embroidery

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Image features: Samples of yarns dyed by members of the Society, affixed to the backs of admission tickets to the Annual Exhibition of 1908. Recipes for some colors are written below. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Preserving Knowledge, Preserving Color
September is New York Textile Month, a citywide celebration of textile creativity. As in past years, the museum is collaborating with the Textile Society of America. A non-profit professional organization of scholars, educators, and artists in the field of textiles, TSA provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of information about textiles worldwide....
Image features: Silk embroidery in pale colors on dark blue linen. A horizontally and vertically symmetrical floral pattern in the Morris style. Please scroll to read the blog post about this object.
The Titan’s Daughter
In celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, June Object of the Week posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. A version of this post was originally published on June 20, 2016. May Morris will forever be in the shadow of her famous father William Morris, the chief protagonist of the English Arts and Crafts movement,...
Image features a length of wool canvas with an irregular grid of embroidered floral and geometric borders. In gray, ochre, orange and white on a dark brown ground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Borders
In 2005, Hella Jongerius was invited to curate a Selects exhibition at Cooper Hewitt. She became fascinated by the museum’s collection of over 1,000 embroidered samplers. For the exhibition, she made her own “Sampler Blankets,” which combined motifs drawn from the historic examples with industrial techniques like machine embroidery and needle-punch felting. These explorations were...
Image features a pair of bags with a flap opening in the center. Black velveteen fronts, embroidered in a large-scale floral design in red with outlines in blue and green; inner and outer borders with a geometric design in yellow and off-white. Woven bands in indigo blue at top and bottom, embroidered with a scrolling design in two shades of red, ending in fringes in dark red, blue and black, wrapped with gold metallic yarns. Backing is red cotton with a discharge print in white of two paisleys, a star and cresent moon. Hanging loops at upper corners. Please scroll down to read the blog post about these objects.
Decorative Storage
In Kyrgyzstan, the nomadic past is evident in the quantity of collapsible, portable textile furnishings. Textile objects found in Kyrgyz homes include patchwork, embroidered, or appliquéd quilts, saddle bags, pot holders, rugs, clothing, room dividers, and in the case of yurts, tent flaps. These garments and housewares are often made as part of a bride’s...
Image features: a U-shaped drawstring purse in green, with a stylized design of fuchsias in two greens, violet, two pinks, yellow and white. Long green cord with tassel. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Sophisticated Sample
Author: Rachel Pool This green purse is made from silk embroidery, plant fibers, and glass beads. A single tassel dangles from one side of the purse. Made between 1910 and 1912, the purse exhibits the Art Nouveau design style, indicated by the embroidered motif that displays organic patterns taken from nature, shown in the form...
Image features a map sampler showing the globe in two hemispheres, tracing the flights of Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh in 1931, 1933, and 1937. There are scenes in each corner labeled S. America, Africa, China, and India. At the bottom center, there is a plane labeled the Sirius-Tingmissartoq. The map is surrounded by a scrolling floral border. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object..
Flight Adventures Stitched in Time
Author: Madelyn Shaw This silk embroidery, titled “Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh’s Flights – 1931 – 1933 – 1937,” is an extraordinary take on the tradition of the map sampler. Embroidered lines in blue, gray, and red trace the routes that Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh took on a few of their 1930s flights: in 1931,...
Nature and the Embroidered World
In celebration of the fourth annual New York Textile Month, members of the Textile Society of America will author Object of the Day for the month of September. A non-profit professional organization of scholars, educators, and artists in the field of textiles, TSA provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of information about...
Image features: a length of woven textile with an off-white ground and scattered overlapping rectangles of different color and weave combinations in pastel shades. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Darning Sampler
Maharam’s collaborations with artists and designers over the years have produced some extraordinary textiles and wallcoverings, and according to Mary Murphy, senior vice president of design at Maharam, one of their favorite partnerships has been with Scholten & Baijings. Their love of process, sophisticated color sense, and familiarity with the making of textiles creates a...
Image features a length of woven textile with an off-white ground and irregular squares and rectangles in different twill weaves and different fibers, in ivory, copper, gray, and dark brown. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Present Perfect
Manufactured by Dedar, the furnishing fabric Present Perfect has the visual qualities of a hand-embroidered textile, with its asymmetrical and punctuated patterning, but it is a jacquard-woven fabric that plays with texture and light. The abstract composition of geometric shapes realized with yarns of different thicknesses, colors, and material is distinctive against the jute and...