Textiles

The 50,000 objects in the textile collections fall into two main categories: raw fibers, yarns, and fabrics, and machines, tools, and other textile technology. Shawls, coverlets, samplers, laces, linens, synthetics, and other fabrics are part of the first group, along with the 400 quilts in the National Quilt Collection. Some of the Museum's most popular artifacts, such as the Star-Spangled Banner and the gowns of the first ladies, have an obvious textile connection.

The machinery and tools include spinning wheels, sewing machines, thimbles, needlework tools, looms, and an invention that changed the course of American agriculture and society. A model of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, made by the inventor in the early 1800s, shows the workings of a machine that helped make cotton plantations profitable in the South and encouraged the spread of slavery.

Currently on loan
Location
Currently on loan
date made
1965
ID Number
TE.T15564.000
catalog number
T15564.000
accession number
295253
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1964
ID Number
TE.T15542.000
catalog number
T15542.000
accession number
295253
An extraordinary scale model of a 24 spindle Slater Spinning Frame; made for exhibition purposes by John W. Shultz of Museum of History & Technology (now NMAH) model shop and used in the Textile Hall displays. Scale: 3" = 1'.
Description (Brief)
An extraordinary scale model of a 24 spindle Slater Spinning Frame; made for exhibition purposes by John W. Shultz of Museum of History & Technology (now NMAH) model shop and used in the Textile Hall displays. Scale: 3" = 1'. The original 1790 Slater Spinning Frame in the NMAH collection has 48-spindles.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1967
associated date
1790
maker
Model Shop, United States National Museum
ID Number
TE.T14067.000
catalog number
T14067.000
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1930-1960
ID Number
TE.T13859A
catalog number
T13859.00A
A pheasant in Berlin work, worked from a pattern in Peterson’s Magazine of January 1868. See pattern TE*T14801Currently not on view
Description
A pheasant in Berlin work, worked from a pattern in Peterson’s Magazine of January 1868. See pattern TE*T14801
Location
Currently not on view
associated dates
1968
ID Number
TE.T14800
catalog number
T14800
accession number
281770
By the 1840s a new technique [in the field] of needlepoint known as Berlin wool work was the rage. It arose in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century. New dyes became available and brightly colored wools could be worked in tent stitch on canvas.
Description
By the 1840s a new technique [in the field] of needlepoint known as Berlin wool work was the rage. It arose in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century. New dyes became available and brightly colored wools could be worked in tent stitch on canvas. The patterns were painted by hand on “point paper,” which today would be called graph paper. Jane’s piece is an example of this technique.
This large rectangular canvas work piece depicts the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. The biblical account is found in Genesis 22:1-14. Abraham is standing clothed in flowing robes girded at the waist, with a dagger hanging at his left side. He gestures toward the sky with his left hand, and his right hand is over Isaac’s face. A lamb is in the bushes at the right side of the picture and smoke is coming from a brazier in the left corner. The picture is worked on penelope canvas ground, 9/18 threads per inch, with Berlin wool in cross stitch. The faces, hands, and feet are done in petit point.
Jane Elizabeth Loucks was born in 1835 to John and Desdemonia Marsh Loucks in Sharon, New York. She married Joseph Warren Hastings on February 16, 1871, in Manhattan, New York. They moved to Illinois and had one daughter, Dena. See her other pieces; Mary Queen of Scots and The Ascension of Jesus.
Location
Currently not on view
associated date
1961
maker
Loucks, Jane Elizabeth
ID Number
TE.T11105.01
catalog number
T11105
accession number
238291
Length of Javanese batik-patterned fabric, 1964. 100" L x 41" wide. Selvage width plain weave cotton cloth.
Description
Length of Javanese batik-patterned fabric, 1964. 100" L x 41" wide. Selvage width plain weave cotton cloth. Patterning of diagonal stripes in alternating patterns, with birds having outstretched wings and spread tails in offset repeat, alternating direction (head up or down relative to the selvage). Typical central Javanese colors and pattern: indigo blue, brown, beige, and off-white. From Jogjakarta, indonesia, 1964. Purchased by the donor, who worked with the Peace Corps in Djakarta, as an example of contemporary batik.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1964
ID Number
TE.T13504.000
catalog number
T13504.000
accession number
255894
By the 1840s a new technique [in the field] of needlepoint known as Berlin wool work was the rage. It arose in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century. New dyes became available and brightly colored wools could be worked in tent stitch on canvas.
