53rd Annual Delaware Show

A Winterthur Primer reprinted with permission from Antiques & Fine Art Magazine. Emelie Gevalt is a second-year Lois F. McNeil Fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. Previously she was aVicePresidentandSeniorAccountManageratChristie’s,NewYork,andhasaB.A.fromYale.HerWinterthurthesiswillundertake astudyofTauntonchests,fromtheir18th-centuryoriginsto theirearly20th-century interpretationsthroughtheeyesofpioneering Americana collectors. This article is generously sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. Morris W. Stroud II. The five-pointed flower in the middle right section of the present picture is an additional motif that appears in the work of Ann Marsh and her students, and, as noted by Amanda Isaac, in Philadelphia silkwork in general. 9 Comparing details from the present picture and one of Sarah Wistar’s works at Winterthur, we find a particularly strong visual correspondence. In each of the buff-colored flowers shown in figs. 3 and 4 , the center is executed in French knots, and the smooth, single-lobed leaves are skillfully shaded using multiple hues of silk, suggesting yet another similarity between the piece under discussion and the needlework of Philadelphia. Despite a lack of genealogical or historical evidence to strengthen the proposed Philadelphia origin, these visual and technical points of comparison are compelling reasons to attribute the piece to the area. A connection to the Marsh school represents an even more tantalizing possibility: in the annals of American needlework history, ElizabethMarsh is a major figure, credited with setting the course for the development of Philadelphia’s sophisticated style. 10 A confirmed connection to this teacher could strengthen our understanding of an important needlework school. Further, in this picture, we may have an unusual early survival of particularly elaborate work, challenging our assumptions about the level of accomplishment of women and girls of the era. Fig. 3. Detail of figure 1. — 103 —