Come learn about historic textiles (and bring your own!) to be identified by renowned weaver/textile historian Rabbit Goody of Thistle Hill Weavers in New York. This special event will begin with an introductory talk on historic textiles, available via Zoom, after which Rabbit Goody will conduct 20-minute individual examinations of textiles brought in by attendees ($10 surcharge, slots booked in advance.) All attendees are welcome to observe the textile identifications.
In person: $15 for members, $20 for non-members.
Virtual Zoom lecture only: $10 for members, $15 for non-members.
Image: Pair of Women’s Shoes, England, ca. 1765. Red-pink glazed, satin-weave wool (calamanco); unbleached plain weave linen; leather. Historic Deerfield, Museum Collections Fund Purchase with Funds Donated by James Ciaschini in Memory of his Mother Eva Ferioli, 2004.26
Historic Deerfield’s 2024 Fall Forum, A Rich and Varied Palette: Coloring New England’s Past, convenes a group of leading researchers and scholars to explore the vast subject of color and its history. Research and publication in the history of color has been growing in recent decades, but few studies have examined color’s impact on specific cultural regions, such as New England. The program’s lectures will focus on the diverse topics of global colorants and textiles, lithoprints in 1840s New England, painted furniture at the Bath Academy, japanned furniture, Shakers’ color use and meanings, New England’s textile bleaching industries, chrome yellow and pink as pigments, and the paints and finishes of the Rockingham (Vermont) meeting house.
Historic Deerfield is home to one of the finest collections of New England architecture, interiors, and decorative arts of the 18th and 19th centuries. Rich in locally made and imported objects, the collection ranges widely from painted and japanned furniture, dyed, painted, and printed textiles, embroidered needlework and samplers, and paintings, drawings, watercolors and colored prints and maps. The museum’s Library also features the superb collection of Stephen L. Wolf (1917 – 2008), composed of pamphlets, trade catalogs, periodicals, and ephemera on applied color dating from the late 1500s to the present.
Despite the pervasive misconception of drabness, New England embraced color as a reflection of refinement and status, a visual display of commerce and the global economy, and a defining element of cultural difference, regional identity, and social and racial hierarchies. Through lectures, workshops, and tours, participants will experience the latest scholarship on color and gain a better understanding of the role of color in New England material life.
Registration
In-Person Base Price (does not include meals or pre-forum sessions) $150 / $135 (members) / $55 (college students)
Historic Deerfield welcomed visitors of all ages to “Wooly Wonders,” from May 18-19, 2024. The annual celebration invited guests to learn about rare heritage breed sheep, including the Lincoln Longwool, Shetland, Merino, and Romney Marsh sheep, as well as demonstrations of sheepdog herding, hand-shearing, spinning on historic wheels, and weaving. We hope to see you again next year for Wooly Wonders 2025!
Historic Deerfield is home to one of the finest collections of New England architecture, interiors, and decorative arts of the 18th and 19th centuries. Rich in locally made and imported objects, the collection ranges widely from painted and japanned furniture, dyed, painted, and printed textiles, embroidered needlework and samplers, and paintings, drawings, painted prints and maps, and watercolors. The museum’s Library also features the superb collection of Stephen L. Wolf (1917-2008). Over the course of half a century, Wolf amassed pamphlets, trade catalogs, periodicals, and ephemera dating from the late 1500s to the present including works on fine art, interior decoration, carriage painting, japanning, color theory, wall treatments, dyeing, enameling, glazing, theatrical set design, art restoration, varnishes, gilding, and the manufacture of paint.
Interest in the history of color has been growing in recent decades, with prominent publications such as The Materiality of Color: The Production, Circulation, and Application of Dyes and Pigments, 1400-1800 (2012), Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion, and Design (2023), and Journal18’s Color issue (Spring 2024), but few studies have examined color’s impact on specific cultural regions, such as New England. Despite the pervasive misconception of drabness, New England embraced color as a mode of defining cultural differences and status. Connecticut River Valley newspapers advertised a wide range of colored paints, and merchant Elisha Pomeroy’s Northampton shelves groaned with the weight of about 2,500 yards of fabric, in colors from black, blue, and brown to pink, yellow, and crimson in patterns from striped to spotted. Pigments and dye materials also formed an important aspect of trans-Atlantic colonialism, connecting New England to Europe, Africa, the West Indies, Mexico, and South America.
