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.