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October 10, 2024 Morgan Brennan

Investigating An Embroidered Waistcoat

by Morgan Brennan, Curatorial Intern

Fig 1. Waistcoat F.510 on mannequin (left)
Fig 2. Waistcoat F.510 held up (center left)
Fig 3. Persian Silk Tree embroidered detail (center right)
Fig 4. Image of a Persian Silk Tree
(right)

A waistcoat in Historic Deerfield’s collection (accession number F.510) is just one of over 8,000 items that comprise the museum’s collection of textiles and historic fabrics. The waistcoat is made of a cream silk, decorated with Chinese embroidery of plants and a variety of birds. The designs on these incredibly fine embroideries were often inspired by real plants and animals, such as the Ring-necked Pheasant and the Persian silk tree. However, on the whole these flora and fauna are decorative, not scientific, and like their European painted counterparts they tend towards being composites of various plants or several species of bird at once. [1]

This embroidered fabric was used to make the first iteration of the waistcoat we see today. In the eighteenth century, English and European men’s waistcoats were made of richly decorated fabrics, especially fabrics brought in from China or France, which reflected the wearer’s wealth, taste, and cultural savvy. These fabrics were expensive and thus used primarily on the exterior of the garment, with an inner lining most often made of fine linen to protect the expensive outer fabrics from the wearer’s sweat and skin oils.

Fig 5. Ring-necked Pheasant embroidered detail (left)
Fig 6. Scientific drawing of a Ring-necked Pheasant (center)
Fig 7. Photograph of a Ring-necked Pheasant (right)
Fig 8. Crested Goshawk embroidered detail (left)
Fig 9. Crested Goshawk photograph (center)
Fig 10. Crested Goshawk photograph (right)
This waistcoat in Historic Deerfield’s collection is just one of over 1,200 items that comprise the museum’s collection of textiles and historic fabrics. This waistcoat is made of a cream silk, decorated with Chinese embroidery of plants and a variety of birds. The designs on these incredibly fine embroideries were often inspired by real plants and animals, such as the Ring-necked Pheasant and the Persian silk tree. However, on the whole these flora and fauna are decorative, not scientific, and like their European painted counterparts they tend towards being composites of various plants or several species of bird at once.
Fig 11. Composite quail embroidered detail (left)
Fig 12. Gambel’s quail photograph (center)
Fig 13. Button quail photograph (right)

The original man’s waistcoat was made in England or Europe around 1780. Earlier examples of embroidered waistcoats in the 1700s are longer with the pockets scalloped, and the bottom of the garment cut in a “V” shape below the final button.  Later examples in the 1790s were increasingly rectangular, with rectangular faux pockets, and without an angle below the lowest button. The density of embroidery near the buttons and in the space between the pockets and hemline is also a distinctive marker of this era. [2]

Fig 14. Waistcoat tailor’s cutting guide, eighteenth century, from ‘L’Art du Tailleur’, Waugh p. 95 (left) 
Fig 15. Silk waistcoats of the mid 1700s, p. 78 (right) 

The waistcoat seen now has been significantly altered to fit a woman’s form. The shape is reminiscent of the 1870s “princess line” style in western European women’s fashion, but the dropped bust suggests a later date of alteration, perhaps closer to 1900.

A similar waistcoat in Historic Deerfield’s collection (accession number F.730) was altered for a woman’s figure around the same time frame as F.510.  The fabric for F.730 is estimated to be from around 1770 and to be of English or French origin. The alteration is estimated to be circa 1785 and then again around 1880–1920. F.730 is also a cream white silk and plain weave linen with polychrome embroidery on the silk.

The curatorial file for F.730 posits, “Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition of 1876 sparked nostalgia for 18th-century customs, including dress. Those people who had access to actual period garments often altered them into ‘fancy dress’ clothes that modern bodies could wear to Colonial Revival-themed events. This example, originally an item of menswear, was altered to fit a woman. Darts at the waist provide the fit required by fashion for women at the turn of the 20th century, more than 100 years after the garment’s original life.” [3] With this in mind, F.510 might have been among the garments altered in the colonial revival era, following the timeline of F.730 with its 1880–1920 alteration date.

