
She works religious petticoats."
Elaborate vines of flowers and other scroll designs were worked on
petticoats, often in colored crewels. There still exists the linen
petticoat of Rebecca Taylor Orne, a Salem dame who lived to be one
hundred and twenty years old. It is deeply embroidered with trees,
vines, flowers, and fruits, on homespun linen. Silk petticoats were
also embroidered and painted by young girls, and are beautiful
pieces of work.
In New York newspapers we find proof that New York girls were
taught decorative accomplishments similar to those which were so
fashionable in Boston:--
"Martha Gazley, late from Great Britain, now in the city of
New York Makes and Teacheth the following curious Works,
viz: Artificial Fruit and Flowers and other Wax-Works,
Nuns-work, Philligree and Pencil Work upon Muslin, all sorts of
Needle-Work, and Raising of Paste, as also to Paint upon Glass,
and Transparant for Sconces, with other Works. If any young
Gentlewomen, or others are inclined to learn any or all of the
above-mentioned curious Works, they may be carefully instructed
in the same by said Martha Gazley."
[Illustration: Flowered Apron]
The waxwork of Martha Gazley was more fully detailed in a school
advertisement of Mrs. Sarah Wilson of Philadelphia. She taught
"waxworks in all its branches"; flowers, fruit, and pin-baskets,
also "how to take profiles in wax." This latter was distinctly art
work; and portraits of Washington and other Revolutionary heroes
still exist in wax--a material that could be worked with facility;
but was very perishable.
[Illustration: Mary Richards' Sampler]
A very full list of old-time stitches has come down to us, and
curiously enough not from any woman who worked these stitches but
from the pen of a man, John Taylor, "the Water-Poet," in his _Praise
of the Needle_, 1640.
"For _Tent-worke_, Rais'd-work, Laid-worke, Frost-worke, Net-worke,
Most curious Purles, or rare Italian Cut-worke,
Fine Ferne-stitch, Finny-stitch, New-stitch and Chain-stitch
Brave Bred-stitch, Fisher-stitch, Irish-stitch and Queen-stitch
The Spanish-stitch, Rosemary-stitch and Mouse-stitch
The smarting Whip-stitch, Back-stitch and the Cross-stitch
All these are good, and these we must allow,
And these are everywhere in practise now."
They were doubtless "everywhere in practice," in America as well,
but nearly all are now but empty names.
While Dutch women must be awarded the palm of comfortable and
attractive housekeeping, they did not excel Englishwomen in
needlework; though the first gold thimble was made for Madam Van
Rensselaer, the foremother of our American patroons; and many
beautiful specimens of Dutch embroidery exist. A sample is here
shown which was worked by Mary Richards, a granddaughter of the
famous Anneke Jans. Mrs. Van Cortlandt wrote in her delightful
account of home life in old New York:--
"Crewel-work and silk-embroidery were fashionable, and
surprisingly pretty effects were produced. Every little maiden
had her sampler which she begun with the alphabet and numerals,
following them with a Scriptural text or verse of a psalm. Then
fancy was let loose on birds, beasts and trees. Most of the old
families possessed framed pieces of embroidery, the handiwork of
female ancestors."
Pride in needlework, and a longing for household decoration, found
expression in quilt-piecing. Bits of calico "chiney" or chintz
were carefully shaped by older hands, and sewed by diligent little
fingers into many fanciful designs. A Job's Trouble, made of
hexagon pieces, could be neatly done by little children, but more
complicated designs required more "judgement," and the age of a
little daughter might be accurately guessed by her patchwork. The
quilt-making was the work of older folk. It required long arms,
larger hands, greater strength.
Knitting was taught to little girls as soon as they could hold the
needles. Girls four years of age could knit stockings and mittens.
In country households young damsels knit mittens to sell and coarse
socks. Many fine and beautiful stitches were taught, and a beautiful
pair of long silk stockings of open-work design has initials knit on
the instep. They were the wedding hose of a bride of the year 1760;
and the silk for them was raised, wound, and spun by the bride's
sister, a girl of fourteen, who also did the exquisite knitting.
Lace-making was never an industry in the colonies; it was an elegant
accomplishment. Pillow lace was made, and the stitches were taught
in families of wealth; a guinea a stitch was charged by some
teachers. Old lace pillows have been preserved to this day, with
strips of unfinished lace and hanging bobbins, to show the kind of
lace which was the mode--a thread lace much like the fine Swiss
hand-made laces.
[Illustration: Old Lace Pillow, Reels and Pockets]
Tambour work on muslin or lace, and a lace made of certain designs
darned on net, took the place of pillow lace. Nothing could be more
beautiful in execution and design than the rich veils, collars, and
caps of this worked net, which remained the mode during the early
years of this century. Girls spent years working on a single collar
or tucker. Sometimes medallions of this net lace were embroidered
down upon fine linen lawn. I have infants' caps of this beautiful
work, finer than any needlework of to-day.