Description:
Framed quillwork picture with a coat of arms with a winged, horned stag (or reindeer?) passant or trippant in a shield, which is made of gilt paper surrounded by red and gilt paper arranged in a tight foliate pattern glued to faded green silk and glazed, and set in a deep, lozenge-shaped shadow box finished with 3/4" round molding and black paint. There is a 19th century paper label attached to the back inscribed in ink: "This "Filigree" work / was made by / Sarah Henshaw / called / Aunt Sallie / at Shrewsbury, Mass. / 1753. / She was wife of Joseph Henshaw." Sarah Henshaw (1736-1822), the daughter of Joseph Henshaw (1702-1777) and Elizabeth Bill Henshaw (1712-1782) of Boston, married her first cousin, Joseph Henshaw (1727-1794) of Boston in 1758, and later moved to Shrewbury. John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) did a pastel crayons on paper portrait of Sarah circa 1770, which is now in the Bayou Bend collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. However, this winged stag is not part of the Henshaw or Bill family coat of arms; Sarah Henshaw is said to have made an embroidered coat of arms of Henshaw and Bill dated 1748, which does not include a stag. The only coat with a winged stag in British heraldry is attributed to Jones of Tredustan, co. Brecon, "a stag trippant, with wings attached to buttocks and hind legs ppr. betw. the attires a rose or." However, Folio 5 of the "Gore Roll of Arms" (99 arms painted by John Gore (1718–1796) and used as a pattern book by school girls in the mid and late 18th century) lists "Edward Euines Esq. of Pembrouck in Wales. Gov. of the Province of Pennsylvania, 1705, Azure, a winged antelope, gold, Crest a stag's head erased, gold." John Evans (b.c.1678-after 1731) arrived in Philadelphia in on February 2, 1704, after travelling from London with William Penn, Jr. (1681-1720), and was Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania from1704-1709 during the proprietorship of William Penn (1644-1718). John's relative, Evan Evans, had emigrated from Wales in 1694, settling in Chester County, Pennsylvania, about twenty miles west of Philadelphia; that side of the family stayed in America, but John Evans, who married Rebecca Moore (b.1692), said to be the daughter of John Moore (1658/59-1732) and Rebecca Axtell Moore (d.1745) of Philadlephia in 1709, returned to Denbigh, Wales, around 1716. In a Dec. 20, 1993 letter (in data file), Betty Ring questioned Sarah's working on arms that were not Henshaw or Bill, and wondered if it came from an earlier family member, but no connection to the Evans or Jones families has been found. She also noted that Boston's golden age of filigree was about 1720-1740, although "The Boston Evening-Post" advertised in its February 15, 1748 edition: "This may inform young Gentlewomen...that...Mrs Hiller designs to open a Boarding-School...where they may be taught Wax Work, Transparent and Filligree, Painting upon Glass, Japanning, Quill-Work, Feather-Work, and Embroidering with Gold and Silver..." Quillwork was advertised well into the 19th century, but few American pieces are known from the Federal period. These shadow boxes are primarily decorated with tiny scrolls of rolled paper known as paper filigree or quillwork. An art form which began in Italian convents in the 13th century, paper quillwork was made from 1/8" strips of paper and parchment from discarded book pages. Plain paper and parchment coils were assembled to mimic carved ivory, while the gilt edges of other textblocks were trimmed and scrolled to resemble gold wire filigree. Other designs included spirals, rosettes and flutes, which were tightly wound around a thin quill and then glued by one edge to a background of paper, silk or wood. By the 17th century, secular decorative paper filigree had become fashionable in England. Formal instruction, papers, and patterns were marketed for the education of young women in England and the colonies in the early 18th century. A related example is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+93.027 |
