Pair of crewelwork borders from a bed curtain. Wool embroidery on tabby-weave linen, with a meandering

trail containing flowers, foliage, fruit, and grassy sprays. Worked in two-ply worsted wool in various stitches, including satin, stem, long-and-short, Romanian, and ladder stitches.

Personalization of one’s home through embroidery was a mark of gentility and a means to show off one’s prowess as a needleworker in the American Colonies. These charming borders would have finished bed curtains, together with matching valances, on a tester bed in a New England home. Despite these embroideries having lost their provenance over the generations, the woman who embroidered them was no doubt proud of her work. The flowers, berries, and leaves ornamenting these borders coordinate with two complete bed curtains and a valance now in the Art Institute of Chicago; and illustrated in Virginia Churchill Bath, Needlework in America (1979), p. 85; and Mildred J. Davis, Early American Embroidery Designs (1969), p. 81.