Historic Deerfield’s 2024 Fall Forum, Coloring New England’s Past aims to address and examine this topic by convening a group of experts in the field to explore the vast subject of color and its history. Historic Deerfield invites paper proposals for its two-day forum. Priority will be given to paper submissions that present new research and examine topics in non-traditional ways. Submissions beyond the geographical scope of New England but informative to this area are also encouraged.
Topics or themes ranging in date from the colonial period to the 20th century might include but are not
limited to:
Focused investigations of individual or small groups of objects made or used in New England (architecture, interiors, wallpaper, painting, sculpture, watercolors, maps and prints, book arts, furniture, trade signs and carriages, ceramics, textiles, needlework, and other decorative arts)
Artist/Artisan Biographies, Artisan Manuals, and Materials
Explorations of the life and work of New England artists or artisans and their use of color
Dissemination of information and publications on color and surface techniques, e.g., Rufus Porter
New England’s experience with natural and imported dyestuffs
Recipes and formulas to make paint, surface effects (japanning, trompe-l’oeil), varnishes, glazes, and gilding
Projects that focus on the study, preservation, conservation, or restoration of period colors in New England architecture, interiors, fine arts, and decorative arts (for example, color washing and tinted mortar on brick facades)
Color’s Social and Cultural Meanings
Influence of color on fashion, cosmetics, and body ornamentation
Use of color as expressions of power, political alliances, solidarity, race, gender, self-expression, or social control
Science, Technology, and Commerce
Introduction, sales, and expansion of natural and synthetic colors
Transatlantic trade in minerals, dyestuffs, and pigments; colors as commodities and products of human labor; effect of war and conflict on available colors
Rise of standardization and manufacture of paints and dyes
TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL
Please send (as a single email attachment) a lecture title, a 250-word abstract that describes the lecture, and a one-page vita or biography to Amanda Lange, Curatorial Department Director and forum organizer, at lange@historic-deerfield.org. Papers should be 25 minutes in length and must be image and/or object based. Proposals will be accepted until June 3, 2024. You will be notified of the status of your proposal no later than June 15, 2024.
Speakers whose papers are accepted will be given complimentary registration to the symposium, free lodging, and meals. The forum will convene in Deerfield, Massachusetts, as a hybrid program, with both on-site and virtual registration options for attendees. Speakers will be expected to present on site at Historic Deerfield.
Lineages of Female Makers in the Connecticut River Valley
By Allison Fulton
Figure 2: (Detail) Sarah Leavitt, embroiderer, Pole Screen, 1810. Metallic silk thread, off-white plain weave silk, metallic sequins, watercolors. 2007.19Figure 1: Sarah Leavitt, embroiderer, Pole Screen, 1810. Metallic silk thread, off-white plain weave silk, metallic sequins, watercolors. 2007.19
In the early decades of the 19th century, young white women at academies and seminaries across New England spent their days mastering foundational arithmetic, reading, and geography while also diligently learning the decorative arts to develop morals and artistic skills. One particularly important hub for the making and teaching of these ornamental arts was the Connecticut River Valley. Schools ran up and down the valley, including the Misses Pattens’ School in Hartford, CT; the Sarah Pierce School in Litchfield, CT; the Abby Wright School in South Hadley, MA; and the still operational Deerfield Academy that is nestled among the homes of Historic Deerfield.
The co-educational Deerfield Academy incorporated the ornamental arts into its curriculum for female students from its inception in 1799. Female instructors who had honed their own craft at schools like those previously mentioned brought their artistic skill to Academy classrooms, transferring “technique, style, and iconography across regions and generations.”[1] The transfers of craft technique via these multi-generational networks of white women are on full display at Historic Deerfield, whose museum and library collections contain many exceptional examples of ornamental art objects and arts instruction manuals that illustrate the techniques used to make such objects.
During its first decade of operation, Deerfield Academy instructors placed heavy emphasis on embroidery instruction. Jerusha Williams, preceptress from 1805-1812, was especially influential in this regard. Williams studied at Misses Pattens’ School where embroidered samplers and silk needlework that often featured biblical scenes were at the center of the young woman’s education. The needlework pictures made here are characterized by a “bright and crisp style,” featuring colorful silk threads and chenille on white silk backgrounds and highly raised and padded metallic embroidery that was often used to work an eagle holding a floral garland.[2]
Figure 3: Mary Upham, Needlework Mourning Picture, ca. 1807. Silk, watercolor, graphite. 69.0470
Williams brought these techniques and styles to Deerfield Academy, as evidenced in two pieces in the Historic Deerfield collections: a pole screen worked by Sarah Leavitt in 1810 and a needlework mourning picture made by Mary Upham around 1807. Leavitt’s pole screen is flush with styles and iconographies associated with the Patten School. Hovering in a graceful arch over the top of the composition are two glimmering eagles worked in gold thread and sequins that pop out of the white silk background, a garland strung between them united in the center by overlapping silver and gold hearts. And though more muted in color to fit the somber tone of a mourning picture, Upham’s needlework picture sets off the cornflower blue watercolor background—a hallmark of many Deerfield Academy compositions during this period—against varying textures of layered silk and chenille threads that bring the trees and grasses to life in a range of green and yellow hues.
