$1,000
DEERFIELD SOCIETY OF BLUE AND WHITE NEEDLEWORK; Embroidered linen, Deerfield, MA, ca. 1900; Embroidered logo, D in flax wheel; 17" x 18"; Note: The Deerfield Society of Blue and White Embroidery was initiated in 1896 by Ellen Miller and Margaret Whiting just a year before the founding of the Boston Arts and Crafts Society. Its aim was to find "joy in labor" and to provide income for women in the Connecticut River Valley. It also functioned as the local women"s suffrage center. The patterns were adapted from eighteenth-century embroidered linens in the collection of the Deerfield Historical Society, and were limited to blue and white embroidery floss on homespun linen. The products were useful domestic items -- tablecloth, curtains, and coverlets. The quality of the embroidery was carefully controlled and each work had to be approved before the Deerfield monogram - a "D" within a spinning wheel -- could be applied. (Janet Karden, The Ideal Home, The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1900
Auctioneer:
Rago Auctions
Date:
2012-02-25
