Laces of Ipswich

Cover, The Laces of Ipswich, with costumed interpreter.

I recently read a fascinating book on a aspect of New England textile history new to me.  In the mid-18th century women in Ipswich, a town on the north shore of Boston, Massachusetts, established a very successful cottage industry in lace-making. At the height of production, 600 lace makers created pillow lace, making edgings for bonnets and shawls.  This wasn't a recreational hobby but rather provided much needed additional income for the lace maker's household. We are lucky in researcher and author Marta Cotterell Raffel, who dug deep and is an engaging writer too. 

In 1791 Ipswich resident Reverend Joseph Dana prepared a report for businessman and senator George Cabot on the lace industry in Ipswich. The report, with thirty-six small samples of lace, was ultimately submitted to Alexander Hamilton, eager to assess industries in the new country as imports from Britain were curtailed or halted altogether.  Eventually the samples became part of the Library of Congress collections, where they have been expertly conserved to this day. The image below is from the Library of Congress website.

https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss24612.003_0347_0460/?sp=19&r=-0.096,-0.064,1.111,0.715,0

The book has a valuable glossary, images of lace samples, portraits of New England women wearing the lace, and a bibliography. Modern day lace makers have reproduced some of the historic patterns. An appendix shows several of these recreated samples with their corresponding pattern, called a "pricking".  Below is a detail of an Ipswich lace with its associated "pricking". The lace maker inserted her pins into the holes of the pricking, and wove around the pins, using linen or silk thread wound onto her bobbins.

 

https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/ipswich-lace

 

It's important to note the lace produced is not the highly refined lace produced by women in Irish convents or trained by lace schools in Europe.  Such imported lace was a luxury item and embellished the clothing and accessories of women of highest social status.  The lace makers of Ipswich, who learned from each other, were producing lace edgings affordable by middle-class women - the wives of merchants and other businessmen, for example. 

With the advent of machine-made lace this once-valued textile lost some of its exclusivity and allure, and the making of Ipswich lace ceased about 1840, although a few practitioners continue until the end of the century.  There was a bit of a revival in the 1920's as part of the general Colonial Revival movement, when antiquarians such as Wallace Nutting recreated a rather romantic vision of colonial life through staged photography.  One major contribution of this revival was the preservation of colonial artifacts and renewed appreciation of the skills demonstrated.

 

Recreation of Ipswich lace edging, with "pricking" pattern.

The Laces of Ipswich: The Art and Economics of an Early American Industry, 1750-1840.

ISBN 1-58465-163-6

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for 2023

 

Morning after a snowfall at Koishikawa, Hokusai, c. 1832. woodblock print.

Thank you so much for reading my blog. 

Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2023 to you and your family.

For more about this image ( and to  view at a larger scale), see https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1927-0613-0-13

Jordan Nassar tatreez embroidery

Tatreez design by Jordan Nassar, stitched by me.

From an article in Selvedge magazine, I learned about the work of Palestinian-American Jordan Nassar, who works in a contemporary form of traditional Palestinian embroidery called tatreez. For the London cultural center The Mosaic Rooms he created a down-loadable tatreez pattern.  One of the colorways suggested was magenta and orange on black canvas. I liked this very much, so decided to stitch it using DMC pearl cotton number 8 in colors 600 (magenta) and 741 (orange-y yellow) on a piece of 15" x 18"  14-count Aida cloth. 

 

Pattern.

 

I printed out the material from The Mosaic Rooms and added center guidelines, in red pen, to the pattern. 

In progress.

I basted center line guidelines first and popped the canvas into a Q-snap embroidery frame, seen above, and started stitching from the center outwards, counting extremely carefully.

Outer border completed.

Close-up of stitching.

The back, in progress.

I found it useful to sometimes tack down thread using drafting tape, a low-tack, low-residue tape. This allowed me to change or amend my stitching before tying off.

 

Finished - back view.

 

The finished embroidery was expertly mounted by textile conservators ConText Inc.  Before framing I will add an indelible label to the back of the mounting stating the designer's name.  Credit where credit is due.

Jordan Nassar - Palestinian embroidery at the ICA Boston

Lament of the Field, detail.

Recently, DH and I journeyed to the booming Seaport area of Boston to see Jordan Nassar - Fantasy and Truth at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)  Boston, on view through January 29, 2023. 

The exhibit features embroidery made monumental.  From the wall text:

 

Jordan Nassar (b. 1985 in New York) is a multidisciplinary Palestinian-American artist who works in traditional Palestinian craft.  His embroideries, many of which he creates in collaboration with craftswomen in Ramallah, Hebron, and Bethlehem, combine regional motifs with imagined landscapes.   A self-taught artist, Nassar is know for his use of Palestinian tatreez (a form of cross-stitch embroidery), through which colors, patterns, and designs distinguish a wearer both by their origins and their social or familial status, and can signal different stages of life.   A thousands-of-years-old tradition, tatreez has strong ties to Palestinian nostalgia, nationality, and heritage.

Gallery overview.