Figure 4: Detail of trees in upper left corner of Figure 3. 69.0470
When Jerusha Williams left the Academy in 1812, Orra White Hitchcock assumed the role of preceptress, ushering in a new era for ornamental arts instruction at the school. Turning away from the detailed embroidery taught by her predecessor, White Hitchcock’s fine arts instruction emphasized drawing, watercolor painting, and cartography. She cultivated her students’ drawing and painting skills by having them copy portraits and landscape scenes in a distinct dappled stencil style from popular prints onto paper for beginning students, and, for the more advanced students, onto hand fire screens and wooden boxes. [3] Copying fashionable images was common practice at the time, taught by teachers like White Hitchcock and reinforced by the plethora of textbooks and instruction manuals marketed to young girls. Volumes such as The Young Women’s Companion, or, Frugal Housewife (1811) and The Cabinet of the Arts (1805) detailed directions and provided exemplary illustrations for drawing outlines and transferring, enlarging, or contracting source images.
Learning to copy images was also at the heart of schoolgirl mapmaking. In an effort to help students master the principles of geography and cultivate ornamental art and penmanship skills, they were asked to replicate maps from mass-market atlases and geography and history textbooks. White Hitchcock likely learned the detailed art of mapmaking at Susanna Rowson’s Academy in Roxbury, MA. At Deerfield, White Hitchcock similarly taught her students to copy in ornate script and detailed outline engraved maps from Jedidiah Morse’s famed textbook Geography Made Easy (1798), producing large maps for display in the classroom or parlor walls at the students’ homes.
Figure 6: Instruction page from Thomas Hodson’s “The Cabinet of the Arts,” 1805. Historic Deerfield Library.
Figure 5: Detail of chenille threads in far right of Figure 3. 69.0470
By copying illustrations, be they double hemisphere world maps, biblical and historical scenes, or landscape views, from popular visual culture sources through the techniques of their teachers, young girls at academies developed unique artistic styles. Rather than being a rote, non-artistic form of artistic reproduction, transforming an engraved print into a needlework or watercolor image in its likeness demanded technical experimentation and innovation. Tracing lineages of artistic techniques across institutional networks and instructor-student lineages at female academies, we can begin to tell the story of how gendered and racialized techniques shaped the aesthetics and circulation of popular visual culture in the early American Republic.
Allison Fulton is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at the University of California, Davis. As a recipient of a Memorial Libraries Research Fellowship, she spent 6 weeks with us in the fall of 2023 researching her dissertation “Disciplining Craft: The Gendered Making of Nineteenth-Century American Science.”
[1] Caryne Eskridge, “Sarah Hooker Leavitt’s Worktable: Women, Education, and Art Making,” Yale University Art Bulletin 2008, 62.
[3] Hand fire screens were small decorative objects used by women to protect their faces from the heat of a fire while simultaneously showing off their comportment and artistic talent (Suzanne L. Flynt, Ornamental and Useful Accomplishments: Schoolgirl Education and Deerfield Academy, 1800-1830 (Deerfield, Massachusetts: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association and Deerfield Academy, 1988), 34. Many decorative objects made by White Hitchcock’s students are on display at the PVMA Memorial Hall Museum.
Figure 7: “A New Map of the World,” from Jedediah Morse’s “Geography Made Easy,” 1798. PVMA Library.
