In the 20th century, women’s hobbies included embroidery techniques such as needlepoint and crewel.
This very large and impressive embroidered wall hanging depicts “The Legend of Czar Saltan.” The czar sits in an elaborately decorated wooden chair. He wears a jeweled crown on his silvery hair, and his long flowing silvery beard covers a part of an elaborately embroidered robe. This scene is on a balcony overlooking a walled village with onion-domed buildings, some with crosses on top, a lake with an island, and mountains beyond. Across the top of the picture are clouds, and the initials “e b r 1951-53" are embroidered near the right lower corner. The ground is linen twill and the threads are silk floss, wool, and metallic. The stitches are split, satin, long and short, outline, stem, laid and couched, wrapped loop, brick, seed, closed fly, French knots, chain, buttonhole, and herringbone. Glass and plastic jewels are also used.
LEGEND OF CZAR SALTAN
The legend is a well-known Russian fairy tale, and is the same story on which Pushkin based a dramatic poem used in turn by Rimsky-Korsakov for his Le Coq d'Or Suite. (The Golden Cockerel Suite.) In some versions, Czar Saltan is called King Dodon, but in all accounts he was given the Golden Cockerel by his Royal Astrologer. The Czar set the cockerel up in the palace as a weather vane. When danger approached, the cockerel warned the Czar by crowing. Apparently the cockerel does give advance warning of impending danger on several occasions, and eventually the Astrologer claims his payment. Some versions of the legend say that the Czar's wife was promised to the Astrologer, while others say that it was his daughter. In any case, the Czar refused to make good on his promise and when the astrologer demanded his fee, the Czar struck him with his scepter and killed him. At this point, the Golden Cockerel flew down from his perch and pierced the Czar's skull with his beak, killing him.
The wall hanging was worked on a roller embroidery frame built by Cornelius Van S. Roosevelt, son of Eleanor and Theodore Roosevelt II. Cornelius drew the design on the linen in 1937. It took Mrs. Roosevelt many years to assemble all the materials and she didn't begin working on it until 1951. It was during the long interval between 1937 and 1951 that R. H. Macy & Co., in New York, helped run tests on the various metallic threads to see if they would tarnish. Over a period of many years, Mrs. Roosevelt determined which wools and silks were color fast, and these she used to stitch this piece and a companion one.
Eleanor Butler Alexander was born on December 26, 1888, to Henry and Grace Green Alexander in New York city. She married Theodore Roosevelt II (1887-1944) on 20 June 1910, and they had four children: Grace, Theodore III, Cornelius V. S. and Quentin. She died on May 29, 1960, at Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Roman lady, with her three children, is depicted with a seated Roman matron holding a box of jewels. The standing lady holds the hand of the youngest child, who is admiring a brooch, and gestures toward her other two children - a boy carrying a scroll on which the letters “ABC” are visible, and a slightly older girl carrying a slate. The heads, arms, legs, and feet of the figures, the background sky, and the bushes are painted. Below the picture, embroidered in black silk stem stitch, is the inscription, "THESE ARE MY JEWELS." It has a glass mat reverse-painted white with a 5/8" gold, black, and violet geometric band. At the lower edge, in gold are the words, "WROUGHT by LYDIA BOWLES AUSTIN at MRS. SAUNDERS & MISS BEACH'S ACADEMY." The picture is worked on a plain-weave ivory silk ground with silk embroidery threads and is lined with linen. The stitches are satin, split, outline, and chain.
The title of the embroidery is taken from a Roman legend which tells of Cornelia, with her children, visiting a wealthy Roman lady who proudly displays her collection of jewelry and then asks to see Cornelia's jewelry. To this Cornelia replies "These are my jewels," indicating her children. The picture is a copy of an engraving by Bartolozzi, entitled "Cornelia Mother of the Gracchi" which was published in London in 1788, copied from a painting by Angelica Kauffmann.
In 1803 Judith Foster Saunders and Clementina Beach moved to Dorchester, Massachusetts, and started a school for young ladies. They used the services of John Doggett for much of the framing of the needlework pieces. The framing included glass mats that had the name of the embroiderer as well as the name of the school, which has made it easy to identify pieces from their school.
Lydia Bowles Austin, daughter of Joseph and Lydia Bowles Austin of Boston, Massachusetts was born in 1792 and died unmarried in Boston on July 18, 1824. Her father was a baker.
A mourning picture embroidered by Susan Winn, about 1816, in Lititz, PA, and dedicated to her sister, Caroline, who died in 1806 as an infant. The circular embroidered picture is surrounded by a band of couched chenille decorated with gold spangles. It shows a woman, two girls, and a boy gathered around a cloth-draped urn on which is printed "rests in Peace." The woman and girls wear necklaces with pendants or plaques; the one worn by the girl on the right is lettered "SW." The boy holds a book on which is printed "Ble--ed are the Dead that die in the L---." Printed in blue ink on the front of the plinth is "Sacred to the Memory / of my dear Sister / CAROLINE WINN. / Sweet be Thy sepulchral rest / Sister dear! supremely blest! / May the ties which us unite / Be renew'd in realms of light! / Erected by Susan Winn." In a gilded wood frame, it measures 25" x 25", and its black mat is reverse-painted on the glass. The ground is twill-weave ivory silk, and the stitches are satin, long and short, stem, and couching.
Susan was born October 18, 1801, to John and Susanna Winn in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was a flour merchant and entered Susan and Elizabeth in the Moravian boarding school, Linden Hall Seminary, in Lititz, Pennsylvania in 1815. Susan married John Reynolds on December 23, 1824.
Mourning designs appear in many 19th-century decorative arts, including needlework. Embroidered landscapes, usually worked by schoolgirls, often show relatives or friends grieving before a monument dedicated to a lost loved one. For more about this embroidery and other schoolgirl needlework, see Girlhood Embroidery, American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework by Betty Ring (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993) and The "Ornamental Branches," Needlework and Arts from the Lititz Moravian Girls' School Between 1800 and 1865 by Patricia T. Herr (Lancaster, PA: The Heritage Center Museum of Lancaster County, 1996).
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.
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.
This rectangular embroidered picture portrays a young man and woman and a dog in a pastoral scene with a floral wreath border around all the edges. The man and woman are in Regency style clothing. The faces, dark curly hair, arms, and hands are painted, as is the sky background. The floral border is elaborate, with much detail. The glass mat, which has been removed, has a reverse one-inch band painted black with a 1/4" gold band around the edges. In the lower band is the name SOPHIA HARSEN. The ground is ivory sheer cotton fabric, sewn to a silk satin after it was embroidered. The thread is silk floss and chenille and the stitches are laid, straight, and satin
There is a Sophia Harsen born July 10, 1815, in New York City, New York. Further research is needed to find other silk embroidered pictures of this style worked with a provenance of New York City to substantiate this attribution.