🔥 Fine Antique Early Old 18th c. American Folk Art Embroidery Tapestry

Description: This is a phenomenal masterpiece of early Americana, a Fine Antique Early Old 18th c. American Folk Art Embroidery Tapestry, silk, wool, and linen cloth, approximately dating to the late 18th c. - early 19th c., and likely created in the New England region of the United States in the crewelwork tradition. This piece depicts a young woman, holding a parasol and guiding two lambs across a field. A tall tree looms above, with finely detailed green leaves. This piece can be confidently dates to the late 18th - early 19th century and is in remarkably good condition for hundreds of years of age, with expected tears, fabric loss, and splitting to the silk (please see photos carefully.) This piece is double sided and was likely meant to be displayed both ways. Approximately 32 x 46 1/2 inches. Comparable pieces to this can be found in prominent museums across the Northeastern United States. Priced to sell. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! About this artwork: Crewelwork,or perhaps a more technically accurate phrase would be crewel embroidery, is adistinct technique of embroidery that has a long history in Europe, and inEngland can trace its history back to the construction of the Bayeux tapestryand beyond.Althoughcrewelwork often used outlined compositional aids in order to guide thestitching, it could equally be constructed without any guides, or only basicand roughly drawn guides, allowing the crewel worker an element of creativefreedom, adding details as they progressed.Crewelembroidery was usually produced using wool rather than cotton or silk, whichseparates it from the main embroidery medium, though this does not make itunique. Even though the woollen yarn used was fine in comparison to generalwool yarn use, the wool still gave a much thicker stitch producing a raisedaspect to the finished embroidery, which gave it its unique style. However,because of the thickness of the yarn an embroidery hoop or frame was needed inorder to maintain an even tension so that the yarn did not distort the basefabric. Probably the best examples of English crewelwork were that produced during the Jacobean period, the first part of the seventeenth century. Some examples are luckily still with us. They give us an insight into the high quality and standard that was regularly achieved by the women who produced these historical gems of embroidery. It is a tribute to them that we still admire these Jacobean crewel work pieces four hundred years after they were first produced.Much of the crewelwork was created for domestic settings. Bedroom furnishings were particularly popular and most large country houses had crewelwork bed hangings and covers that were being used generations after their creation. Crewelwork was also used to a certain extent in clothing, with crewel-embroidered jackets being popular for both sexes at the beginning of the seventeenth century. English crewelwork had at its root the decorative theme of the natural world of flora and fauna. Much of the work consisted of stylised flowers, leaves and trees. These could take the form of landscapes, with forest hunting scenes being particularly popular. However, some of the decorative work was much more complex and intertwined, using highly stylised flowers and leaves, giving a rich and detailed surface to the fabric.This form of Jacobean crewelwork became inspirational to many who used embroidery within the nineteenth century Arts & Crafts movement. William Morris and his daughter May produced an element of their embroidered, printed and woven textile work that used this traditional and highly stylised English decorative art as its inspiration. It was its distinctive rural Englishness that seemed to appeal to the Morris's and the Arts & Crafts movement in general. The love of the English natural world was a magnet to the creative craft makers of the later nineteenth century. The high standards of hand production achieved by English Jacobean crewelwork deeply impressed them and the combination of the two meant that this form of crewelwork featured across the English Arts & Crafts movement for much of life of the movement.This article was originally published in the Design, Decoration, Craft Blog. "Embroidery worked with loosely twisted yarn, called crewel, is known as crewelwork. Also known as "worsted" yarn, crewel was widely available in England by the seventeenth century, when favorable agricultural conditions produced robust sheep capable of growing the longer strands of wool required for this yarn. American crewelwork was inherited from Jacobean England. While the embroidery is generally less dense than that of English prototypes, English patterns were perpetuated in American designs. Coastal New England was the center of crewelwork activity on this side of the Atlantic. The needlewomen of New England purchased their yarn, as well as the fabric on which they embroidered, from England and generally followed English needlework styles. Crewelwork motifs were derived from painted and printed cottons imported into England from India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Typical crewelwork designs showed flowering trees rising from delineated hills, as in this eighteenth-century example made in Massachusetts. Exotic birds in scroll-like branches were also popular, as were floral sprays scattered irregularly upon the ground fabric, which was usually of linen plain-weave. This crewel-embroidered valance retains the luxuriant character of Indian designs in the forms of the exotic trees and in the rich combination of brilliant colors. Crewelwork decorated counterpanes (bedspreads), hangings for four-poster beds, valances for windows, chair coverings, or curtains for the home."

Price: 6500 USD

Location: Orange, California

End Time: 2024-08-25T19:55:38.000Z

Shipping Cost: 45 USD