Description:
young woman with dark dress, white apron, hair up in a bun seated on a wood chair working at whip-snap machine placed near a window, four large spools of thread at her feet, patterned rug on floor and baren winter landscape outside window; woman; work; interior; furniture; costume/uniform
Label Text:
Elmer, a native of Ashfield, Massachusetts, documents both his family and his own mechanical achievements here. His wife, Mary, still dressed in mourning garb after losing their only child, is at work before the whipsnap machine that he invented. It was used to braid the silk threads that form the end of horsewhips. Elmer's whipsnap machine served in a cottage industry which supplemented the incomes of many households in western Massachusetts at the time.
As is characteristic of images of solitary females of the period, Elmer included a view out one window. Though the landscape beyond is bleak and barren, and the room in which she works is starkly austere, Mary Elmer is calm and focused, bathed in an almost religious light which emanates from within the machine.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1979.47 |
