I have created this blog to begin to describe my efforts in the world of antique textiles. While right now I am primarily focusing on Maine schoolgirl needlework--more about that in a moment--my interests are broader than that and span most of my life, going back to at least my teen years.

First the Maine schoolgirl needlework part...
I am so fortunate as to have the job of my dreams. I am the executive director of the Dyer Library and Saco Museum. The Dyer Library Association, a private non-profit, operates both of those, the first as the public library for the City of Saco, (located on the south coast of Maine,) and the museum as a regional cultrual resource. The museum owns art, furniture and other historic objects related to the history of the Saco River Valley. Among those objects is a goodly collection of a variety of different textiles: clothing, especially 19th century, quilts, hooked rugs, and samplers and other schoolgirl needlework.

Starting in at least the 17th century, girls were tasked with creating examples of the types of stitches that they would need to support a hand-sewn textile world. Generations before the invention of the sewing machine all clothing, bed linens, tablecloths--everything had to be sewn by hand. It was a vast and daunting task that continued on a daily basis for virtually all women for all of their useful lives, from whenever they were deemed old enough to even potentially stitch a seam, until their fingers no longer had the strength to push needle through fabric.

This life-long mission generally began with instruction in the wide variety of stitches that would be needed, from simple cross stitches used to mark linens, to various darning stitches, each appropriate for a different type of mending, to straight stitches for seaming fabric, to purely decorative stitches that would be used to enhance treasured pieces. Girls might work their earliest marking sampler, which was often just a series of different alphabets and numbers, at a remarkably (by our standards) tender age of 6-8 years old. By the 19th century, a marking sampler might be created in a district school or at home under the supervision of an older female in the household. Fortunate girls--those with parents who had more money and could afford it and who valued education for girls,might then be sent to a female academy where they could acquire refinement both in education (math, English, sometimes French, geography, handwriting, music, dance, painting. drawing, etc.) and in handcrafts. The handcrafts would likely include further instruction in both plain (seaming, darning, knitting) and fancy needlework. The fancy needleowrk often involved an artistic sampler and then perhaps a silk embroidered on silk piece.

Betty Ring, collector and researcher extraordinaire, was one of the first to bring a high level of scholarship to the field of schoolgirl needlework. Her groundbreaking research brought attention to a growing body of work concerning the attribution of particular needlework to individual female academies and teachers. While she explored that topic all over the U.S. (and especially in Rhode Island), I am concentrating on Maine. While a coming exhibit at the Saco Museum was the impetus for that work, I find that it's the perfect fit for my interests: textiles, genealogy, women's lives and their work.  So here's the blurb about the exhibit:

“I My Needle Ply With Skill”:
Maine Schoolgirl Needlework of the Federal Era
January 12 through March 2, 2013

Join us at the Saco Museum for an in-depth look at the complex and lovely needlework created in Maine by schoolgirls of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At a time when advanced academic opportunities for young women were limited, private academies—often run by women—offered training not only in academic subjects, but also in the fancy sewing skills that were of critical importance to future homemakers of the Federal era. While many of these schools were well established in southern New England states by the late 18th century, Maine developed private academies a bit later. As these local academies grew and flourished, new styles of samplers and needlework evolved that were unique to Maine.  This exhibit explores that evolution and offers a glimpse of a period of blossoming female creativity and accomplishment that transcended the societal limitations on women of the era. About eighty samplers and other embroideries will be on view, drawn from the collections of the Dyer Library/Saco Museum as well as other public and private collections in Maine and beyond. The exhibition will also be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an essay by Dyer Library/Saco Museum Executive Director Leslie Rounds. A FREE public opening reception will take place at the Saco Museum on Friday, January 11, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Saco Museum 371 Main St. Saco, Maine 04072
207-283-3861 www.dyerlibrarysacomuseum.org

What I've found out, over the past year of intensive research, is that there is MUCH to be learned about Maine schoolgirl needlwork!