Ann Archer Archer’s bedspread
Notes by Dr NER Archer (daughter of William George Reed Archer, born 1878);
Transcribed by pba 3 November 2003
(note that Ann Archer Archer was sister of John Archer (junior), the father of Alfred George Archer (NERA’s grandfather), and thus Ann was NERA’s great great aunt):
The sampler speaks for itself;
The bedspread is said to have been made before the sampler as an exercise in plain sewing;
Both pieces of work remained in Ann’s possession until her death when they passed through the hands of my grandparents, Alfred George and Olive Emma Archer, to my father William Archer, and hence to me;
My father William GR Archer had them when his mother died, and he gave them to me when he was moving to a smaller house, in the mid-nineteen-fifties; (Cotswold at 19 Sandfield Road, pba);
The bedspread is a child’s very personal record of her family’s interests and activities. My grandfather was a keen amateur naturalist, with a particular interest in breeding and rearing birds song (pba: not sure if “song|” is right, as the word is not easy to interpret);
The wealth of wildlife decorating the bedspread suggests that his interest was engendered by earlier generations of his family, and that Ann had first-hand experience with canaries and greenfinches in their cages, the newts from under a stone, and the tadpoles her little brother brought home from the ponds and the snails among the plants in the garden;
Her doll’s house is very carefully worked, and, most interesting of all (is) a very decorative and accurate balloon with two small animals peering out of the basket.
I could not understand this at all until, by chance, I discovered that the first British balloonist was Sadler who grew up in Oxford, a contemporary of Ann’s grandfather. Sadler’s home was in the High Street and he made his first balloons there and flew them in Christ Church meadows and The Physic Gardens; (pba:12.12.07: see notes on Sadler from the internet, now saved in Ann Archer Archer’s file).
Sadler’s first succesful flight was in November 1784. His inventions aroused great interest in the city and it seems that some were telling the story to their children and grandchildren thirty years later. (pba: AAA was born in 1815, which was 31 years after1784).
Further Notes by NERA Transcribed 19.11.2005 by pba:
I have an applied work bedspread made by my grandfather’s aunt, Ann Archer Archer, born 16.6. 1814, in about 1822 to 1823;
I know the approximate date because I have also a sampler signed and dated March 1824 and my grandmother, who had the bedspread when Ann died very early this century, said that she made it before the sampler “to learn plain sewing”;
It is about 2 yards by 3 yards and decorated with hundreds of lively and idiosyncratic appliques, which seem to me to be a child’s record of her environment made with her needle;
Knowing the family I can appreciate the origins of many of the little pictures she chose to put on her bedspread, from the tadpole in a tiny pot, to the accurate and beautifully made early hot air balloon, with a coloured gas bag, and two little animals peering out of the basket slung beneath it.
The work was clearly a training in thrift needlecraft, as the background is made up of obviously superannuated pieces of domestic linens and cotttons in various shapes and sizes carefully jointed, including a curved seam, to make an acceptable and serviceable coverlet. The appliqués are almost all printed cottons, with a few pieces of plain colour, and must have been drawn from an extensive rag-bag.
I have looked at them carefully with the V & A books ‘English Printed Textiles’ and ‘English Chintz’ in hand, and conclude that they present a fascinating selection of the printing and dyeing methods in use at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. (I believe there are wood block prints and early roller prints, and many of the greens are the old “double green”, showing the blue and the yellow at the edges).
I suspect that these are the cheaper ranges of dress and furnishing cottons, and that few of these are now available for study.(pba: there is an amendment here, in the original, introducing the words: “in view of the changes in”, which I cannot make sense of, so I have reverted to the crossed-out words, which do make sense).
I know too, that fully-documented, well-preserved pieces of work of this period are rare, so would like to glean as much information from it as possible. I have asked the county library to get me one or two of the books in the bibliography of ‘English Printed Textiles’ as a starting point in search of more detailed information about the materials, but there may be a more recent book you could recommend to me (pba 21.11.05: this is, I think, the first indication in this text, that NERA is writing to anyone. I thought these were just notes)
I wonder, too, is there a book on applied work of that period? I have been able to find only very few and very general references to it so far. It seems to me a most imaginative way to interest a child in plain sewing! The result is a colossal tribute both to her teacher, probably her mother or aunt or sisters, (pba: these last 7 words crossed out in the original) and her own industry, and her work has lasted for 150 years without a stitch giving way. (pba: end of first page of undated hand-written notes. There is another page of notes in the same hand, but written in blue rather than black ball-point ink, and in slightly larger text, so perhaps written at another time, which provides further notes on the same subject, as follows):
The most fascinating thing to me is a beautifully-work(ed) balloon with a gaily-quilted gas bag and a couple of little animal faces peering out of the gondola beneath. A little research has revealed that the first English balloonist, Sadler, grew up a contemporary of the child’s grandfather in Oxford, and made and sent up his first balloon there. I feel certain that this balloon was the result of eye-witness stories from her grandfather and father. It is certainly remarkably accurate from the pictures I have seen of the first balloon.
I have never actually seen another antique applied work bedspread – but have seen quite a number of photographs in various books on patchwork, applied work and quilting. None of them has shown the very lively contemporary domesticity of my great-great aunt’s work. It looks as if she saw a snail or butterfly in the garden, her elder sister protecting her complexion from the fierce heat with the fire screen, her mother using the warming pan to warm her bed for her, her younger sister bringing tadpoles home from the river nearby, (and she) heard her grandpa’s story of (the) excitements of (the) first balloon (flight), and (she) recorded them to the best of her ability in her needlework.
It may be that there was a fashion for depicting everyday life at that period. This bedspread is a piece of social history in child hand work. (pba: end of notes. These are followed by numerical references to the bibliography to which NERA refers).
References:
a) 9-56724 Exeter Museum & Art Gallery;
b) 9-73047 – Library- Exeter: The World of Cotton, Edmund Bale, 1957, Robert Hale Ltd; The Cotton Industry in Britain, Rt (Robert?) Robson, Macmillan & Co. Ltd, 1957;
c) Printed Textiles, V & A.
(pba: 21.11.2005).