Description:
An embroidered picture on paper known as colifichet depicting a a vase of flowers on stiffened paper. The stitches, are done in filling stitch and stem stitch using untwisted polychrome silk embroidery thread. "Lucinda Flint/ Aged 10" handwritten at the bottom. The handwritten tag on back (now in data file) reads: "Lucinda Flint - MEB's great-/ great Grandmother was 10 yrs old / in 1807- when she wrought this" and "Reframed in 1999. This [the above inscription] was with painting." This may be Lucinda Flint (b.1796), the daughter of John Flint (1768-1824) and Ruth Upton Flint (1773-1843) of Andover, Massachusetts, who married William B. Abbott (1793-1840) of Andover in 1816. Due to the fragility of the paper ground, embroideries on paper rarely survive, although they were probably more common than survival rates would indicate. Such embroideries required particular care in spacing the stitches and reusing puncture holes so as to avoid dropping out the design. The term for this type of work supposedly comes from nuns in in western France, who made large numbers of them, calling them colifichets (or trifles). Characteristics of this type of embroidery include the use of untwisted silk embroidery thread on paper, and the same pattern on both sides. The design is traced out onto paper, the outline pricked with a needle. Then the paper was placed between a frame of two cards to keep taught. This type of needlework was probably practiced elsewhere in Europe as well during its heyday in the 17th and 18th centuries. Earlier extant examples tend to depict religious scenes. This later 19th-century, probably American example may have been a schoolgirl exercise.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2000.18.3 |
