The Development of Embroidery in AmericaWheeler, Candace
History
The Development of Embroidery in America
Wheeler, Candace
Bayeux tapestry; Embroidery -- United States; Tapestry -- United States
The question of design must have been a rather difficult one, as there
were no designs, and almost no sources of design for needlework, and at
this stage of the art in New England original design seems not to have
suggested itself. It would certainly have been quite natural to have
copied pine trees and broken outlines of hills, but as this class of
embroidery was almost entirely used for hangings and decorative
furnishings, the Pilgrim mothers seem to have had an instinctive sense
that such design was incongruous. Consequently they copied English
models. We find designs of crewelwork of the period in English museums
identically the same as in the New England work, thorned roses and
voluminously doubled pinks, held together in borders of long curved
lines or scattered at regular intervals in groups and bunches.
My grandmother explained to me in that long-ago period, where her great
age and my inquisitive youth met and exchanged our several and
individual surplus of thought and talk, that to a certain extent ladies
of colonial days copied many of their designs from what were called
India chintzes. These chintzes seem to have been the intermediate wear
between homespun of either flax or wool and the creamy satins or the
thick "paduasoy," the more flexible "lutestring" silks, worn by great
ladies of the period, and the wrought India muslins for less
conventional occasions. India chintzes were printed upon white or tinted
grounds of hand-spun cotton, in colors so generously full of substance
as to have almost the effect of brocaded stuffs, and adaptations from
their designs were suitable for embroidery. I remember the
three-cornered and square bits of India chintz which my grandmother
showed me in long-preserved "housewives," or "huz-ifs," as she called
them. They were lengths of domestic linen on which small squares or
triangles of chintz were sewn, making a series of small pockets, each
one stuffed with convenient threads or bits of colored sewing silks, or
needle and thimble. These were pinned at the belt of the active
housewife, and hung swaying against her skirts if she rose from her
sewing, or were conveniently at hand if she sat patching or
embroidering. I remember that some of my grandmother's "huz-ifs" still
held threads of different colored crewels wound on bits of cardboard,
and any embroiderer might envy the convenience of such holders.
I do not see, in fact, why there should not be a revival of "huz-ifs," a
pleasant new fashion, founded upon the old, holding in harmonious
variety all the wonders of modern manufacture, as well as making
mementos of former gowns of one's own and of one's friends. They might
be studied gradations of color and design, and be enriched by harmonious
bindings. If my dwindling time holds out, perhaps I shall institute or
assist at such a renewal of old conveniences, in spite of sharp contrast
of purposes, adding to home costume a grace of pendent color.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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