Talented Tuesday: 170 year-old Embroidered Linen

At Christmas 1937, my great aunt Dorothy got a note and a gift from her aunt Lila.

If you wish to preserve it as an antique, I would suggest you put it under glass in a frame or as a tray . . . It must be one hundred years old.  The cloth (linen) was woven by your great great grandmother Laura Potter.  The flax from which it was made was gathered by your great grandfather Thomas Brayton Potter and your great aunt Olive Potter.  She also did the etching on it . . . I hope you like it and preserve it for as long as possible.

The little box with the linen that was sent to Dorothy is now in my possession.  I don't know how old it is, precisely.   Laura Potter was born in 1783.  Thomas Brayton was born in 1820 and Olive in 1833, so if the flax was gathered by them, it must have been done in the 1830s or 1840s.  Olive's embroidery may have been done later.

It must have been quite a process, the creation of this beautiful, soft linen.  Growing the flax, gathering it, combing and spinning the thread, and then weaving such fine cloth.  Laura was clearly a precise weaver, it is beautiful work.  My sister (also a Dorothy) is a weaver as well, so one wonders, as with quilting, about the heredity of such a gift. 

Front of embroidery

Back of embroidery

Lila's letter to Dorothy talks about the other embroidery that Olive had done for her nieces, so it was clearly her love as well as her talent.  As someone who does embroidery, I encourage you to appreciate it not from the front of the piece, but from the back -- that's where you see the real skill, in the neatness and smoothness of the back of the piece. 


So it is probably about 170 years old now.  And (ahem) it is still not preserved, sitting in the box that Dorothy received in 1937.  It's been 75 years since Lila made that request, I am going to get to work on it.  But in the meantime, I wanted to share its loveliness with you all.