April 9, 2026 Evan Stackpole

‘Began to work att my trade…’: Making Men’s Clothing in Eighteenth-Century Deerfield

by Evan Stackpole

Fig 1: Carrington Bowles, “Deny It If You Can—Nine Taylors make a Man,” English, 1774. Print. Historic Deerfield, 2018.49.

Fig. 2: “The Tailor,” The Book of English Trades (London, 1821) Historic Deerfield Library.

The tailor’s work was familiar in eighteenth-century North America. The Book of English Trades claimed, “in a Tailor’s shop, where much business is carried on, there are always two divisions of workmen: first, the foreman, who takes the measure of the person for whom the clothes are to be made, cuts out the cloth, and carries home the newly-finished garments to the customers. The others are mere working tailors, who sit cross-legged on the bench… of these, very few know how to cut out, with any degree of skill, the clothes which they sew together.” [i] A print in Historic Deerfield’s collections illustrates tailors at work: nine men seated on a table, cutting, sewing, and pressing garments. The cabbage at the foot of the bench is a sly reference to the tailors’ maligned practice of appropriating spare cuttings from cloth, known as cabbaging, and a source of much eighteenth-century hilarity.

The accounts of John Russell, a Deerfield tailor during the 1760s and 1770s, show both similarities, as well as departures, from metropolitan tailors’ practice. Currently held in the Memorial Libraries, Russell’s accounts comprise two volumes, covering the years 1763 to 1775. [ii] In addition to selling tea, crockery, and many gallons of rum, Russell worked on over 1,700 garments. More than a simple record of purchases, Russell’s accounts illustrate how he adapted his craft to serve a rural clientele.

Born in 1731 in Wethersfield, Connecticut, Russell arrived in Deerfield in his mid-twenties20s and worked as the town’s principal tailor until his death in 1775. Russell catered to all segments of Deerfield’s population: he made clothes for militia officers and clergymen, as well as apprentices, servants, and the enslaved. [iii] Russell largely dealt in the standard components of an eighteenth-century man’s wardrobe: coats, vests, and breeches. In total, during this 12-year period, Russell made 421 coats, 439 vests, and 462 pairs of breeches. Overgarments, essential for New England’s harsh winters, also figured prominently: 55 surtouts and 69 great coats appear in the records. Russell occasionally made more specialized garments, including three ladies’ riding habits, a man’s banyan, and several pairs of “endian stockens.” These, the diarist Epaphras Hoyt recalled, were “coarse knit leggings, reaching from the hip to the shoe, to which they were fastened with strings.” [iv] Russell rarely made undergarments. His accounts mentioned only three shirts and one pair of drawers.

Fig. 4: November 28, 1768, John Russell Account Book, 1763-1775, vol. 2, 53. PVMA Library.

A clear hierarchy existed in Russell’s work. The tailor cut, sewed, and lined—a process known collectively as “making”—more formal garments, such as coats, vests, and breeches. However, he merely cut utilitarian garments, such as trousers, which his clients sewed up at home. In total, Russell cut 22 pairs of trousers, but he only “made” six. The absence of trousers in Russell’s accounts contrasts with their frequency in Hampshire County inventories during the same period. Their relative absence in his account books may suggest that, during the colonial period, trousers, like shirts, were more likely to be made up in the home rather than purchased from a tailor. [v]

Russell kept on hand materials for sewing, stiffening, and facing garments. The Book of English Trades described the “buckram, tapes, bindings, trimmings, buttons, &c. with which every master Tailor should be furnished, and from which they derive very large profits.” [vi] Tailors’ propensity to upcharge clients on these articles did not go unremarked. A poem printed in the Greenfield Recorder claimed,

“…by buckram, canvas, tape, and thread,/sleeve linings, pockets, silk and twist,/And all the long expensive list/With which uncouth bills abound/ Though rarely in the garment found…” [vii]

Russell apparently followed this practice: in his second account book, covering the years 1767 to 1775, over 20 percent of his transactions included surcharges for trimmings. In total, Russell made over 77 pounds on trimmings during these years.

Fig 5a–b: Coat, French(?), c. 1760. Plain-woven Worsted. Historic Deerfield, F.523.
Regarding the fashions of the 1760s, the diarist Justin Hitchcock recalled, “The men wore low
crowned hats and large brims generally down flat it was rare to see on [sic] worn cocked up their
coats long skirts a large cuff on the sleeve with three large buttons on each and on each pocket
flap [emphasis mine] the men wore leather britches and brass shoe buckles.” [xi]

Unlike his English counterparts, Russell does not seem to have kept an extensive stock of cloth on hand. Most of his entries record labor but make no mention of materials. The November 28, 1768, entry for William Shattuck is a notable exception, in that it listed 3 ½ yards of blue coating at seven shillings and six pence a yard, and red baize for the cape (collar), in addition to the five shillings Russell charged for making Shattuck’s coat. [viii] As the breakdown in prices indicates, cloth represented a considerable expense, and customers did their best to preserve it. Russell usually charged between 8 and 12 shillings to “turn” a coat, which meant ripping its seams and turning the cloth inside-out, then sewing it again—about the same as he charged for making a new one.

