Connecticut Needlework

Download or read book Connecticut Needlework written by Connecticut Historical Society and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masterworks from the extraordinary needlework collections of the Connecticut Historical Society.

Download or read book Findings written by Mary Carolyn Beaudry and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mary C. Beaudry mines archaeological findings of sewing and needlework to discover what these small traces of female experience reveal about the societies and cultures in which they were used. Beaudry's geographical and chronological scope is broad: she examines sites in the United States and Great Britain, as well as Australia and Canada, and she ranges from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution.The author describes the social and cultural significance of "findings": pins, needles, thimbles, scissors, and other sewing accessories and tools. Through the fascinating stories that grow out of these findings, Beaudry shows the extent to which such "small things" were deeply entrenched in the construction of gender, personal identity, and social class.

Download or read book Connecticut Needlework written by Susan P. Schoelwer and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Connecticut Book Award (2011) Winner of the Connecticut League of History Organizations Award of Merit (2012) Connecticut women have long been noted for their creation of colorful and distinctive needlework, including samplers and family registers, bed rugs and memorial pictures, crewel-embroidered bed hangings and garments, silk-embroidered pictures of classical or religious scenes, quilted petticoats and bedcovers, and whitework dresses and linens. This volume offers the first regional study, encompassing the full range of needle arts produced prior to 1840. Seventy entries showcase more than one hundred fascinating examples—many never before published—from the Connecticut Historical Society's extensive collection of this early American art form. Produced almost exclusively by women and girls, the needle arts provide an illuminating vantage point for exploring early American women's history and education, including family-based traditions predating the establishment of formal academies after the American Revolution. Extensive genealogical research reveals unseen family connections linking various types of needlework, similar to the multi-generational male workshops documented for other artisan trades, such as woodworking or metalsmithing. Photographs of stitches, reverse sides, sketches, design sources, and related works enhance our understanding and appreciation of this fragile art form and the talented women who created it. An exhibition of needlework in this book will be held at the Connecticut Historical Society in late fall, 2010. Funding for this project has been provided by the Coby Foundation, Ltd., and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Download or read book With Needle and Brush written by Carol Huber and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-15 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First book to explore schoolgirl needlework of the Connecticut River Valley

Download or read book With Needle and Brush written by Carol Huber and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Connecticut River Valley was an important center for the teaching and production of embroidered pictures by young women in private academies from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. This book identifies the distinctive styles developed by teachers and students at schools throughout the valley, from Connecticut and Massachusetts to Vermont and New Hampshire. Needlework was a means of instilling the values of citizenship, faith, knowledge, and patriotism into girls who would become mothers in the early republic. This book describes and illustrates how these embroideries provide insight into the nature of women's schooling at this time. Over the course of their education, girls undertook progressively more complex and difficult needlework. Before the age of ten, they stitched elementary samplers on linen. As the culmination of their studies, they executed elaborate samplers, memorials, and silk pictures as evidence of the skills and accomplishments befitting a lady. Proudly displayed as enticements to potential suitors, these pieces affirmed a young woman's mastery of the polite arts, which encompassed knowledge of religious and literary themes as well as art and music. This publication has been made possible through the generous support of The Coby Foundation, Ltd., the Connecticut Humanities Council, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, and several private donors.

Download or read book The Needle's Eye written by Marla R. Miller and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the enduring stereotypes of early American history has been the colonial Goodwife, perpetually spinning, sewing, darning, and quilting, answering all of her family's textile needs. But the Goodwife of popular historical imagination obscures as much as she reveals; the icon appears to explain early American women's labor history, while at the same time allowing it to go unexplained. Tensions of class and gender recede, and the largest artisanal trade open to early American women is obscured in the guise of domesticity. In this book, Marla R. Miller illuminates the significance of women's work in the clothing trades of the early Republic. Drawing on diaries, reminiscences, letters, ledgers, and material culture, she explores the contours of working women's lives in rural New England, offering a nuanced view of their varied ranks and roles - skilled and unskilled, black and white, artisanal and laboring - as producers and consumers, clients and crafts-women, employers and employees

Download or read book Treasures Afoot written by Kimberly S. Alexander and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018-09-14 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shoes reveal the hopes, dreams, and disappointments of the early Americans who wore them. Honorable Mention of the Historic New England Book Prize by Historic New England In Treasures Afoot, Kimberly S. Alexander introduces readers to the history of the Georgian shoe. Presenting a series of stories that reveal how shoes were made, sold, and worn during the long eighteenth century, Alexander traces the fortunes and misfortunes of wearers as their footwear was altered to accommodate poor health, flagging finances, and changing styles. She explores the lives and letters of clever apprentices, skilled cordwainers, wealthy merchants, and elegant brides, taking readers on a colorful journey from bustling London streets into ship cargo holds, New England shops, and, ultimately, to the homes of eager consumers. We trek to the rugged Maine frontier in the 1740s, where an aspiring lady promenades in her London-made silk brocade pumps; sail to London in 1765 to listen in as Benjamin Franklin and John Hose caution Parliament on the catastrophic effects of British taxes on the shoe trade; move to Philadelphia in 1775 as John Hancock presides over the Second Continental Congress while still finding time to order shoes and stockings for his fiancée’s trousseau; and travel to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1789 to peer in on Sally Brewster Gerrish as she accompanies President George Washington to a dance wearing a brocaded silk buckle shoe featuring a cream ground and metallic threads. Interweaving biography and material culture with full-color photographs, this fascinating book raises a number of fresh questions about everyday life in early America: What did eighteenth-century British Americans value? How did they present themselves? And how did these fashionable shoes reveal their hopes and dreams? Examining shoes that have been preserved in local, regional, and national collections, Treasures Afoot demonstrates how footwear captures an important moment in American history while revealing a burgeoning American identity.