Embroidered Picture

Elizabeth Jefferis

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This work falls somewhere between a sampler and a needlework picture. It owes its inspiration to seventeenth-century English crewelwork, such as bed hangings decorated with designs of large vinelike flowering trees emerging from small hillocks embroidered at the bottom edges. Such designs were in turn inspired by printed Indian textiles. Instead of creating a totally coherent picture, Elizabeth Jefferis chose to have most of the motifs float untethered across the linen; thus the composition also recalls Pennsylvania German samplers, which feature unrelated individual motifs. This needlework is the earliest example of at least three known pieces of this type made by Chester County girls.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art