A SHORT HISTORY OF A SMALL STITCH
Chapter Three
In America, in
the early nineteen hundreds, a woman named Anne Orr shopped
at a needlework shop in New York City and was shown an
exquisite hand embroidered tablecloth for nine hundred
dollars. The design was a medley of dogs and mice! Anne Orr
was an artist/collector, the editor of a publication called
Southem Woman. The mother of three daughters and one of the
first women to drive a car, a pioneer career woman, a
gentlewoman, she became so challenged by the dog/mice
embroidery that she started a cottage industry for which she
designed counted cross stitch and filet crochet pattems. In
one day in 1917 she had orders for half a million copies of
her design books. Her books were translated into French and
Spanish and were sold in America, China, India and Europe.
The designs were winsome colonial children; little girls in
hoop skirts, boys in pantaloons, colonial ladies bowing to
colonial gentlemen. She also favored black and white
silhouettes of famous historical figures, chinoserie, Scotty
dogs, cottages and nursery rhymes. The themes of the
embroideries were friendship, welcome to guests,
exhortations to the young to keep their rooms tidy, new
babies and the words were quaint to modern ears: lad,
lassie, wee. In 1919 Anne Orr became art needlework editor
of Good Housekeeping, retiring in 1940.
Every civilized
country has had counted cross stitch in its history. One
country has loved it so much it has been named the National
stitch and this country is Denmark . In earlier centuries
a
Danish mother began her daughter's trousseau when the child
was five or six years old, weaving the fustian and the linen
and embroidering bed linens, cushions and table linens. At
her engagement, a girl began her fiance's wedding shirt and
her own bridal shift. As the shirt was blousy with full
sleeves it could be made before the future husband appeared.
The embroidery down the sleeves was especially important.
After the wedding the wife's next project was for funeral
garments, also beautifully embroidered. Embroidered hangings
for the bed cupboards featured stitching on the pillow slips
where it would show best on the edge hanging down and dark
winter cottages were brightened with white linen hangings
for the walls. It was the custom to borrow these hangings
from friends for special festive occasions and this was
called "drawing the room".
Next issue: Danish Handcraft
Guild
© 1999 MTS MegaStitcher@hotmail.com
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