The Development of Embroidery in America Part 5

The threads used were flosses of linen or cotton, preferably the latter, which were almost entirely imported. With these restricted materials, wonders of ornamentation were performed. The st.i.tch, quite different from that of crewelwork or picture embroidery of the preceding period, was the simple over and over st.i.tch we find in French embroidery of the present day. The leaves of the design or pattern were frequently brought into relief by a stuffing of under threads.

Everything was embroidered; gowns, from the belt to lower hem, finished with scalloped and sprigged ruffles in the same delicate workmans.h.i.+p, were everyday summer wear. Slips and sacques, which were not quite as much of an undertaking as an entire gown, were bordered and ruffled with the same embroidery. The amount and beauty of specimens which still exist after the lapse of nearly a century is quite wonderful. Small articles, like collars, capes and pelerines, were almost entirely covered with the most exquisite tracery of leaf and flower, a perfect frostwork of delicate st.i.tchery, with patches of lacework introduced in s.p.a.ces of the design.

The designs were seldom, almost never, original, being nearly always copied directly from what was called "boughten work," to distinguish it from that which was produced at home.

Many beautiful and skillful st.i.tches were used in this form of work.

Lace st.i.tches, made with bodkins or "piercers," or darning needles of sufficient size to make perforations, were skillfully rimmed and joined together in patterns by finer st.i.tches, and open borders, and hemst.i.tching, and dainty inventions of all kinds, for the embellishment of the fabrics upon which they were wrought.

With these materials and these methods most of the women of the different sections of the country busied themselves from a period beginning probably about 1710 and extending to 1840, and it is safe to say, notwithstanding the apparent simplicity of life between those dates, that at no period in the history of woman was as much time and consummate skill bestowed upon wearing apparel. Many a young girl of the day embroidered her own wedding dress, and during the months or years of its preparation suffered and enjoyed the same ambition which goes on in the present, to the acquirement of some wonder of French composition, or costly ornament of point lace and pearls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Left_--BABY'S CAP White mull, with eyelet embroidery.

Nineteenth century American.

_Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_

_Right_--BABY'S CAP Embroidered mull. 1825.

_Courtesy Mrs. Isaac Pierson, Canandaigua, N. Y._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLLAR of white embroidered muslin. Nineteenth century American.

_Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_]

Everything was embroidered. The tender, downy head of the newly born baby was covered with a cap of delicatest material incrusted to hardness with needlework. The baby's caps of the period are a perfect chapter of human emotions; mother-love, emulation, pride, and declaration of family or personal position are skillfully expressed in a multiplicity of decorative st.i.tches. A six-foot length of baptismal robe carried for half its length the same elaborate st.i.tchery. Long delicate ruffles were edged with double rows of scallops. Double and triple collars and "pelerines" of muslin were to be found in the hands of all women of high or low degree. Articles of wearing apparel were done upon a soft fine muslin called mull, breadths of which were embroidered for skirts, lengths of it were scalloped and embroidered for flounces, and hand-lengths of it were done for the short waists and sleeves of the pretty Colonial gowns worn by our delicate ancestresses. One of these gowns, stretched to its widest, would hardly cover a front breadth of the habit of one of our well-nurtured athletic girls of the present, and the athletic girl can show no such handiwork as this.

Beautiful embroidery it was that was lavished upon muslin gowns, baby's caps and long, long robes, and upon ap.r.o.ns, pelerines and capes. Over st.i.tch instead of tent st.i.tch was the order of the day. "Tent st.i.tch and the use of the globes" was no longer advertised as a part of school routine. Instead of this, there were the most delicate overst.i.tches and mult.i.tudinous lace-st.i.tches which we nowhere else find, unless in the finest of Asian embroidery.

A large part of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century was a period of remarkable skill in all kinds of st.i.tchery. It was not confined to embroidery, but was also applied to all varieties of domestic needlework. Hemst.i.tched ruffles were a part of masculine as well as feminine wear, and finely st.i.tched and ruffled s.h.i.+rts for the head of the household were quite as necessary to the family dignity as embroidered gowns and caps for its feminine members.

