Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework And SewingMary C. Beaudry mines archaeological findings of sewing and needlework to discover what these small traces of female experience reveal about the societies and cultures in which they were used. Beaudry's geographical and chronological scope is broad: she examines sites in the United States and Great Britain, as well as Australia and Canada, and she ranges from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution.The author describes the social and cultural significance of "findings": pins, needles, thimbles, scissors, and other sewing accessories and tools. Through the fascinating stories that grow out of these findings, Beaudry shows the extent to which such "small things" were deeply entrenched in the construction of gender, personal identity, and social class. |
Contents
| 1 | |
The Lowly Pin | 10 |
The Needle An Important Little Article | 44 |
The Ubiquitous and Occasionally Ordinary Thimble | 86 |
Shears and Scissors | 115 |
Findings Notions Accessories and the Artifacts of Textile Production | 137 |
Other editions - View all
Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing Mary Carolyn Beaudry No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
alloy American Andere archaeological contexts archaeologists artifacts blades bobbin bone brass bronze burial clamp clothing colonial common straight pins copper copper-alloy Courtesy The Winterthur crochet crochet hook Cunnington cutting dating Deagan decorated diameter early eighteenth century embroidery England English Essex County evidence example excavated fabric fasteners finds garments gauge heads Hoelle holes Holmes hook household illustrates implements inches long indentations industry interpreted Ipswich iron ivory knitting needles lace lace-making large numbers length linen London Longman and Loch loom manufacture Mary's City Massachusetts medieval metal needle guards needlecases needlework nineteenth century notes objects pair pin-making pincushions Post-Medieval Archaeology Probate Proctor produced recovered scissors seventeenth seventeenth-century sewing needles shank shears Sheffield silver bodkin silver thimbles sort Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm spindle spinning steel stitched survive tailors tambour hook tended textile thimble-makers thimbles thread weaving wheel Winterthur Library Winterthur Museum wire women wool yarn
Popular passages
Page 4 - ... homogeneously feminine - but it is acknowledged to be art. When women embroider, it is seen not as art, but entirely as the expression of femininity. And, crucially, it is categorized as craft ... [T]here is an important connection between the hierarchy of the arts and the sexual categories male/female, The development of an ideology of femininity coincided historically with the emergence of a clearly defined separation of art and craft.
Page 4 - Women embroidered because they were naturally feminine and were feminine because they naturally embroidered.5 used by them.