Maker(s): Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework Culture: American (1896-1926) Title: table scarf Date Made: 1896-1926 Type: Household Accessory; Textile Materials: textile: polychrome linen embroidery; white, plain-weave linen Place Made: United States; Massachusetts; Deerfield Measurements: overall: 18 3/8 x 42 1/4 in.; 46.6725 x 107.315 cm Accession Number: HD 1998.5 Credit Line: Museum Collections Fund Museum Collection: Historic Deerfield
Description: Linen table scarf made by a member of The Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework, which is perhaps the most famous group in the arts and crafts revival that occurred in Deerfield at the turn of the 20th century. Margaret Whiting (1860-1946) and Ellen Miller (1854-1929), the Society’s founders, created replicas and new designs based on 18th century New England crewelwork for Deerfield tourists and prosperous patrons. About twenty-five Deerfield women were paid to embroider vegetable-dyed linen yarns on hand-spun linen cloth. If their work was of sufficient quality, a flax wheel with a “D” was embroidered on the piece by one of the two founders as a “seal of approval.” This table scarf is an example of Pattern No. 7: Shepherd’s Thistle. This scarf is made of unbleached linen cloth with linen embroidery threads with traditional Blue and White Society stitches, in three shades of blue, plus white, detailing the large thistle at each end of the scarf. The proper right side of one end has the ‘D’ sign in a wheel, the sign of the Society. The paper label reads: “The Deerfield Society of Blue/ & White Needlework/ Embroideries of Original/ Design in Natural Dyes/ Established in 1896/ At the Sign of the Wheel/ Old Deerfield Massachusetts”. Handwritten on the label is “No. 7/ Shephard’s Thistle”.
Wearable Gardens: Nature Embellishes the Human Figure
By Ned Lazaro Curator of Textiles
The depiction of flowers to decorate and embellish textiles has been an integral part of clothing for thousands of years. Where actual flowers wilt and die, realistic and stylized representations on fabric copying flower colors and shapes, and symbolizing life and renewed growth, survive. Mirroring a growing interest in plants and gardens, the appearance of flora on textiles likewise increased and diversified.[1] Eighteenth-century textiles worn for dress display some of the most elaborate and beautiful examples of flora, both real and stylized. Woven, embroidered, painted, and printed flowers depicted on clothing reveal the genre’s popularity. They delighted the eye, conjured faraway lands, and illustrated humankind’s attempts to harness fleeting beauty onto the human form.
Woven Flora
The eighteenth century’s drawloom allowed for unparalleled and realistic representations of flowers in woven textiles (Fig. 1). Floral patterns were first drawn out by specialized designers who found inspiration in nature, gardens, and the work of other artists. Some also received academic training.[2] Successful designers had an understanding of what was possible for master weavers to create using a complicated loom that bound warp and weft threads in a myriad of ways.
Fig.1, Bernard Direxit (engraver). “Soierie, Etoffes Brochées. Élévation Perspective du Métier pour Fabriquer les Etoffes Brochées garnide tous les cordages et Agrets.” Denis Diderot, Recueil de planches, XI, pl. LX.
These artists also paid attention to fashion, usually emanating from France, with current trends and the relentless desire for novelty leading the way. One such trend began in the 1730s. At that time, French and English weavers began depicting flowers more realistically. Artistic improvements in the weaving of brocaded silks created an effect known in French as points rentrés, adding shading, and therefore depth, to flowers, buds, and fruit (Fig. 2a, b) by interlocking brocading threads.[3] Motifs grew considerably in size as the vogue for more detailed and lifelike flowers became possible. Large, asymmetrically repeating motifs, as well as secondary or background designs, also created the illusion of realism, echoing the imperfections of nature. The inclusion of metallic thread further heightened the allure of these flowers (Fig. 3a, b). When new, these untarnished metallic elements reflected candlelight in the evening, illuminating dark interiors and captivated onlookers.
Fig. 2a, b. Gown and detail, England (Spitalfields), woven from a design by Anna Maria Garthwaite (1690-1763), c.1743. Polychrome, weft-patterned silk (brocade) patterning; off-white, plain-weave silk. F.098.
Fig. 3a, b. Waistcoat and detail, probably Lyon, France, 1730s-1740s. Polychrome, weft-patterned silk and metal (brocade) patterning; green, plain-weave ribbed silk. F.191.
Embroidered Flora
Embroidery is the process of using a needle to add design to an already-woven fabric or other ground (such as leather). Embroidery was uniquely suited to represent flowers in the eighteenth century; a needle and thread could easily create small, detailed motifs in ways ordinary weaving could not achieve (Fig. 4). Embroidery also allowed for a higher degree of individualization in designs not possible with weaving (Fig. 5a-c).
Fig. 4. Waistcoat pattern, England or France, 1770s. Gouache paint; laid paper. Mr. and Mrs. Hugh B. Vanderbilt Fund for Curatorial Acquisitions, 2001.48.1.
Fig. 5a-c. Petticoat and details, probably England, 1721. Polychrome, two-ply worsted embroidery (crewel); white, twill-weave linen and cotton (fustian) ground. Museum Collections Fund, 2007.5.