Fitting the F.510 waistcoat to a female form took a great deal of work. The back was let out with a triangle of linen. Then, the waistcoat was carefully shaped to the contours of a woman’s body, taking in the fabric in three places to emphasize the slimness of the waist, including in the front of the garment where a dart shows where the fabric was taken in. A piece of boning was put in near the buttonholes to keep the front of the garment lying flat on the body.

Inside of the garment, the shape of a silk embroidered panel shows how the outward collar embroidery on the men’s version was turned inward to create a higher, round-necked silhouette. On the sides of the garment, there are two matching holes, likely the insertion points for a belt or matching ribbon of some sort, which would have helped emphasize the shape of the garment when worn.

The pocket flaps are interesting and possess some of the densest embroidery in the piece. Upon closer inspection, the pockets are simply pieces of densely embroidered fabric stitched onto the garment after it had been reshaped. The collar too is made of this same densely embroidered strip and is not the original collar embroidery. These pieces might have been taken from the original men’s garment when it was shortened around 1880–1920 to accommodate prevailing fashion trends. A line of stitch work running just under the faux pockets suggest a full cut and then shortening of the waistcoat to preserve the original densely embroidery bottom of the garment, which would have resulted in strips of excess embroidered fabric, some of which was used for the faux pockets and  the collar additions.

Fig 16. Waistcoat F.730 

In 1965, the F.510 women’s waistcoat was sold by the Parisian dealer Madame Niclausse. This French company was led by two women, Mme A. Niclausse, for whom the business is named, and Juliette Niclausse, who was an art historian and biographer. The waistcoat was sold to Henry Flynt, co-founder of Historic Deerfield, along with seven other Niclausse objects over the course of a decade. [4]  Henry’s wife, Helen Geier Flynt, was an enthusiastic collector of fine French and Chinese textiles from the eighteenth century.

It is likely that a number of altered waistcoat examples exist in the collections of other museums. Unfortunately, these objects can be hard to find because of confusion over vest, waistcoat, and jacket labels and the tendency for alterations to garments to go unremarked upon in museum catalogue descriptions. The Fashion Institute of Technology’s “Fashion Unraveled” exhibition in 2018 focused on mended, altered, and repurposed garments. [5]  However, altered garments are not just the purview of museum collections. Clothing alteration today, even something as simple as taking in a hemline, is a continuation of the long practice of people changing their clothes to suit new purposes.

Fig 17. F.510 linen back (left)
Fig 18. F.510 inside panel (center left)
Fig 19. F.510 side detail with belt hole (center)
Fig 20. F.510 collar detail Fig 21. Waistcoat (center right)
Fig. 21 F.510, prepped for storage (right)

Special thanks to Lauren Whitley, Historic Deerfield’s Curator of Clothing and Historic Textiles, for her help in untangling the history of this piece.

[1] Milton M. Klein, ed. Historic Deerfield F.510 object file.

[2] Norah Waugh, The Cut of Men’s Clothes, 1600-1900 (Faber & Faber, 1964), 78, 95.

[3] Historic Deerfield F.730 object file.

[4] Historic Deerfield Niclausse dealer’s file.

[5] Colleen Hill, Fashion Unraveled, Until November 2018, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum/exhibitions/fashion-unraveled.php.

February 16, 2024 Allison Fulton

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. 2007.19
Figure 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.

[2] Florence Griswald Museum, “Stitching It Together: Locations of Needlework Schools,” https://florencegriswoldmuseum.org/visit/families/stitching-it-together/locations-of-needlework-schools/

[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.
October 17, 2020 Historic Deerfield

Blue and White Needlework Table Scarf

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”.


Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+1998.5