You all probably know by now that I love 18th century embroidery, although I don’t do historical recreations very much any more. This is an 18th century piece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that isn’t the silkwork I normally gravitate to. It’s probably much more typically American than I might usually find when searching out this time period.
Done in woolwork, in Roumanian couching (a VERY American stitch, as it uses less wool), the design comes across as a bit rough and primitive, but is still absolutely charming to me.
It is part of a group that was stitched by “young ladies” at a school in Boston. I have no idea what age group “young” means in this context. The details are lacking enough that it could be anywhere from 8 to 15. I’d suspect, from the way the stitches are taken, that the stitcher was probably somewhere around 10. But it’s a guess. And an amateur guess, at that!
