Colonial Embroideries at the Boston MFA

I could just kick myself for not jotting down the attribution for this piece, but it is silk and metallic hand embroidery on a silk apron if I remember correctly. A metallic embroidered pheonix from the colonial period—pretty friggin rad right?!

I've been spending a lot of my spare time at various area museums lately in order to write papers for my first graduate course and was delighted to see an exhibit of hand embroideries from colonial Boston featured in the MFA's Art of the Americas wing. It was just a little room tucked away in the basement of the museum and I think anyone who might have walked in on me would have thought I was some crazy woman on a sugar high or something, I felt so lucky to have stumbled upon them!

It always makes my heart feel good to see such exquisite historical textiles not only professionally conserved, but taken seriously and displayed in a museum of such stature. I'm afraid my photos from within the low-lit exhibit (gotta protect those delicate fibres) don't do them justice at all, but hopefully they are enough to give you a taste for the rich history of the art form and an idea of what the exhibit offers. It will remain up until June 3, 2012 so I highly recommend seeing it if you're going to be in the Boston area before then!

Embroidery attributed to Catherine Woods Brigham, American, born in 1733

Petticoat Border, Boston, Massachusetts, Mid-18th century, Linen plain weave, Embroidered with Wool

It was amazing to see all the individual stitches of a Jacobean style embroidery up close and in person for the first time and the tree of life motif from the border of this petticoat was my absolute favorite. Can you just imagine having that peeking out from your skirts?! Most of the pieces are attributed to Boston school girls and I just stood there wondering in amazement at the incredible articulation of the medium, let alone the idea that these magnificent works adorned everyday items like aprons, seat covers, and petticoats.

Now I've just got to find time to go back and see another exhibit there that just started on the role of vintage textiles from the home front of WWII Britain...is it just me or does that sound pretty much awesome?

Back to the Books

Where o where has this blogger been? Well, August has turned out to be unexpectedly busy and full of some big new changes for us which have managed to keep me busy and distracted (not to fear though, I have a few posts up my sleeve that are on their way). In the meantime, I have some exciting news to share: today I am starting my first class in pursuit of my Master's of Museum Studies at Harvard! I am thrilled and nervous as this is a dream come true that's been a long time in coming.

First things first, I will still be blogging and running my etsy shop (in fact, it's time I started building up inventory for the big shopping season that's coming up so expect to see some new listings over the next several weeks!). I'll be balancing part-time school with part-time work so that will make for a rigorous, but definitely fulfilling, new schedule and pace. It may take me a little to get my head wrapped around being a student again and learning to balance that with work and a social life of some kind (I hope...), but I really am looking forward to the challenge and hopeful that my etsy shop can help me see my way through so that I do not have to try and balance work on someone else's schedule as well. Time will tell I suppose so my fingers remain crossed.

I expect to always continue with my etsy shop and this blog on some level as it is as much a part of me as anything. I love the work that both allow me to do and the outlet it has become for me but the longer I am away from museum work, the less whole I feel. With a double major in art and art history, I knew my life would always involve both creative hands-on work and scholarly pursuits within the world of museums and art history. Questions of how and if I would be able to manage both within a career have been quite another story though and I am feeling a huge sense of peace and purpose now knowing that I am the kind of person who needs to keep a hand in both worlds and that I don't need to continue to deny one in order to pursue the other wholeheartedly. My husband has always been so gracious in giving me time to work through this and so we had always planned on getting him settled in a stable job he loved before I went back to school but it's been many years of moving and waiting for that to happen with this economy. We'd even started looking into making another big move to a city we love but that isn't panning out at this time so we decided together to finally make the most of what we have here and stop waiting for outside factors to change the things we aren't happy about. This particular program is the one that I felt best fit me all along and I'm glad the stars have finally aligned in such a way as to make it possible, even if it's not how we originally planned it.

I guess that's how dreams from one's bucket list often end up entering the realm of reality, eh?


P.S. We were very lucky and thankful to have made it through Irene's visit intact here just north of Boston. We had a couple lengthy power outages, a downed tree in an intersection by our house, but otherwise are doing just fine and grateful we live on high ground in an area that was more affected by wind damage than rain. Many others were not as lucky though and you can visit here to help.