Current and coming; needle arts in New York city

The New-York Historical Society's extensive and diverse collections reveal much about how New Yorkers have lived and worked over the course of four centuries. The aspect of that history currently in focus at the society is sewing. Home Sewn: Three Centuries of Stitching History, an exhibition on view there until April 18, is largely drawn from the society's holdings and is organized into six thematic sections. Included are samplers, embroidered pictures, portraits, sewing implements and patterns, quilts, clothing, linens, fabric swatches, photographs, and other documents.

Among the rare exhibits is a needlework picture of biblical scenes worked by Christina Arcularius (later Mrs. Samuel Barker Harper) in 1792. It is shown with a portrait of her executed in 1830 by an unidentified artist. Arcularius is thought to have executed the needlework while she was enrolled in a boarding school in New Rochelle, New York. Another fascinating survival is a group of embroidery patterns dating from about 1786 to 1815 that were owned by Mary Ann Vache. These are accompanied by miniature portraits of Mary Ann and her husband, John Vache. Mary Ann clipped embroidery patterns from the periodical Ladies' Magazine, traced them from unknown sources, and made them up herself. The pinholes and extensive wear on the patterns demonstrate that she used them repeatedly.

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Many of the objects in the show are solidly documented to their owner or creator, and in some cases numerous pieces made or owned by one woman afford great insight into how the needle arts were practiced over a period of one woman's lifetime. Irene Meladakis Zambelli, a Greek immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1914, sewed throughout her life, first as a professional dressmaker and then as a hobby, following her marriage to Samuel Silverman in 1941. Among the creations on exhibit are clothes, pillows, sewing kits, and garment wrappings dating from the 1920s through the early 1980s.

In times of war women have risen to the occasion by sewing and knitting for the troops. The United States Sanitary Commission was established by volunteers in 1861 to help the government improve medical treatment and sanitary conditions for the Union army. Included in the exhibition are the commission's specifications for knitting socks for soldiers. This effort was continued during both world wars, largely through the Red Cross under whose aegis women sewed shirts, handkerchiefs, and drawers for American troops serving overseas. Other charitable causes encouraged sewing for the underprivileged in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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The gradual perfecting of the sewing machine from 1790 into the 1850s revolutionized home sewing. By 1870 New York City had become the center of the garment industry in the United States, and there were more than thirty-four thousand women in the city alone who earned their living making dresses and performing other sewing tasks at home. These women were generally single and took up the profession to earn money without having to leave home, which was especially important if they were caring for small children. However, many of these women were living in reduced circumstances, and in order to increase their productivity they were forced to enlist the help of their own children, which kept them out of school. Such exploited women and children were photographed in their tenement apartments by social reformers such as Jacob August Riis, who campaigned for better wages and working conditions.

There is no catalogue for this exhibition.