Category Archives: Textiles

A Woman’s Work at Her Needle Is Never Done

Posted on by
1

“Work” with respect to girls and women used to be synonymous with “needlework.”  Not just the stitching of samplers, but “plain sewing,” the making of shifts and shirts, aprons and babies’ caps for members of the family.   Those tasks were not relegated to the servants: princesses and queens were supposed to cheerfully perform  this necessary work as well.  Virtuous female characters from the Bible and classical literature were cited as examples.  It was said the daughters of Queen Charlotte were expert at tapestry work and fine embroidery of all kinds.

But times were changing according to the anonymous author of The Little Needle Woman: Or the Pleasures of Work.  Published with the Approbation of The Princess Royal of Lilliput, for the Entertainment of the Ladies of Great-Britain and Ireland  (Gainsborough: H. Mozley, 1792).  He or she exclaimed:

Needle—work, the cares of domestic affairs, a serious and retired life, is the proper function of women; and for this they were designed by Providence.  The depravity of the age has indeed affixed to these customs which are  very near as old as the creation, an idea of meanness and contempt; but then what has it substituted in the room of them?  A soft indolence, a stupid idleness, frivolous conversation, vain amusements, a strong passion for public shews, and a frantic love of gambling.

If dexterity with the needle was as important as claimed above, then surely this little pamphlet has illustrations of obedient little girls hard at work.  Just one–the frontispiece shows a girl sewing while she watches the baby in the cradle.  But there is also a picture of a girl practicing the piano while her mama watches, which directly contradicts the rant in the introduction.…To be honest, there are more illustrations in 18th-century children’s books of boys mistreating animals in than of girls sewing.  Only one I’ve found in the collection so far is The Brother’s Gift, which was first published by Francis Newbery in 1770.  The story is straightforward enough.  Kitty Bland returns home from boarding school “perfectly spoiled,” having picked up affected manners.  Like most boarding school misses, she can’t spell correctly, write neatly, read aloud nicely, or, most important of all, sew carefully.  In spite of all this her older brother Billy loves her too much to let this continue  and explains kindly why it is to her advantage to learn all these things—and stop spending so much time staring at herself in the mirror.  Here she is hard at work.And here is her thimble.

If Kitty applies herself, she might one day produce a map sampler like this one in the Victoria and Albert Museum.Or aspire to needle paintings  in worsted like Mary Linwood, who exhibited her full-size copies of old masters in a  gallery on Leicester Square in London for decades.  Here is one after the famous animal painter, George Stubbs. 

 

 

Made by a Child: A Sampler of Siblings’ Names Stitched in 1778.

Posted on by

[Needlework sampler]. England, 1788. (Cotsen)

An exhibition catalogue of eighteenth-century embroidery would probably pass by this small sampler just purchased for Cotsen which records information about a family in the English Midlands 1767-1787. It is simply a list of names enclosed in a narrow  border unaccompanied by alphabets, mottoes, architecture, birds, and swirling vines in more bravura examples designed by school mistresses for their pupils.

Joan Oughton, the dexterous young needlewoman, signed at the bottom so posterity would know that she lived in Birmingham and finished the piece in 1788.   She used just three stitches–outline, cross, and tent—and a quiet,  harmonious palette of blue-gray, black, gold, and silver silk thread on linen.  The tiny stitches are so regular that the embroidered words and numbers are beautifully legible.  It  lacks the name of a teacher or school, which may be an indication that she worked it as part of lessons  at home to learn plain and ornamental needlework, an key component of girls’ education.

Perhaps Joan sewed it as  a  memorial to her sisters and brothers, rather like to writing out family members’ names, dates of birth and of passing on a blank leaf in the family Bible. Her mother was almost continually pregnant between 1766 and 1786, bearing eleven children, seven of whom survived infancy.   Joan’s brothers were Thomas Smith, who lived only a week in June 1767, James Harwick born in 1779, Samuel in 1781, and Timothy in 1783.  The oldest girl Elizabeth was born in 1768, Maria, in 1770 and passing away at age eight,  Harriet in 1772, Joan in 1773, Catherine in 1774, Ann who was alive the summer of 1778.  The last girl was a second Maria born in 1786 and living eleven months later. The detail below shows the lines for the first Maria, Harriet, Joan, Catherine, and Ann.Using Joan’s record of her brothers and sisters, I tracked down some very promising candidates for their parents in Ancestry Library even though there was no family tree that brought all these Oughtons together.  Christopher Oughton was the brood’s father.  Son of Timothy Oughton, he was born April 14th, 1747, and baptized in Lichfield, Staffordshire.  His wife was a Maria, but her maiden name and the date of their union didn’t seem to be documented.

How Christopher support his growing family?  He can be found in Birmingham city directories of tradesmen between 1751 and 1775 as a peruke maker (a more elegant term for someone who makes wigs) at fashionable 22 Church Street.  Someone in this line of work might also cut and dress hair, sell perfume and pomades, etc.  Christopher added a second, more unusual line of work around 1785—that of pawnbroking.

Joan’s somber tribute to her brothers has proven to be a little piece of family history worked on linen and a very welcome–and unusual–addition to Cotsen’s small group of samplers among the textiles.