Needlework Special Exhibit
May/June 2005
“Antique Needleworking Tools and Accessories” is the featured exhibit for the months of May and June. The items on exhibit are from the collection of Elizabeth Graff of Hagerstown, Maryland.
Sewing goes back to the beginning of time when the desire to cover the body precipitated the need to devise a way to put fig leaves together and then animal skins. Sewing has not always been associated with something only women do; early professions of men included those of tailor and weaver. Barthelemy Thimonnier, a French tailor, invented the first functional sewing machine in 1830. Thimonnier was almost killed, though, when his garment factory was set afire by other French tailors, because they thought his invention would cause them to be unemployed. Look in your closets and dresser drawers. Can you imagine that, for countless centuries, every stitch in every garment that one wore was made by hand? The making of clothes seemed to naturally fall into the hands and laps of women, who as very little girls began to practice and perfect their skills with needle and thread in the stitching of samplers.
Some of the
first needles were made of thorns, fishbone, animal bone, and slivers of stone.
The first metal “needle” was likely bronze and then steel. Finger guards, that
we call thimbles, were probably first made of stone or wood pieces wrapped to
the finger. Again, nature supplied the materials for the first pins. Thorns
and fine fish bones were able to puncture the garments’ material and were used
as closures before buttons were invented. Because pins were very scarce and
expensive, the term pin-money, which goes back to the 14th century,
means a lot of money, not a small amount of money. Early metal pins were
handmade in two parts, the pointed shaft and the head.
As valuable as
pins were, a safe place was needed in which to put them when not in use.
Pincushions and cases, of as many designs and shapes as there were imaginations,
were created to hold pins. Needle cases of elaborate and simple design were
then made in which to keep the sharps and blunts. Bobbins held the thread and
were of innumerable shapes and sizes. The traditionally shaped spool held
sewing thread. Lace bobbins held the thread used in making bobbin lace. Silk
or thread winders of mother of pearl, ivory, bone, and other materials held
smaller amounts of thread for projects. The everyday bobbins weren’t fancy
enough for the Victorians, so they made finely carved bobbin covers of mother of
pearl. Punches, awls, and stilettos were used for fancy needlework like eyelets
and in leather work, basket making and bookbinding. We can’t forget scissors,
which were used by the Aryans several centuries before Christ. The first
implements of this kind were likely made from shells or stone sharpened to a
thin edge. Scissors, needles and needle cases, pins and pincushions, bobbins,
winders, punches, hosiery darners, emeries, and many other sewing accoutrements
were stored in work boxes made of faux-grained exteriors, which imitated
expensive woods, to fine hardwood boxes with inlays of mother of pearl, ivory,
and wood.
A wide
array of the above mentioned needleworking tools, accessories, boxes, and more
are among the collection of Elizabeth Graff. Graff received an AB degree from
Smith College, with a major in studio art. She worked as an artist and copy
editor for Harper and Row Publishers and was the curator of the historic Miller
House in Hagerstown, Maryland for 19 years. Graff has exhibited at the
Washington County Museum of Fine Arts. She is a charter member of the
Hagerstown Chapter of the Embroiders’ Guild of America and has taught embroidery
classes, including a crewel embroidery class at the Renfrew Institute in
Waynesboro, of an 18th century-styled lady’s pocket, which she
designed.
During
the Sunday open house on June 12, the museum is hosting a cross stitch bookmark
project for youth (young ladies and gentlemen are both welcome) sponsored by the
Hagerstown Chapter of the Embroiders’ Guild of America. The class size is
limited, and registrations will be handled through the Besore Library. The
museum is coordinating the bookmark project with the library’s summer reading
program.