Like weaving, formal instruction in embroidery guilds in England and France was almost exclusively for men. However, women had the chance to embellish their appearance, and that of a loved one, through embroidery done in more informal settings such as the home, or taught as an ornamental art at a school. The mastery of stitches could later serve as a creative outlet for some women to embellish items of clothing such as petticoat hems (Fig. 6). Regardless of the context of training, skilled embroidery and a variety of stitches created nuanced shading and texture that added to a floral motif’s lifelike qualities.
Fig. 6. Petticoat hem detail, possibly American, mid-late 18th century. Polychrome, two-ply worsted embroidery (crewel); off-white, plain weave linen. Gift of Jane Dow Bromberg, 86.088.
Painted and Printed Flora
Seventeenth-century Indian painted-and-printed cottons captured the interests and imaginations of England and Europe. The finest examples of chintz trumpeted the skill of Indian artisans, especially those from the southeast Coromandel Coast, who used a combination of mordant- and resist-dyeing techniques on mostly plain-woven cotton fabrics to create detailed and colorfast designs.[4] Enterprising people in the West soon sent designs, or musters, to these Indian craftsmen to copy in the hopes of better appealing to customer tastes back home. Besides colorfast designs, the ability of these Indian artisans to create patterned fabric featuring white, undecorated grounds to set off vibrantly hued motifs only increased their vogue in the West (Fig.7a, b).
Fig. 7a, b. Petticoat and detail, painted and printed, mordant- and resist-dyed, plain weave quilted cotton, India and England, 1750-1800. F.654.
By the early eighteenth century, long frustrated by their lack of success replicating the colorfast techniques of India, English and European printers and dyers began experimenting in earnest (Fig. 8). These efforts eventually yielded more generalized, less detailed designs using printing techniques. Writing about his late eighteenth-century childhood during the 1840s, Deerfield, Massachusetts, historian Epaphras Hoyt (1765-1850) remembered women in the 1770s wearing “calicos [of] stamped linen” when more popular printed cottons imported from English merchants became unavailable during the American Revolution. Hoyt recalled these homemade versions possessed motifs created by using wooden stamps that decorated the linen with motifs that “might please the eye.” But the colors achieved, using inferior, natural dyes that were locally available, did not last.[5] By the end of the eighteenth century, however, these experiments paid off. Woodblocks, engraved copper plates, and cylinders were all employed to produce stylized floral designs, which also became smaller as the century ended (Fig.9a, b).
Fig. 8 “Calico Printing,” from John Barrow, A Supplement to the New and Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. London, 1754.
Fig. 9a, b. Gown and detail, English and American, c. 1800. Blue and green, block-printed, plain-weave, glazed cotton; undyed, plain-weave linen lining. Hall and Kate Peterson Fund for Paintings, Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, 2019.6.
In addition to their pleasing, decorative effects, the inclusion of two-dimensional flowers on textiles worn for dress on three-dimensional bodies held deeper meanings in Western society. Flowers could spark conversation and interest. New or exotic flora could signal knowledge of the latest trends in horticulture or an awareness of different cultures.[6] In this way, these fabrics served as portable libraries or communicators of a person’s knowledge, as well as reflect their access to, and knowledge of, the latest fashions.
[1] Vanessa Remington, Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2015).
[2] Lesley Ellis Miller, “Education and the Silk Designer: A Model for Success?,” in Mary Schoeser and Christine Boydell, eds., Disentangling Textiles: Techniques for the Study of Designed Objects (London: Middlesex University Press, 2002), 185-194. Moira Thunder, “Improving Design for Woven Silk: The Contribution of William Shipley’s School and the Society of Arts,” Journal of Design History 17 No. 1 (2004): 5-27.
[3] Lesley Ellis Miller, “Jean Revel: Silk Designer, Fine Artist, or Entrepreneur?,” Journal of Design History 8 No. 2 (1995): 79-96.
[4] Rosemary Crill, Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West (London: V&A Publishing, 2008).
[5] Epaphras Hoyt, “Dress of Females,” in Recollections of times and things of my early life, with a sketch of recent improvements, and remarks upon the principles of our government, on our parties & our frequent political condition (unpublished manuscript), 25. Historic Deerfield Library. Thanks to Barbara Mathews, Public Historian and Director of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield, for bringing this to my attention.
[6] Clare Browne, “The Influence of Botanical Sources on early 18th-Century English Silk Design,” in 18th-Century Silks: The Industries of England and Northern Europe (Riggisberg; Abegg-Stiftung, 2000), 25-38.
