On Sunday I was at my parents for lunch, and before we sat down my mother handed me this small piece of embroidered linnen. I recognized it immediately, because it had always hung on a wall in my mother’s room in their previous house. I remembered that this was something her grandmother had made at school.
Looking at it in more detail, I not only saw the embroidery and the date (made in 1899), but also the great quality of the color red in the threads and firmness of the fabric itself: it does not feel over 125 years old at all!
Besides the embroidered borders, alphabet and numbers, my great-grandmother’s initials are on here, as is the year. I do not know what the “6” means underneath the initials “SDJ” on the left, it might be that she was in class 6 (the final year of primary school, you leave when you are 12), nor do I know the meaning of the letters “SR” above the year “1899”.
When I had previously seen this hanging on the wall, I never looked closely at the red/white sections that are stitched between the neatly marked boxes on the piece. Looking at them in detail, these are examples of the various methods to repair any woven fabric, and I guess my great-grandmother had a few tries to get more proficient at these repair methods. Knowing she went into service only about two years later, I think she was mostly taught useful skills at primary school and she was never expected to continue her education, because she had to earn a living (and probably help pay bills at home) at an early age.
I will look for a good frame with both sides in glass, so that I can see the front and back equally well, and I might end up having this professionally framed so that the fabric is secure behind museum-grade glass.
Yesterday I posted about this precious piece of fabric on Fedi and I received wonderful responses: to date this is my most popular post in the ⁂verse!
❤️ My mother gave me this sampler made by my great-grandmother (matrilineal line) when she was eleven, back in 1899. Only about one year later she left school to serve as a maid for a doctor's household in The Hague.
Looking at this sampler, there are various ways to repair linen fabrics on show here. I'll have to look for a good double sided frame so that I can see both sides equally well and hopefully learn from my great-grandmother's work when she was a child.