Description
By the 1840s a new technique [in the field] of needlepoint known as Berlin wool work was the rage. It arose in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century. New dyes became available and brightly colored wools could be worked in tent stitch on canvas. The patterns were painted by hand on “point paper,” which today would be called graph paper. Jane’s piece is an example of this technique.
A large rectangular composition shows Mary, Queen of Scots, kneeling over Douglas, who lies mortally wounded on the ground. A riderless horse stands nearby, probably Douglas’s. All in clothing of the period. The warriors wear armor and carry lances. One has a banner. The faces and hands are done in petit point. The picture is worked on penelope canvas ground, 14/28 threads per inch, with Berlin wool in tent/half cross stitch.
The title of this piece is Mary Queen of Scots, Mourning over the Dying Douglas at the Battle of Langside. It is based on a painting by Charles Landseer (1799-1879). However, Douglas did not die at that battle. Charles Landseer based many of his paintings on the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and in his book entitled The Abbot, Douglas does die at the Battle of Langside. Scott was writing historical fiction and so he could have Douglas die whenever and wherever he wanted him to.
In 1856 Jane entered this piece in the American Institute Fair in New York City where it was awarded the bronze medal (which was first prize for worsted work.) (See picture of her medal.)
Jane Elizabeth Loucks was born in 1835 to John and Desdemonia Marsh Loucks in Sharon, New York. She married Joseph Warren Hastings on February 16, 1871, in Manhattan. They moved to Illinois and had one daughter, Dena. See her other pieces; The Ascension of Jesus and The Offering of Isaac.
Location
Currently not on view
associated date
1961
maker
Loucks, Jane Elizabeth
ID Number
TE.T11103.01
catalog number
T11103
accession number
238291
Canvas work embroidered chair seat. Wool on linen canvas. The date "1750" in silk cross stitch. Probably New England. Thread count is 32 x 27 to the inch. Cut to shape as a chair seat, but also cut after embroidering to fit a chair.
Description
Canvas work embroidered chair seat. Wool on linen canvas. The date "1750" in silk cross stitch. Probably New England. Thread count is 32 x 27 to the inch. Cut to shape as a chair seat, but also cut after embroidering to fit a chair. Depicts a male figure at bottom, with large flowering branch design, and a few animals. Design elements are not to the same scale. Design shows Moses at the burning bush, flowers, two animals, butterfly. Shoes on ground behind Moses. Hands, face, and shoes worked in petit point. Colors: brown ground, pinks and salmon pinks, red, blues, greens, yellows, white. The back has been reinforced and stabilized with white linen stitched along the sides. The reverse shows the original colors of the embroidery wools very clearly.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1750
associated dates
1968 / 1968
ID Number
TE.T14548
catalog number
T14548
accession number
277536
After a young lady learned to embroider a sampler, she might attend a female academy to make a silk embroidered picture. This was a more challenging technique that became popular in the early 1800s.
Description
After a young lady learned to embroider a sampler, she might attend a female academy to make a silk embroidered picture. This was a more challenging technique that became popular in the early 1800s. Subjects included classical, biblical, and historical scenes, as well as mourning pictures. The death of George Washington gave impetus to this new fad of the mourning picture. It included an assortment of plinth, urn, mourners, and trees in a garden setting.
This square embroidered picture depicts a young girl weeping, kneeling beside a plinth topped by an urn beneath a weeping willow tree. There was once an inscription glued on the plinth, but it is now missing from the oval. The girl is dressed in an ivory and pale gold Empire style dress with lacy edging around the square neck. The embroidered weeping figure, plinth, chenille tree and chenille ground are surrounded by painted water. A gold inscription on a black mat at the bottom says, “Wrought by Sophia W. Childs, Charleston, 1827.” It is stitched on a plain weave ivory silk ground with silk floss and chenille. The stitches are satin, long and short, laid, and straight.
This mourning embroidery contains the usual motifs of a plinth with an urn, weeping willow trees and a young lady mourning. The Regency style dress would have been the dress of the period and helps to date the picture.
