Winter 2016

S amplers and needlework pictures can provide a tantalizing sense of connection to early American history, serving as rare links to the personal experiences of girls and young women of the era. Even more alluring for their mystery are those pieces passed down without signature or documentation, as is the case with a silkwork picture in Winterthur’s collections since the 1950s (Fig. 1). Long said by family tradition to have been made in early eighteenth-century rural New Jersey, this elaborate piece is made still more complex by a reinvestigation of its origins. Both its old-fashioned visual style and its biblical subject are suggestive of seventeenth-century English embroidery tradition. 1 Points of comparison include the Stuart-style dress, the simply executed facial features, and motifs such as the rolling hills and distant tents, the abundant small animals and f lowers, the anthropomorphized sun, and the prevalence of oak trees with snake-like trunks and lumpy leaves. But what of the family stories that the piece was worked in colonial New Jersey by a girl named Ann Carlisle? Genealogical research reveals nothing to support the traditional creation place. Yet, there are possible connections between the previous owner and an early eighteenth-century Carlisle family, well-off settlers of Sussex County, Delaware. 2 Given the region’s proximity to Philadelphia, it’s possible that just such an affluent Delaware Traces of Philadelphia in an Early Silkwork Picture by EMELIE GEVALT WINTERTHUR PRIMER 2016 Antiques & Fine Art 173 Fig. 1: Needlework picture, probably depicting the meeting of Isaac and Rebecca. Attributed to Nancy Ann Carlisle, ca. 1690–1740. Mid-Atlantic region, possibly worked in Philadelphia. Embroidered silk on satin weave silk. Museum purchase with funds provided by Lammot du Pont Copeland (1953.0152.007A). Courtesy Winterthur Museum.