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 Crewel Work Embroidery

Presented here, a delicate Crewel Work Embroidery that looks like a valance, but on a smaller scale.  The paper which is attached reads as follows:

To Jenny Ross

The cotton cloth was carded, spun and wove,
the worsted, carded, spun and colored by our Great
Grandmother Sarah Stevens.
The embroidery was done by our Grandmother Sarah
Fellows in 1776 when she was 13 years old.
Grandmother told me herself.
                                                        Mary Call Abbott

The style of American crewel was more open than English work, showing off much more of the lovely and lovingly made hand woven linen. The work that went into making the fabrics was very much appreciated and wools to do the work were costly and labor intensive to make.

In the fashion of the day, an embroidered Bedspread, Valance and Bed Curtains would be something a young woman might make as part of her trousseau and her wedding bed. The inclusion of hearts on the flowers would point to this. When Sarah worked this valance in 1776, perhaps as a model for the full sized bed set she would later make, perhaps she was dreaming about the man she would marry. Eight years later in 1784 she married Levi Shaw in Minot, Androscoggin, Maine.

The valance measures 37-1/2" long x 5" wide and is in excellent condition.  There is only some very minor loss to the embroidery in a couple of places, mostly on the undulating green vine from which the flowers bloom with great abandon, lending a charming naivete` to this effort of a young girl's hands and her dreams of her future.
 
R08D16005

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