The exhibit occupies one gallery and also features Nassar's forays into wood marquetry and glass bead manipulation, but for me it's all about the stitching, which utilizes cotton embroidery floss on cotton cloth.  The panels featuring traditional motifs are "interrupted" by stitched landscapes, through which Nassar succeeds in expanding this tradition into a modern cultural expression. The traditional panels and the landscapes play off each other as foils; each made livelier by the adjacency of the other. Each traditional panel features four analogous colors while the landscape panels introduce complementary hues and additional colors not seen elsewhere.

 

The titles of the two works are from a book of poetry, A Tear and A Smile by Lebanese-American author Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883-1931),

Song of the Flowers, 2022.

Lament of the Field, 2022.

Viewers give some idea of the scale of these panels.

 

Detail, landscape panel, Song of the Flowers.

Close-up of cross-stitching, Song of the Flowers.

The motifs in the more traditional panels have specific meanings or references but these were not identified in the exhibit. At the end of this blog I've listed some books which give more information on tatreez, which the UN has designated as an Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Detail, Song of the Flowers.

Detail, Lament of the Field.

Detail, Lament of the Field.

Detail, Lament of the Field.

By varying the color within  motifs - Nassar's signature style - curvilinear patterns can be created, as in the moon above, and its counterpart, the sun, below.

 

Detail, Song of the Flowers.

To learn more about Palestinian embroidery:

(Note - some of the books are out of print and/or hard to source.)

 

Ghnaim, Wafa. Tea and Tatreez. 

Kamel, Widad. Threads of Identity.

Skinner, Margarita. Palestinian Embroidery Motifs: A Treasury of Stitches.

Weir, Shelagh. Palestinian Embroidery.

Kate Sessions, San Diego's landscape gardener

Kate Sessions statue, by sculpor Ruth Hayward.

As the weather turns chilly here in New England, I think back fondly to a late summer vacation in San Diego.  While there we toured Balboa Park, a huge park and cultural center in the city.   I learned about Kate Sessions (1857-1940), an important woman with whom I was unfamiliar.

The land which became Balboa Park was deliberately protected from development to create an amenity for the city, partly to increase the attractiveness of San Diego real estate but also because some forward-thinking city elders realized the value of open space to the quality of life in a city.

Kate Sessions, a native of California, managed a plant nursery in San Diego and needed more space for her growing business. The City of San Diego leased land in the park to her, and in exchange she consulted on the design of the park and donated plants and labor.

It is important to know that, by the time Ms. Sessions began her work, much native vegetation of the area had already been heavily over-grazed by cattle introduced by ranchers from Mexico, who colonized this area of California before any European settlers.  While Ms. Sessions introduced non-native species, such as eucalyptus, to the nursery trade she also popularized native plants, particularly succulents, and introduced them to a broader horticultural audience.

I apologize for my less-than-great photograph of the statue; I hadn't planned to blog about this.  However, I love this statue of a woman in the midst of her work - sturdy boots on feet, trowel in hand, a tray full of offshoots to be planted or potted up.

 

There is a children's book about her: The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman Changed a City Forever.  Below, in the Cactus Garden in Balboa Park.

 

John C. Weber kimono collection at The Met, part 2 - Meisen

Yoshu Chikanobu, A Contest of Elegant Ladies among the Cherry Blossoms, detail, 1887.

After Japan opened up to trade with the West, western-style clothing became fashionable, especially among the upper classes. However, kimono were style worn by many, especially in the home, but also by young women who newly entered the work force after 1920 or so.  As  Western styles infiltrated the wardrobe so did the concept of "ready-to-wear" garments. While the kimono in my previous post were made of hand-reeled silk from top-quality cocoons, machinery imported from Europe could spin the filaments of lesser-quality, previously discarded cocoons into thread.  This thread was then woven into silk fabric which was much more affordable than yardage for custom-made garments. In addition, new synthetic dyes added deep and novel hues to the traditional color palette.  Designs were also influenced by Western art movements, such as Art Deco and Art Nouveau.

Meisen kimono, ca. 1930's.

Decoration of these ready-to-wear kimono was simplified too - no more gold embroidery, hand-painting or other time-consuming techniques. Instead the fabrics were patterned by resist- or stencil-dyeing designs onto the stretched warp, before the actual weaving. This process is call kasuri (from the Japanese word for "blurring") and is similar to ikat.  You can get a feel for this surface design process in this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaziD8vT6f8

although the process for producing meisen textiles was more mechanized.  

 

Some traditional patterns and motifs continue to appear, but updated, such as the rabbit kimono below, which may have been made during the Year of the Rabbit, in 1939.

 

Meisen summer kimono, ca. 1930's.

 

Japan is an island nation and the sea has always figured prominently is its decorative imagery.  The wave design below recalls The Great Wave, a woodblock print by Hokusai (1760-1849).

 

Summer kimono, 1920's - 1930's.

Kimono, detail.

Meisen kimono were not as well known or as widely collected as the earlier kimono, but John Weber made them a focus of his collection. I love their bold designs and graphic impact.  Many of the most intricate designs are made with a double ikat technique (heiyo-gasuri) in which both the warp and weft are patterned prior to weaving. 