The nineteenth-century antiquarian George Sheldon described Russell as “famous for his leather breeches.” [ix] The tradesmen and shopkeepers of the Connecticut River Valley were no strangers to hard-wearing, working leather breeches. [x] Evidence from Russell’s account books suggests that he was a minor player in the leather breeches trade. Though he made a significant number of breeches, very few of these seem to have been leather. Indeed, only twelve entries for leather breeches appear in Russell’s accounts. A further four entries for breeches include accompanying costs for purchasing skins, such as one for Timothy Childs for “2 small leather skins,” and a subsequent entry for “making breeches.” [xi]

For the most part, Russell was a conventional tailor after the eighteenth-century mode. He does not appear to have trafficked in any singular garment, such as leather breeches, nor do his accounts suggest his garments were especially coarse or workmanlike. Yet he departed from the norm in significant ways. Clients brought Russell lengths of cloth to be sewn into garments, rather than purchasing them at his store. Furthermore, his traffic in specialized garments, as well as his division of labor between cutting and sewing garments, illustrates how the tailor adapted to circumstances in Deerfield. Russell’s accounts provide compelling evidence for how craftsmen balanced tradition and innovation in late colonial America.

Evan Stackpole is a master’s student at Colorado State University. As a recipient of a Memorial Libraries Research Fellowship, he was here in the summer of 2025 researching men’s clothing in the early United States for his thesis.

[i] Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, The Book of English Trades and Library of the Useful Arts (London, 1821), 334. Historic Deerfield Library.

[ii] George Sheldon, History of Deerfield, Massachusetts vol. 2 (Deerfield, 1896), 275.

[iii] In 1756, the selectmen of Deerfield bound Burns Cooley, son of Ebenezer, to Noah Wright, “to be taught and instructed… in the business and calling of a husbandman.” At the end of his term, Cooley was promised “two good suits of apparel for all parts of his body the one serviceable for working days the other decent and fit for sabbath days.” An entry in Russell’s account book, dating from April 1770, records the making of a vest, breeches and coat for one Cooley. Was this to be the young man’s “decent suit”? If Cooley had been apprentice at age seven or eight—a young, but not improbable age, especially for a youth “bound out” by the overseers of the poor—then the math would certainly add up, see Burns Cooley to Noah Wright, May 6, 1756, Deerfield Town Papers, box 9, folder 9, PVMA Library; April 4, 1770, John Russell Account Book, 1763–1775, vol. 2, 115. PVMA Library.

[iv] Epaphras Hoyt, Recollections of Time and Things of My Early Life (1839, np). Historic Deerfield Library.

[v] See, Wendy Kennerson, “Forms, Fashions, and Vanities: 1783–1811: A Study of Men’s Clothing in Western Massachusetts Through Probate Inventories,” BA Thesis (Skidmore College, 1987), 88.

[vi] Book of English Trades, 334–35.

[vii] “The Embarrassments of False Shame, or The Adventures of Young Whipstitch. A Tale,” Greenfield Recorder November 11, 1800. Newspapers.com.

[viii] November 28, 1768, John Russell Account Book, vol. 2, 53.

[ix] Sheldon, History of Deerfield, vol. 2, 275.

[x] John Williams recorded purchases for leather breeches made at his store in Deerfield during the 1780s, as did Datis Ensign of Westfield, Massachusetts and Samuel Smith of Farmington, Connecticut; See, December 13, 1783, John Williams Account Book, 1782–1784, PVMA Library; March 1766, Datis Ensign Account Book, 1763–1793, Historic Deerfield Library; April 29, 1771, Samuel Smith Account Book, 1769–1780, PVMA Library.

[xi] August 16, 1765, John Russell Account Book, vol. 1, 133.

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January 21, 2026 Leon Wiebers

Mining Collections for Dress History in Deerfield

by Leon Wiebers

Fig. 1: Invoice of Sundry Slops to be Ship’d from London….1760. Historic Deerfield Library.

As a recipient of Historic Deerfield’s Memorial Libraries Research Fellowship, I was thrilled to be able to access collections at Historic Deerfield and the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association (PVMA) to examine a variety of objects to be included in the forthcoming edition of the Survey of Historic Costume. As one of the new authors on this major book in the discipline, my time in Deerfield rewarded me with exceptional findings that represent both the library and museum collections.