It would be difficult to enumerate all the uses to which the national perfection of needle dexterity was put. It was, indeed, a national dexterity, for although its application was widely different in the eastern and southern states, the two schools of needlework, as we may term them, met and mingled to a common practice of both methods in the middle states.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EMBROIDERED SILK WEDDING WAISTCOAT, 1829. From the Westervelt collection.

_Courtesy of Bergen County Historical Society, Hackensack, N. J._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EMBROIDERED WAIST OF A BABY DRESS. 1850. From the collection of Mrs. George Coe.

_Courtesy of Bergen County Historical Society, Hackensack, N. J._]

Perhaps one may account for the prevalence of this kind of work, as it existed at a period of very limited education or literary pursuits among women. Domestic life was woman's kingdom, and needlework was one of its chief conditions. But whatever cause or causes stimulated the vogue of this variety of embroidery, we find it was universal among rich and poor, in city and country, for nearly three-quarters of a century. The narrow roll of muslin, for scalloped flounces and ruffling, and the skeins of French cotton went everywhere with girls and women, except to church and to ceremonious functions where men were included. Needlework was far more than an interest, it was an occupation.

The varieties of tambour work and open st.i.tchery of various ornamental kinds were possible for all capacities. It was a general form of fine needlework, happily available to women of the farmhouse, as well as of the mansion, and its exceeding precision and beauty gave a character to the purely utilitarian st.i.tchery of the day which has made a high standard for succeeding generations. The hemst.i.tched ruffles of s.h.i.+rts, the st.i.tched plaits of simpler ones, the b.u.t.tonholed triangles at the intersection of seams--all these practically unknown to modern construction--were probably the result of the skillful and careful needlework ornamentation of simple fabrics.

As an occupation, French embroidery practically displaced the making of cabinet pictures of graceful ladies in scant satin gowns which had occupied the embroidery frame, or decorated drawing-room walls. Flowers ceased to blossom upon pincus.h.i.+ons, and the engrossing and prevalent occupation of needlework was entirely devoted to personal wear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EMBROIDERY ON NET. Border for the front of a cap made about 1820.

_Courtesy of Mrs. A. S. Hewitt_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VEIL (unfinished) hand run on machine-made net. American nineteenth century.

_Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York_]

At this period, however, s.h.i.+ps were coming into Boston and other eastern ports almost daily or weekly, instead of at intervals of weary months.

s.h.i.+ps were going to and returning from China and the Indies and the islands of the sea, laden on their return voyages not only with spices and liquors and sweets of the southern world, but with satins and velvets and silks and prints, and delicately printed muslins and cambrics; and the fair linen and cotton flosses disappeared from the hands of needlewomen. Manufacturers had brought their looms to weave designs into the fabrics they produced and to simulate the work of the needle in a way which made one feel that the very spindles thought and wrought with conscious love of beauty.

The larger demands of luxurious living increased also the necessary work of the needle, and while the looms of France and Switzerland were busy weaving broidered stuffs, the needles of sewing women were kept at work fas.h.i.+oning the necessary garments of the millions of playing and working human beings. It was the era which gave birth to the "Song of the s.h.i.+rt," a day of personal and exacting practice.

Lacework

The disappearance of the practice of French embroidery was as sudden as the dropping of a theater curtain, but a coexistent art called Spanish lacework lingered long after muslin embroidery had ceased to be. It was chiefly used in the elaboration of shawls, and large lace veils, which were a very graceful addition to Colonial and early American costume.

There is no difficulty in tracing this kind of decorative needlework. It came from Mexico into New Orleans, and from there, by various secrets of locomotion, spread along the southern states.

The veils were yard squares of delicate white or black lace, heavily bordered and lightly spotted with flowers, while the shawls were sometimes nearly double that size, and of much heavier lace, as they had need to be, to carry the wealth of decorative darning lavished upon them.

The design was always a foliated one, generally proceeding from a common center, representing a basket or a knot of ribbon, which confined the branching forms to the point of departure. The edges were heavily scalloped, with an extension of the ornamentation which included a rose or leaf for the filling of every scallop. The centers of flowers, and even of leaves, were often filled with beautiful variations of lace st.i.tches worked into the meshes of the ground, and were very curious and interesting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LACE WEDDING VEIL, 36 40 inches, used in 1806. From the collection of Mrs. Charles H. Lozier.