Sophia Wyman Childs married Jeremiah Holmes Kimball (1802-1849) of Woburn, Massachusetts, on February 24, 1828. She died sometime before November 1832, when Jeremiah wed Jerusha Ann Richardson.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1827
associated date
1964-12
maker
Childs, Sophia Wyman
ID Number
TE.T19319
accession number
256396
catalog number
T19319
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1930-1960
ID Number
TE.T13859
catalog number
T13859.000
By the 1840s a new technique in the field of needlepoint, known as Berlin wool work, was the rage. It arose in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century. New dyes became available and brightly colored wools could be worked in tent stitch on canvas.
Description
By the 1840s a new technique in the field of needlepoint, known as Berlin wool work, was the rage. It arose in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century. New dyes became available and brightly colored wools could be worked in tent stitch on canvas. The patterns were painted by hand on “point paper,” which today would be called graph paper. Jane’s piece is an example of this technique.
This rectangular canvas work piece depicts the Ascension of Jesus. The biblical account is found in Acts 1: 9-11. Jesus is the main figure, upper center. He wears robes and there is a halo or nimbus around his head. Two men and one woman on the ground partially cover their eyes, as if blinded by the light. The faces, hands, and feet are done in petit point. The picture is worked on penelope canvas ground, 14/28 threads per inch, with Berlin wool in tent/half cross stitch. The colors of this piece are vivid. The frame is original to the picture; with reverse painted glass and gilded gesso molding on the frame itself. An inscription, "The Ascension J.E.L." is located in the bottom border.
Jane Elizabeth Loucks was born in 1835 to John and Desdemonia Marsh Loucks in Sharon, New York. She married Joseph Warren Hastings on February 16, 1871, in Manhattan. They moved to Illinois and had one daughter, Dena. See her other pieces; Mary Queen of Scots and The Offering of Isaac.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1850
associated date
1961
maker
Loucks, Jane Elizabeth
ID Number
TE.T11104.01
catalog number
T11104
accession number
238291
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1700-1820
associated dates
1897 03 13 / 1897 03 13, 1965 00 00 / 1965 00 00
1966 10 27 / 1966 10 27
ID Number
CL.176398
accession number
31785
catalog number
176398
This wedding veil was designed and made for Princess Stéphanie of Belgium for her wedding to Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria in 1881.
Description
This wedding veil was designed and made for Princess Stéphanie of Belgium for her wedding to Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria in 1881. The Hapsburg-Lothringen shield dominates the center back of the veil, while the coat-of-arms of Belgium is in the center of the garland of 21 coats-of-arms along the border with Belgian province shields on one side and the Austro-Hungarian on the other. The name "Leon Sacré" and "Bruxelles 1880" are worked in needlepoint by the central border motif of the Belgian Lion. The veil is made in fine Brussels Point de Gaze needle lace embellished with elaborate ferns, lilies, roses and other flowers on a gossamer fine handmade ground powdered with tiny dots. Queen Henriette commissioned Leon Sacré to design the veil for her daughter to be made by the best lace makers in Belgium. It was a wedding gift from the city of Brussels
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1880
used date
1881-05-10
1927-01-27
associated date
1964-06-18
ID Number
TE.T13491
catalog number
T13491
accession number
254382
One script alphabet no "J." Two block alphabets with 26 letters and numbers to 0. One partial and three complete geometric crossbands. Two small flower baskets and border on all four sides.
Description
One script alphabet no "J." Two block alphabets with 26 letters and numbers to 0. One partial and three complete geometric crossbands. Two small flower baskets and border on all four sides. Framing center is simple zig-zag, geometric strawberry vine in middle, Greek-key band at outside edge. Silk embroidery thread on linen ground. STITCHES: cross, crosslet, queen. THREAD COUNT: warp 29, weft 32/in.
Inscriptions:
"Remember now thy Creator in the days
of thy youth while the evil days come not
nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt
say i have no pleasure in them.
Susan H Salter aged 10 years Elizabethtown
7th May 1826"
Background:
Susan Henrietta was born on April 7, 1816, to Thomas and Susan Henrietta Williamson Salter in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. She married George W. Wallace in 1843 and they had three children—William, Thomas, and Elizabeth. The sampler descended in the family of her sister, Harietta Matilda Spencer Salter, who married Elisha Codwise.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1826
associated dates
1967 06 09
maker
Salter, Susan H.
