The Development of Embroidery in America. Candace Wheeler
1850 by Miss C. A. Granger, of Canandaigua, N. Y. 78
EMBROIDERED PICTURE in silks, with a painted sky 80
CORNELIA AND THE GRACCHI. Embroidered picture in silks, with velvet inlaid, worked by Mrs. Lydia Very, of Salem, at the age of sixteen while at Mrs. Peabody's school 80
CAPE of white lawn embroidered. Nineteenth century American 84
COLLARS of white muslin embroidered. Nineteenth century American 84
BABY'S CAP. White mull, with eyelet embroidery. Nineteenth century American 86
BABY'S CAP. Embroidered mull. 1825 86
COLLAR of white embroidered muslin. Nineteenth century American 86
EMBROIDERED SILK WEDDING WAISTCOAT, 1829. From the Westervelt collection 88
EMBROIDERED WAIST OF A BABY DRESS, 1850. From the collection of Mrs. George Coe 88
EMBROIDERY ON NET. Border for the front of a cap made about 1820 90
VEIL (unfinished) hand run on machine-made net. American nineteenth century 90
LACE WEDDING VEIL, 36 × 40 inches, used in 1806. From the collection of Mrs. Charles H. Lozier 92
HOMESPUN LINEN NEEDLEWORK called "Benewacka" by the Dutch. The threads were drawn and then whipped into a net on which the design was darned with linen. Made about 1800 and used in the end of linen pillow cases 92
BED HANGING of polychrome cross-stitch appliquéd on blue woolen ground 98
NEEDLEPOINT SCREEN made in fine and coarse point. Single cross-stitch 98
HAND-WOVEN TAPESTRY of fine and coarse needlepoint 100
TAPESTRY woven on a hand loom. The design worked in fine point and the background coarse point. A new effect in hand weave originated at the Edgewater Tapestry Looms 100
EMBROIDERED MITS 104
WHITE COTTON VEST embroidered in colors. Eighteenth-nineteenth century American 104
WHITE MULL embroidered in colors. Eighteenth-nineteenth century American 104
EMBROIDERED VALANCE, part of set and spread for high-post bedstead, 1788. Worked in crewels on India cotton, by Mrs. Gideon Granger, Canandaigua, New York 104
DETAIL of linen coverlet worked in colored wool 108
LINEN COVERLET embroidered in Kensington stitch with colored wool 108
QUILTED COVERLET worked entirely by hand 118
DETAIL of quilted coverlet 118
THE WINGED MOON. Designed by Dora Wheeler and executed in needle-woven tapestry by The Associated Artists, 1883 122
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DESIGN TAPESTRY PANEL 126
THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES. Arranged (from photographs made in London of the original cartoon by Raphael, in the Kensington Museum) by Candace Wheeler and executed in needle-woven tapestry by The Associated Artists 130
MINNEHAHA LISTENING TO THE WATERFALL. Drawn by Dora Wheeler and executed in needle-woven tapestry by The Associated Artists, 1884 132
APHRODITE. Designed by Dora Wheeler for needle-woven tapestry worked by The Associated Artists, 1883 134
FIGHTING DRAGONS. Drawn by Candace Wheeler and embroidered by The Associated Artists, 1885 140
THREE SCENES FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY 146
THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMBROIDERY IN AMERICA
INTRODUCTORY
The story of embroidery includes in its history all the work of the needle since Eve sewed fig leaves together in the Garden of Eden. We are the inheritors of the knowledge and skill of all the daughters of Eve in all that concerns its use since the beginning of time.
When this small implement came open-eyed into the world it brought with it possibilities of well-being and comfort for races and ages to come. It has been an instrument of beneficence as long ago as "Dorcas sewed garments and gave them to the poor," and has been a creator of beauty since Sisera gave to his mother "a prey of needlework, 'alike on both sides.'" This little descriptive phrase—alike on both sides—will at once suggest to all needlewomen a perfection of method almost without parallel. Of course it can be done, but the skill of it must have been rare, even in those far-off days of leisure when duties and pleasures did not crowd out painstaking tasks, and every art was carried as far as human assiduity and invention could carry it.
A history of the needlework of the world would be a history of the domestic accomplishment of the world, that inner story of the existence of man which bears the relation to him of sunlight to the plant. We can deduce from these needle records much of the physical circumstances of woman's long pilgrimage down the ages, of her mental processes, of her growth in thought. We can judge from the character of her art whether she was at peace with herself and the world, and from its status we become aware of its relative importance to the conditions of her life.
There are few written records of its practice and growth, for an art which does not affect the commercial gain of a land or country is not apt to have a written or statistical history, but, fortunately in this case, the curious and valuable specimens which are left to us tell their own story. They reveal the cultivation and amelioration of domestic life. Their contribution to the refinements are their very existence.
A history of any domestic practice which has grown into a habit marks the degree of general civilization, but the practice of needlework does more. To a careful student each small difference in the art tells its own story in its own language. The hammered gold of Eastern embroidery tells not only of the riches of available material, but of the habit of personal preparation, instead of the mechanical. The little Bible description of captured "needlework alike on both sides" speaks unmistakably of the method of their stitchery, a cross-stitch of colored threads, which is even now the only method of stitch "alike on both sides."
It is an endless and fascinating story of the leisure of women in all ages and circumstances, written in her own handwriting of painstaking needlework and an estimate of an art to which gold, silver, and precious stones—the treasures of the world—were devoted. More than this, its intimate association with the growth and well-being of family life makes visible the point where savagery is left behind and the decrees of civilization begin.
I knew a dear Bible-nourished lonely little maid who had constructed for herself a drama of Eve in Eden, playing it for the solitary audience of self in a corner of the garden. She had brought all manner of fruits and had tied them to the fence palings under the apple boughs. This little Eve gathered grape leaves and sewed them carefully into an apron, the needle holes pierced with a thorn and held together by fiber stripped from long-stemmed plantain leaves. Here she and her audience of self hid under the apple boughs and waited for the call of the Lord.
The long ministry of the needle to the wants of mankind proves it to have been among the first of man's inventions. When Eve sewed fig leaves she probably improvised some implement for the process, and every daughter of Eve, from Eden to the present time, has been indebted to that little implement for expression of herself in love and duty and art. For this we must thank the man who, the Bible relates, was "the father of all such as worked in metals, and