Mourning Embroidery
date: label: date made
content: 1827
label: associated date
content: 1964-12
name: label: maker
content: Childs, Sophia Wyman
notes: label: Description
content: After a young lady learned to embroider a sampler, she might attend a female academy to make a silk embroidered picture. This was a more challenging technique that became popular in the early 1800s. Subjects included classical, biblical, and historical scenes, as well as mourning pictures. The death of George Washington gave impetus to this new fad of the mourning picture. It included an assortment of plinth, urn, mourners, and trees in a garden setting.
label: Description
content: This square embroidered picture depicts a young girl weeping, kneeling beside a plinth topped by an urn beneath a weeping willow tree. There was once an inscription glued on the plinth, but it is now missing from the oval. The girl is dressed in an ivory and pale gold Empire style dress with lacy edging around the square neck. The embroidered weeping figure, plinth, chenille tree and chenille ground are surrounded by painted water. A gold inscription on a black mat at the bottom says, “Wrought by Sophia W. Childs, Charleston, 1827.” It is stitched on a plain weave ivory silk ground with silk floss and chenille. The stitches are satin, long and short, laid, and straight.
label: Description
content: This mourning embroidery contains the usual motifs of a plinth with an urn, weeping willow trees and a young lady mourning. The Regency style dress would have been the dress of the period and helps to date the picture.
label: Description
content: Sophia Wyman Childs married Jeremiah Holmes Kimball (1802-1849) of Woburn, Massachusetts, on February 24, 1828. She died sometime before November 1832, when Jeremiah wed Jerusha Ann Richardson.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Massachusetts, Boston, Charlestown
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Textiles
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content: Embroidered Pictures
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content: Textiles
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: The Eleanor and Mabel Van Alstyne American Folk Art Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: TE.T19319
label: accession number
content: 256396
label: catalog number
content: T19319
objectType: label: Object Name
content: embroidered picture
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: plain weave silk ground (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: silk floss and chenille (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: watercolor (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: pencil (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: ivory ground (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: golds (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: greens (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: brown (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: red watercolor (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: mourning picture (overall style)
label: Physical Description
content: satin, long and short, laid, straight (stitches production method or technique)
label: Physical Description
content: embroidery (overall production method/technique)
label: Measurements
content: average spatial: 16 7/8 in x 16 7/8 in; 42.8625 cm x 42.8625 cm