ID Number
TE.H11981
accession number
51998
catalog number
H11981
Block upper-case alphabet; letters colored alternately; no "J" or "U." Numbers 1 to 0. These rows, together with rows containing verse, all separated by narrow crossbands, including sawtooth and dentil patterns.
Description
Block upper-case alphabet; letters colored alternately; no "J" or "U." Numbers 1 to 0. These rows, together with rows containing verse, all separated by narrow crossbands, including sawtooth and dentil patterns. Below verse, three wide crossbands: one of flowering plants, birds, and sheep or goats, and two wide geometric bands in patterns that appear often on eastern Massachusetts samplers, especially in Boston area. At bottom of sampler spies, from Canaan, wearing knee-breeches and flared coats, identified by letters "Ja" and "Ca" and flanked by trees, flowering plants, and small birds. Below them, 1 5/8" strip with geometric strawberry vine solidly worked in cross-stitch. Border of geometric flowering vine on top and two sides. Silk embroidery thread on linen ground. STITCHES: cross, satin, Algerian eye. THREAD COUNT: warp 38, weft 42/in.
Inscriptions:
"When Stern Affliction Waves her Rod
My heart Confids in the my God
When Nature Shrinks Oppresd with woes
E en then in thee She finds Repose
Affliction flyes and hope returns
Her Lamp with brighter Splendor burns
Gay Love with all his Chearful Train
And Joy And peace are here again
Molley Ruff[ss]ell
Ad 12 1776"
Background:
Mary (Molly) was born on June 19, 1765, to Peter and Molly Russell of Bradford, Massachusetts. Her father was a distinguished shipbuilder. She married Ephraim Emery on September 17, 1785. He enlisted as a fifer on April 19, 1775, at the Lexington alarm, and entered the service in William Rogers's Company on April 27, 1775. Ephraim was in the assault on Stony Point and the battle of White Plains. After the war, in 1799, he was appointed captain in the United States Army, 14th Regiment, which was disbanded in 1800. He served successively as captain, brigade major, and inspector in the state militia. The couple had four children—Mary, John, Thomas, and Hannah.
Mary died on March 3, 1843, in Newbury, Massachusetts.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1776
associated dates
1963-11-28
maker
Russell, Molley
ID Number
TE.T20239A
accession number
246268
catalog number
T20239.A
This pieced pieced quilt in the "Maple Leaf" or "Tea Leaves" pattern was made by Mandy Ary. Mandy Lula Madison was born in Alabama in 1886, she married George Daniel Ary and they had three children.
Description
This pieced pieced quilt in the "Maple Leaf" or "Tea Leaves" pattern was made by Mandy Ary. Mandy Lula Madison was born in Alabama in 1886, she married George Daniel Ary and they had three children. She died December 14, 1972 in New Milford, CT.
The quilt is pieced of cotton fabrics; solids, stripes and 2 florals were used for the pattern. Hand pieced and quilted. Four feed sack bags, a floral print on pink ground, were used for the lining. It has a cotton filling. Quilting pattern consists of straight lines, quilted 5 stitches/inch.
date made
1940 - 1960
1900-1930
1960 - 1970
maker
Ary, Mandy Lula Madison
Ary, Mandy Lula Madison
ID Number
2010.0009.01
accession number
2010.0009
This bassinet quilt with a framed center design is made of high-quality plain blue and white cotton feed sack fabrics.
Description
This bassinet quilt with a framed center design is made of high-quality plain blue and white cotton feed sack fabrics. Dorothy Overall of Caldwell, Kansas, a contestant in many sewing events in the 1950s and 1960s, pieced and appliquéd this quilt on a Pfaff sewing machine she had won in a contest. In 1959 she won the National Cotton Bag Sewing Contest that included a vacation trip to Hollywood as part of the prize.
According to Dorothy, cotton feed sack fabric was light enough for summer, almost as nice as percale and the colors didn’t fade. Cotton sacks for flour, animal feed and other commodities were produced in many colors and prints. Flour and feed companies found that their sales were often influenced by the popularity of their sacks which were used for clothes and household items.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1950-1969
quilter
Overall, Dorothy
ID Number
1992.0102.07
accession number
1992.0102
catalog number
1992.0102.07

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