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Object Timeline
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1942 |
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Sampler (USA)
This is a Sampler. It was student at Scuola d'Industrie Italiane and embroidered by Miss Francesca Amari. It is dated ca. 1915 and we acquired it in 1942. Its medium is linen and its technique is embroidered on plain weave. It is a part of the Textiles department.
Greenwich Village Lace
A young Italian female immigrant in Greenwich Village in the early twentieth century had few options if she wanted to earn a living outside the small tenement apartment she likely shared with her family. If she found work, it was almost certainly unskilled factory labor in unhealthy working conditions for little pay. In 1905, progressive upper class New Yorkers Florence Colgate Speranza and her husband Gino Speranza imagined an alternative: a clean, light-filled workshop where women might learn a skilled trade and earn decent wages. While on vacation in Italy, the Speranzas had observed small-scale revival textile industries cropping up in Italian cities and towns such as the Aemelia Ars in Bologna and the Scoula di Sorbello in Pischiello. The Speranzas set out to establish a similar studio in the all-Italian neighborhood of Greenwich Village. The Scuola d’Industrie Italiane operated until 1927 producing “embroideries copied from ancient designs and adapted to modern uses.”[1]
This linen sampler served as a teaching tool to provide step by step instructions on how to form the raised knot that decorated many of the Scuola’s embroideries and often represented stylized grapes. Numbered threaded needles inserted into a piece of linen detail the technique for a young embroiderer just learning to reproduce Italian Renaissance patterns. While the studio’s promotional materials extolled the Italian women’s natural ability as inheritors of a storied craft tradition transported from the Old Country, the young workers of the workshop learned to copy antique laces in the workshop from instructors using guides such as this one.
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[1] “Scoula d’Industrie Italiane,” Needle and Bobbin Club Bulletin, V. 1-3 (1916-1919).
This object was featured in our Object of the Week series in a post titled Greenwich Village Lace.
This object was
donated by
Mrs. Florence Colgate Speranza.
It is credited Gift of Mrs. Gino Speranza.
- Altar Set (USA)
- linen.
- Gift of Scuola d' Industrie Italiane in New York through Florence Colgate....
- 1943-41-1-a/d
- Placket Sampler (Germany)
- cotton.
- Bequest of Gertrude M. Oppenheimer.
- 1981-28-309
- Sewing Instruction Book, Sewing Book, I.E.A., N.Y.
- label: embroidered linen cover, ink on paper pages, cotton and linen samples....
- Gift of Anonymous Donor.
- 1934-18-1-a/g
Our curators have highlighted 3 objects that are related to this one.
- Sampler
- silk embroidery on linen foundation.
- Bequest of Gertrude M. Oppenheimer.
- 1981-28-192
- Table Cover (USA)
- linen.
- Gift of Mrs. William Bayard Cutting in memory of Mary E. Parsons.
- 1943-44-6
- Unfinished Piece (Spain)
- linen, paper.
- Bequest of Marian Hague.
- 1971-50-273
Its dimensions are
H x W: 10.2 x 61 cm (4 x 24 in.)
Cite this object as
Sampler (USA); Embroidered by Miss Francesca Amari; Student at Scuola d'Industrie Italiane; linen; H x W: 10.2 x 61 cm (4 x 24 in.); Gift of Mrs. Gino Speranza; 1942-47-7
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Maira Kalman Selects.
