Thursday, September 8, 2011

Book Review: American Needlework

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Title: American Needlework

Author: Georgiana Brown Harbeson

Date: 1938

Publisher: Coward-McCann / Bonanza Books

ISBN: none

Length: 232 pages including index

Illustrations: photos, mostly black and white

Quote: "Many fine works, notable for their beauty of design and high standard of craftsmanship, were produced even when the manner of life was crude and exacting and when dangers threatened on every side..."

Adelaide Hechtlinger outlined American women's history through quilts; Georgiana Brown Harbeson here outlines it through embroidery. American Needlework begins with a chapter on Native American quillwork and proceeds chronologically through discussions of bead embroidery, "stump work," crewelwork, candlewicking, samplers, and on through the patriotic wall hangings of the early twentieth century and the first of several twentieth-century bargello fads.

Certain academic authors have tended to support a vague impression that art historians always respected painting because men did it and ignored embroidery because women did it. Harbeson seems unaware that this question would come up for debate, but presents evidence that American intellectuals did respect embroidery as an art form. (Of course, they recognized that some embroidered pieces were more artistic than others.)

In fact, during periods when American Protestant churches seemed to be competing to see which group could adopt the strictest rules of discipline, embroidery was encouraged while painting was considered frivolous or even sinful. American Needlework contains a large, selective sample of needlework pieces that were preserved in art museums and some literature that was written about them.

However, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries artists did not become celebrities by producing outstanding embroidery. During this period a pretense was being made that English "gentlemen" would publish their writing only anonymously, forfeiting all chance of payment, because doing any kind of creative work for money lowered one's status down into the working class. Americans affirmed that a "gentleman" could demand payment for what he did, even if it was creative work that he enjoyed, but clung to a philosophical notion that "ladies" didn't want fame or money. Harbeson tries to recognize the women (and the two men) whose embroidery she documents in this book, but many of the living artists hid behind titles or aliases, including "Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt."

What does it say about American male artists that only two men produced embroidered pieces good enough to be mentioned in American Needlework? (Remember, Roosevelt Grier, Kaffe Fassett, and other men who are active as needle artists today hadn't been born yet...)

American Needlework does not tell people who've never done embroidery how to make the basic stitches, but it can fairly be called "a practical handbook," as it is in the blurb on the jacket. Embroidery is a visual art. Looking at a good photo of what someone else has done is enough to show you whatever you might learn for your own artistic purposes. Although the color and clarity readers have learned to expect in glossy magazines like Threads and Piecework were not available in 1938, the pictures in American Needlework can still teach needle artists a great deal.

This book deserved to remain in print at least until someone else had taken the trouble to re-photograph all these embroidered pieces. If I hadn't committed all my available craft time and space to knitting, American Needlework would not be a Book You Can Buy From Me, but I have and it is.

(To buy it here, scroll down until you find a Paypal button.)










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