Needlework at Winterthur Museum

Colonists coming to America in the 17th century brought with them ideas and traditions that were reflected in their buildings and their furniture. Relatively little remains of furniture and furnishings before 1650. Anything that had to be brought from abroad was prohibitively expensive, so toward the end of the century local craftsmen began to establish themselves, making furnishings more readily available to the average person.

It is these furnishings that fascinated Henry Francis duPont. He was light-years ahead of his contemporaries in connoisseurship and zeal. His reputation is still untarnished, decades after his death. DuPont engineered the assembly and installation of his collection in rooms with period woodwork from each of the original 13 colonies, the collection itself spanning two centuries of productivity in American decorative arts, approx. 1640-1840. It is called the Winterthur museum.

This is a slide show overview of the collection of needlework in the Winterthur museum. The slides are copies of the actual museum accession slides, so they are up-close-and-personal. Included are samplers, needlepoint and a variety of early American needleart.