My time in Deerfield kicked off in September 2025 with my attendance at Historic Deerfield’s fabulous Fall Forum, Fashioning the Body: Dress in New England 1600-1900, and viewing the exhibition, Body by Design: Fashionable Silhouettes from the Ideal to the Real. Connecting students and readers of Survey of Historic Costume to the homespun movement prior to the American Revolution became a germ of an idea from the Fall Forum. This symbolic form of economic protest in the hands, needles, and looms of women offered a story told by connecting the collections at Deerfield.

Several findings located in Memorial Libraries will inform my research for the Survey of Historic Costume. One example includes an invoice from 1760, which details a large amount of pre-made garments imported to the colony from Britain. This “Slop” clothing was usually considered cheaper and of inferior quality to tailor-made clothing of the time. (Fig. 1)

Another example is Epaphras Hoyt (1765–1850) recalling memories of life in Deerfield during the Revolution:

[Because of] “…deprivations caused by the war substitutes were found for calicos in stamped linen. Sheets which had become thin from use, were submitted to the process. Artists who had taken up the business, traveled about the country profering their services to families. They had wooden stamps prepared with various figures of vines, plants and other devices such as might please the eye. The colors used were various, but often no other than the juice of the elder berry, perhaps prepared by some mordant to render it more durable; but the colors were miserably defective at the best. Into the coloring matter the stamp was dipped, and then imprinted on the sheet, smoothly stretched for the process. The work was not very expensive. In this dress, we often saw our sprightly females proudly flaunting in their home made calico. But like the feathers of some of our brilliant summer birds, the colors soon faded and left the receiver with the sad remembrance of its precious beauty.” [i] (italics added by blog author)

Fig. 3: Calico hand stamps, c. 1775. Courtesy of Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association’s Memorial Hall Musuem, Deerfield, MA 1882.073.01.

Additionally, the young boy’s suit of clothes (1800–1815) in Historic Deerfield’s collection reveals a skill in weaving and making, yet one that could not compete with the vast textile industry established in Britain at this time. (Fig. 2)

This story of industrious, patriotic, innovative work completed mostly by women celebrates their work towards becoming a new country yet reveals the limitations. The textile woodblocks used to print fabrics of the time added a tangible and visible quality to the dress of these industrious women. (Fig. 3) These and other objects from the collections will be included in the new, 8^th edition of the book for students and readers all over the country.

The support of the Memorial Libraries Research Fellowship has also inspired a new path of research for consideration. The astonishing women of Deerfield who renovated, revived, and researched the town and their inhabitants to create a place of historical tourism, the Arts and Crafts movement, and the Colonial Revival deserve closer examination of their dress, adornment, personal spaces, and gender identities. While much has been written and said about C. Alice Baker (1833–1909), she remains a somewhat enigmatic character. Eschewing eccentricities and costliness in dress, she wrote to her cousin George Sheldon:

“[E]very man’s and woman’s position in the world is greatly dependent upon his surroundings and in order to win any recognition as a ‘lady’ I must keep up in some measure to the required standard – I must not dress worse than my pupils or affect Thoreauish eccentricities of dress or living – To do this costs money – more than I wish or am willing to spend.” [ii]

However, she was ready to dress up for the camera frequently and document this publicly with a grand ball! (Fig. 4) More is yet to be uncovered.

Thank you to all the partners at Historic Deerfield, PVMA, and the amazing Memorial Libraries.

Fig 2: Boy’s homespun suit, blue-and-white checked cotton, 1800-1815. Historic Deerfield, 2005.4.

Fig. 4: Photo of C. Alice Baker in an 18th century gown, 1892. Historic Deerfield, 2009.5.

Leon Wiebers is a professor of costume design at Loyola Marymount University and the current president of the Costume Society of America.

[i] Epaphras Hoyt, Recollections of Times and Things in my Early Life, 1839. Historic Deerfield Library.

[ii] C. Alice Baker, Letter to George Sheldon, May 22, 1876. PVMA Library.

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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.

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.

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May 23, 2024 Historic Deerfield

GALLERY: Wooly Wonders 2024

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!

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April 26, 2024 Historic Deerfield

Call for Papers — Coloring New England’s Past

Coloring New England’s Past

An Historic Deerfield Forum, Deerfield, MA

September 13-14, 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS

Dressing table and wash stand, circa 1837

Call for Papers

Submissions due by June 3, 2024

Historic Deerfield is home to one of the finest collections of New England architecture, interiors, and decorative arts of the 18^th and 19^th 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 20^th century might include but are not
limited to:

Object Studies

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

Analysis, Preservation, and Conservation

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.

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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.

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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

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February 3, 2020 Ned Lazaro

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.