Vermeer's Women and their Sewing Cushions

Try putting 'sewing cushions' in a search engine and you'll see more instructions in how to do the obvious than you could have dreamed of.  But what I'm talking about here is something quite different, spotted by a textile-aware visitor to the current Vermeer exhibition 'Vermeer's Women - Secrets and Silence' at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Follow that link and you will see the sewing cushion under discussion. The observer was Jill Kane, listowner of the British Quilt History List, who shared the following with listmembers:

"Yesterday I went to the exhibition "Vermeer's Women-Secrets and Silence" at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It's a wonderful gathering of Dutch interior paintings from around the world, all complementing one another and giving an insight into the domestic and private lives of women in the seventeenth century. The exhibition centres around Vermeers jewel of a painting "The Lacemaker".
What attracted my attention was the repeated showing of women using a sewing pillow for their stitching - not the lacemaking pillow used in "The Lacemaker" but a seemingly oval pillow, which supported the stitchers' arms as they worked. It must have opened and contained threads, and maybe tools, and struck me as a superbly sensible and useful device. What a wonderful support!
In the picture of the young lacemaker there is a pillow beside her, with threads dangling from within.
In Nicholaes Maes' "A Young Woman Sewing", the subject is working on plain stitching, with her pillow on her knee ( a lace making pillow is beside her).
In Gerard ter Borch's "Woman sewing by a cradle", she again has support for her work from a pillow.

Has anyone seen such a pillow in any museum? I don't recall seeing one, but may have been oblivious, before noticing their use in these paintings!"


The beauty of online communities is the immediate access to knowledge without borders.  This response quickly came from An Moonen an Antique Textile Historian from the Netherlands. An has recently published a book on the history of Dutch Quilts but like most textilehunters her interests range much wider.  This is what she told us about pillow cushions:


"Interesting you noticed the sewing cushion on the painting, here is some explanation.. 

There is only, I think, 1 left, in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, beautiful embroidery, and the trick is you can open it. It is a box with a cushion around it. There is a publication, but only in Dutch, I am sorry. An Article in the Rijksmuseum Bulletin nr 56 [2008] page 128-135 by Bianca du Mortier, curator of the textile/fashion dept.

But.. There is also a cushion in miniature in one of the 2 dolls houses in the same Rijksmuseum, that one can be opened as well, as small as it is. I could not find a clear picture on the net.

Sewing cushions are known of the Dutch genre paintings from the 17th century, second half. Their function is as well as sewing box, as an example for the  working, nice housewife/woman. Sometimes the cushion being open, or closed on the painting and that could be a special reason [Married/unmarried?]. They were very precious and very expensive, and made by divers craftsmen specialized in wood, silver, textile, metal etc. maybe there is a difference in interpretation between the northern and southern Lower countries. Sometimes it is known as being a wedding present.

So it is a typical Dutch thing for well to do ladies! If you visit the website of the Rijksmuseum,  www.rijksmuseum.nl  You will find different paintings with those cushions, even on from about 1770. "


An also gave an insight into the subtext of the arrangement of the cushion in Vermeer's painting:


"...The box is open and the embroidery silk is hanging out, white and red, the 2 colors used for marking the linen. White for the table cloths and serviettes, and red for the bed linen. So it says the girl is working for her dowry, with the lace and the marking of linen."


And finally, another listmember contributed this link to an online pdf of Volume 62 (1979) of the Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club, containing an article on workbasket/cushions by M.G.A. 
Shipper-Van Lottum, with excellent illustrations.


Some days I just love the internet. 

Message in a Bottle

Back in May I wrote a post about the ship in a bottle occupying the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.  You can read the story and find the links here. Personally I have found this the most moving, and the most apt, of the many Fourth Plinth occupants since the project started.  No doubt I was swayed by the artist's brilliant use of fabric.

Yesterday in The Guardian, I read that as its time of occupancy draws to a close its future is uncertain.  There is a wonderful suggestion that it be re-positioned permanently in Greenwich.  There is of course an alternative, that it be shipped abroad to grace a tycoon's garden.

Please take time to read the Guardian article.

'On the March'. An Exhibition of Union Banners. Manchester until 30 October 2011

Photo by Roger Cornwell,
 reproduced with permission under Creative Commons Licence

Banners.  For me they epitomise the proud traditions of the coal miners' Unions of north-east England. Huge and heavy, their polished wood poles having proud brass finials, many of these banners were supported on wheels as they paraded through the streets during the celebratory Galas. Their decorations were many and varied:  insignia of the particular Lodge, portraits of political heroes, religious imagery, romantic images of the workplace, the workers and their families, the pains of the past, and the hopes of the future when workers would rule the world.  The example above comes from the Flickr photostream of Roger Cornwell. You can read and see the banner history of one particular lodge on the Murton Heritage Society site, and view many more, listed according to lodge, on the  website of The Durham Miner project.

During the Miners strike in the 1980s banners were rallying points for protest and demonstration, and then were carried bravely by the men marching back to the doomed mines when it was all over. It was indeed all over for the mines, but not for the banners - as can be seen in The Northern Echo's coverage of the 2010 126th Durham Miner's Gala.