_Courtesy of Bergen County Historical Society, Hackensack, N. J._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

_Courtesy of Bergen County Historical Society, Hackensack, N. J._]

Darning with flosses upon both white and black bobbinet, or silk net, was a very common form of the art, and veils of white with seed or all-over designs darned in white silk floss, may be called the "personal needlework" of the period, and some of the shawls were superb stretches of design and st.i.tching. This art, although so beautiful in effect, demanded very little of the skill necessary to the preceding methods of embroidery. The lace was simply stretched or basted over paper or white cloth, upon which the design was heavily traced in ink; the s.p.a.ces which were to be solidly filled were sometimes covered with a shading of red chalk, and when this was done, it was a matter of simple running over and under the meshes of the net, in directions indicated by the shape of the leaf or flower. The work could be heavier or lighter, according to the design and size or weight of the flosses used. I have seen a wedding veil worked upon a beautiful white silk net, carrying a sprinkling of orange flowers, darned with white silk flosses, and a heavy wreath around the border. Certainly no veil of priceless point lace could be so etherially beautiful as was this relic of the past, and certainly no commercial product, however costly, could carry in its transparent folds the sentiment of such a bridal veil, wrought in love by the bride who was to wear it.

I have seen one beautiful shawl, where the entire design was done in s.h.i.+ning silver-white flosses, upon a ground of black net, with the effect of a disappearance of the background, the wreaths and groups of flowers seeming to float around the figure of the wearer.

In one or two instances, also, I have seen shawls in varicolored flosses producing a silvery ma.s.s of ornamentation which was most effective, but they were experiments which evidently did not commend themselves to North American taste.

The same method of darning was used upon what was then called, "bobbinet footing," narrow lengths of bobbinet lace which were extensively used as ruffles for caps and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and garniture of capes and various articles of personal wear.

Cap bodies were also worked in this method; in fact, the decorative treatment of caps must have been a trying question. The dignity of the married woman depended somewhat upon the size of the cap she wore, and it was as necessary to convention that the crow-black locks of the matron of twenty-five should be hidden, as that the scant locks of sixty should be decently shrouded.

Insertings of darned footing, alternating with bands of muslin, were largely used in the construction of gowns, and, in short, this style of needlework, while not as universal or absorbing as French embroidery, continued longer in vogue and perhaps amused or solaced some who had little skill or time for the more exacting methods of embroidery.

CHAPTER V -- BERLIN WOOLWORK

It surprises us in these latter days of demand for the best conditions in the prosecution of decorative work, that it should have lived at all through the days of existence in one-roomed log cabins of early settlers and the conflicting demands of pioneer life. It survived them all, and the little, fast-arriving Puritan children were taught their st.i.tches as religiously as their commandments; and so American embroidery grew to be an art which has enriched the past and future of its executants.

After the two periods of French and Spanish needlework pa.s.sed by, there appeared what was known as Berlin woolwork. Those who in earlier times were devoted to fine embroidery solaced their idleness with this new work--certainly a poor subst.i.tute for the beautiful embroidery of the preceding generation, but answering the purpose of traditional employment for the leisure cla.s.s. This came into vogue and was rather extensively used for coverings of screens, chairs, sofas, footstools and the various specimens of household furniture made by workmen who had served with Adam, Chippendale and Sheraton, and who had brought books of patterns with them to the prosperous, growing market of the New World.

Berlin woolwork was a method of cross-st.i.tch upon canvas in colored wools or silks--in fact, an extension of sampler methods into pictures and screens, or the more utilitarian chair and sofa covers. It was sometimes varied by using broadcloth or velvet as a foundation, the canvas threads being drawn out after the picture was complete. We occasionally find entire sets of beautiful old mahogany chairs, with cus.h.i.+ons of cross-st.i.tch embroidery, the subjects ranging over everything in the animal or vegetable world, so that one might sit in turn upon horses, bead-eyed and curled lap dogs, or wreaths of lilies and roses.