 

Meisen kimono with thunderbolts, ca. 1950-55.

 

Meisen kimono with water droplets pattern, ca. 1930-40.

Meisen kimono with diamond patterns, ca. 1950-55.

 

As much as I enjoyed this ground-breaking exhibit, I would have appreciated it if the curators had featured more about the process and perhaps included some videos of  textile surface design and construction.  There is a helpful illustrated glossary at the end of the catalog, called "Textiles and Techniques," which features close-up photographs of weaves and decoration techniques.

 

Also, why did even modern-era Japanese fabrics still heavily rely on dyeing, either by stencil or immersion, for color deposition whereas in the West patterns on silk and other fibers are so often placed by printing?   However, there's no doubt these garments are amazingly beautiful.

Meisen jacket with looped lines, ca. 1950-55.

Jacket, detail.

The John C. Weber kimono collection at The Met, part 1

Bridal kimono, 19th c., detail.

 

 

In October we went to New York City to visit family and see this amazing exhibit of historic Japanese garments.  Below are some images, more or less in chronological order, of items which appealed to me.  The exhibit was big, so I'll do more than one post about it.  This post focuses primarily on garments from the Edo period (1615-1868).  Most of the images reference uchikake, which is actually a heavily embellished over robe which would have been the top layer of an ensemble, but I will just use the term kimono for simplicity.

 

My husband's newer iPhone did a very good job of capturing the images in the low light of the galleries, but for better images and more information the catalog accompanying the exhibit, Kimono Style: Edo Traditions to Modern Design, is excellent.

 

Kyogen suit, detail, mid-19th c.

The kimono and related garments in the exhibit were worn by a variety of folks: actors, brides, wealthy women, fisherman and firefighters. The jacket above was part of a comic theater (Kyogen) costume and is made of hemp, as is the jacket below.  The rabbit motif references a Shinto tale of a clever rabbit who outwits some crocodiles to get across the sea.  Many kimono reference literature.

Kyogen jacket, early 19th c.

 

 

Of course, many are familiar with Noh costumes, elaborately decorated silk kimono worn by performers in these highly stylized plays. Many of these costumes featured gold embroidery, eye-catching and glittering on stage.

 

 

Noh costume, 19th c.

 

Noh costume, detail with shippo motif.

Kimono often feature traditional motifs commonly understood by the audience, such as the interlaced circles shippo pattern, symbolizing harmony and prosperity.

Designs for kimono were published in woodblock-printed pattern books, from which women, or their representatives such as a family steward, could select  suitable decoration.  Use of materials and decoration was closely circumscribed by sumptuary laws during the Edo period, as the military dictatorship of the shogunate kept control over society. Politics and social status were intertwined with clothing. 

Hishikawa Moronabu, book of designs, 1677.

Imura Katsukichi, order book of kosode patterns, 1716.

The kimono shape we know today evolved from an earlier type of garment called a kosode; the salient differences being the sleeve proportions and the sash - thinner than kimono obi and worn lower on the body, as seen in the figurine below, made for export to the West.

Porcelain figurine, c. 1670-90.

 

The kimono shape became codified by the end of the Edo period but colors, patterns and forms of decoration changed with the times and woe betide to the high-status lady who wore an out-of-date kimono.  Old, no-longer-chic kimono were not discarded, however, but often donated to Buddhist temples to be recycled as garments or liturgical textiles.

 

 

Buddhist monk's vestment, detail, 18th c.

 

Wealthy brides wore astonishingly decorated kimono, featuring all the skills of Japan's textile artisans, including: brocade weaving, embroidery, dyeing, and painting.  Symbolic motifs demonstrated that the wearer aspired to the attributes of the images.

 

For example, the kimono below features bamboo stalks, symbols of resilience and vitality. The folded paper decorations, in the shape of butterflies, symbolize a long marriage.  Other motifs in the kimono, including pine trees, turtles, plum blossoms and cranes, reference longevity (see first image of this post.)

 

Bridal kimono, 19th c.

 

Bridal kimono, detail.

Bridal kimono, mid-19th c.

 

 

The reddish-orange kimono above was worn by a samurai bride. She would have worn all white for the ceremony, then changed into a colorful robe for the banquet.  Auspicious images cover this kimono, including Mount Horai, near the hem, a mythical mountain associated with eternal life. We see cranes again, in the embroidery.

Bridal kimono, detail.

The turtle depicted has a "skirt" of threads attached to its rear end. These lines symbolize the seaweed that attaches to a sea turtle during its long life. The longer the trailing seaweed, the longer the life.

Detail of turtle, with seaweed trailing behind.

 

Finally, one more exquisitely embroidered kimono from this era.  This would have been worn by a high-status lady at court.  There are embroidered Chinese characters (Japanese borrows Chinese characters for part of the writing system) at the top of the body and on the sleeves which originally referenced a poem by courtier Miyako no Yoshika:

 

The weather clears, breezes comb the 

hair of the young willows;

The ice is melting, wavelets wash the whiskers

of the old bog moss.

Kimono, 18th century.

Kimono, detail.