I had never given much thought about how they were made, or even properly considered them 'textiles', until one day I saw an old  banner up close, and was stunned by a vibrant blue fabric, probably silk, on which was the crusted thick paintwork,  the whole ornamented with heavy cords and  tassels.  Wikipedia tells me that to begin with the banners were locally made by signwrighters, coachpainters or decorators, but that from 1837 onwards 'more than three quarters' were made by a firm called George Tutill of Chesham in Buckinghamshire. Good heavens, I grew up there, its a small town, and I never knew! Their banners at that time were made from London silk.   The silk was stretched taut over a frame, covered with India rubber, then decorated with 'old' oil paint, as this allowed the paint to dry quickly and become more pliant.  I see from their website that the firm still thrives.

I had thought that with the decline of the mines the banners might have become a thing of the past,  rolled up and forgotten or given into the care of museums such as Beamish, in the North of England.  (Beamish have one  which was rescued from a rubbish tip) But only last week I was chatting with a textile conservator when the talk turned to banners.  I was pleased to hear that abandonment is a rare fate, that old banners are still treasured, cared for, and conserved when necessary, and that replicas are being made so that they could still be paraded. And that so long as there are causes to which people will rally, new banners will be made.

Soon after talking to the conservator, I was doing my usual trawl for blog items and what did I find but an exhibition of banners currently on display in the Peoples History Museum in Manchester.  The exhibits are the work of Ed Hall, an ex-council architect who fell into the work 30 years ago and discovered a vocation.  The museum has posted an interview with Ed in which he describes his personal design and construction techniques.  A lot of his work has been for the RMT (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers).  It looks like an exhibition worth visiting for the graphic design alone.

Modern banners are somewhat lighter in weight, and no longer roll along on wheels.  But there is one trick which the miners understood and modern demonstrators seem to have forgotten, as Ed reminds us in his video.  Never tie your banner down, let it blow in the breeze.  Tie it to the base of your poles and you will find you are struggling to walk along carrying a giant sail, and if you turn a corner into a headwind your poles will snap.

I'll remember that on my next demo.

'Celebrations', and 'Cradle to Grave'. Two exhibitions in York

The Quilt Museum and Gallery in York have timed their new exhibition to take advantage of this spring's big event, and 'Celebrations' will give visitors a chance to see celebratory items from birth, marriage and anniversaries.  Quilters will be particularly interested in the chance to see the quilted wedding dress made by Amy Emms for her daughter. Interestingly, the shape and style of the dress is not a million miles from that worn by Kate Middleton.

In tandem with Celebrations there is an exhibition titled 'Made in Yorkshire' featuring invited work from textile artists working in the area.  Work on show includes weaving, embroidery and quilting.

While you are in York, I recommend a permanent exhibition in York Castle Museum, 'From Cradle to Grave'.  This exhibition covers traditions surrounding birth, marriage and death in England over the past 300 years and won many plaudits for its curator, Josie Sheppard, when it first opened.  It is a textile and costume-rich exhibition with much to fascinate.

Of a Queen (future) and McQueen (past). That Royal Wedding Dress and the Savage Beauty Exhibition

Acres of print and megabits of bandwith have been expended on discussing Kate Middleton's wedding dress, designed by Sarah Burton for the Alexander McQueen label.  For those of you who have been in a bunker for the last couple of weeks there is a good article by Jess Cartner-Morley at The Guardian.

The article discusses what we can read from a choice of wedding dress, and a choice of designer.  Sarah Burton turned out to be very safe hands, recognising what was required of the occasion, producing stunningly artful and well constructed dresses for the bride and her chief bridesmaid.  Each dress, in its own way, was at the same time virginal and stunningly sexy.  By channelling one of fashion's favourite brides, Grace Kelly, a very clear message was sent about what kind of princess Ms Middleton is to be.

Barely a week after the wedding, a retrospective exhibition of the work of Alexander McQueen opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  For those of us trapped on the wrong continent and unable to visit, there is a very good blog and video presentation on the Met Museum blog site.  If you think this is not of interest to you because you don't 'do' fashion, I urge you to sit down for five minutes and think again. If you don't like McQueen's creations when seen on catwalk models, sit back and look at them as sculptures, textile art, masterpieces of tailoring and embroidery.  McQueen served his time apprenticed in Savile Row, and embodies one of my favourite aphorisms, that in order to be able to break the rules you first have to learn them.  His knowledge of tailoring and embroidery is embedded in all his work.

And when you get to the end of the tour, take another look at Kate's wedding dress.   As Cartner-Morley wrote in another Guardian article:

 "To pick McQueen is inspired, because the label has always been about telling stories through clothes, and that is what a day like this is all about. It is the perfect choice."

Yorkshire Fashion Archive - a new permanent resource

A friend just pointed this out to me, a 'new, publicly accessible collection of haute couture, fashion garments and everyday clothing (which) provides a unique historical and cultural record of Yorkshire life and documents clothing produced, purchased and worn by Yorkshire folk throughout the 20th Century'.  


The collection is housed at Salts Mill, Saltaire, so, always a good day out.  There is an introductory exhibition designed to encourage the future development of the archive with help from the public, running from 16th April to 15th May.


The archive's website has a lot more information and a nice little slideshow, in which I spotted a floral full length dress which could be in Topshop's window today, and a disconcerting ballgown  which reminded me too much of the American quilt pattern 'darts of death', or 'widow's quilt', the only reference to which I've ever seen is in Shiela Betterton's 'Quilts and Coverlets from the American Museum in Bath'.