I've wanted to visit this particular museum for some considerable time, as you'll be able to see from the next few posts, its well worth a visit and I've promised myself to return...
I'll start with the needlework images. In this first batch they're all from the same mirror. I believe this design was originally sold in kit form, from house to house, where the supplier would also provide the threads you would need.
If you Google 'Restoration Embroidered Mirror' you'll see many more, especially if you refine the search to only 'Images', at the top there.
This typical design incorporates a huge variety of stitches. The piece doesn't cover the period that I'm most interested in, as I prefer to see needlework from roughly 30 years or more earlier.
Its my personal observation with these mirrors, that not all the examples of Cloth Stitch, which is a lacemaking stitch, were made especially for the piece, but in my view, collaged from samples. I could be wrong, but scale, apart from anything else, seems to be the giveaway? Comments most welcome.
However, apart from the odd piece of collaged fabric, the rest still needed an incredible amount of work to stitch and then put together and must have taken years by a single stitcher, or perhaps less if there were say 3 or 4 sisters working on it together?
The colour is obviously very faded, which is a shame, but at least it must have been displayed and enjoyed over the years, instead of put away, never to be seen again, as can so often happen to heirloom pieces.
I decided to leave the image below in its original orientation, to preserve the detail.
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