Written by Molly Marsella
Michael Yonan, in a formative 2011 essay, has advocated for bridging the disciplines of art history and material culture studies, raising the argument that the separation of the two is relatively arbitrary and based in traditional academic convention. He explains how, currently, art historians prioritise the visuality of objects, stating: ‘at best, the work of art’s materiality is telescoped into its medium, which typically is positioned as a predecessor to meaning.’ It’s a noble take, and something that has received little push-back, especially with the recent turn towards globalizing art history as a discipline.
However, the consolidation of the tangibility of material culture studies with the visual focus of art history is not as straightforward as one might assume. John Elkins describes his own experience of engaging with the materiality of oil paintings and finds that, because materiality is grounded in production of art, it ‘is something that gets in the way of thinking as well as looking.’ Elkins’ description of materiality’s diminishing returns illuminates how separate and individualised its framework has come to emerge as an alternative perspective to traditional art history. But materiality and visuality do not necessarily have to remain as always mutually exclusive modes of understanding. For the “art-craft divide” to fully diminish, Yonan posits that one must begin to explicitly, rather than implicitly, focus on the materiality of objects as well as their visuality. Proper consideration of an object should be equally devoted to each of these aspects.
Looking at both the visuality and materiality of objects previously considered only in the context of one or the other helps to bring about a wider, and more nuanced, understanding of the object and what it can tell us about the past. Objects whose materiality has been long neglected in favour of pure visual analysis have often been relegated to a status of ‘inconsequential importance’ or used as static examples of a “style” or condition in support of a greater argument. Of course, with the turn to global art history, focusing on materiality has played its part in efforts to decolonise many artistic objects previously considered as “artefacts” that were the primary concern of anthropologists rather than art historians. The art-craft divide which has been so fundamental to the separation of discipline and practice is being reconfigured. How can one participate in this?
I will now turn to demonstrate a practical approach to using visuality and materiality to enhance their understanding of each other and to improve upon the importance objects conventionally are seen to hold. My objects of study are the embroidery samplers of Quaker children from the late eighteenth century. These objects, as created in a Western context, have been placed into the box of “art” rather than “artefact”. Resultingly, their materiality has long been neglected.
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has a sizeable collection of samplers made by young girls from and around the 1790s. The website description of a 1792 embroidery sampler made by Patty Coggeshall considers the ‘profusion of colourful silk twist, floss, and metal wrapped thread’ to only ‘enhance her designs’. In retrospect, this dismissal of material construction as only something made to enhance an objects visuality is reductive. Indeed, the sampler’s materiality can be used for so much more. I will demonstrate its usefulness for providing insight into a story that critically combats historical assumptions regarding the education of girls in post-Revolutionary America and the situation of children in an increasingly globalised world.
An image-oriented analysis finds this sampler to primarily showcase the standards young girls were raised to adhere to, explored most clearly with the inscription:
‘If I Am Right Oh Teach My Heart
Still In the Right to Stay
If I Am Wrong Thy Grace Impart
To Find the Better Way’
Visuality has also focused on the imagery of the four couples and floral motifs accompanying Venus and Cupid, to demonstrate the expectation that young girls had to marry. The traditional supplementary application of materiality regarding samplers has traditionally been reduced to promoting this idea that obedience was one of the main values instilled in girls, in that these samplers would have been created in schools and under certain instruction. The length of time this sampler would have taken to create dictates that, if these were such core values, they were doted on and reflected upon for a long period of time through repetitive work. Furthermore, the act of needlework as a staple in female education has been perceived as merely a preparation for future housewife duties.
History favours this notion that the education of young girls was exceedingly lacklustre in comparison to their male counterparts. Even in 1819, when Emma Willard wrote her Plan for Improving Female Education, she complained ‘why do they make their daughters illegitimates, and bestow all their cares upon their sons?’ Scorning the decorative focus of instruction, she promises that needlework has no place at her institution. However relevant this notion of educational suppression may be to feminist conceptions of the constant presence of patriarchal oppression from a girl’s birth, this idea that Patty’s sampler was simply a lesson on mindless obedience to be displayed decoratively seems a gross oversimplification.
A focus on materiality purely in itself, without aiming to use it simply to corroborate visual interpretation, indeed suggests that, while domestic preparation was important, the education of girls had greater concerns. Through close examination of stitching as well as the progress of wear, I contest that this assignment’s primary lesson may have been ensuring literacy, as well as values for the importance of self-improvement, individuality, and being a responsible and socially aware individual. These samplers come from the era of “republican motherhood”; that period of the early United States that saw women as having a strong and crucial moral and educational role for the future and wellbeing of the republic. Both moral as well as political instruction was seen as the responsibility of these republican mothers, who were tasked with reinforcing the paradigm of liberty, and were thought to represent modern “enlightenment” values in their very fibre. I think these samplers directly respond to this call and standard of active citizenry, that young girls were raised with in fitting in this new mould. The materiality backs this up. It is commonly known that the tighter something is reinforced, the more durable it becomes. This might explain why certain areas of the sampler have withstood for longer than others. It is also true that in needlework this denotes a process that was much more thorough, slow, and careful. That the best-preserved section to the piece is the alphabet, still in remarkable condition, attests that the lesson of literacy held significant importance.
Materiality also provides different perspectives regarding the role that this sampler, and indeed the education of girls, held in the wider context. During this time, girls’ schools relied on voluntary investment and constrained local funding. Willard’s lamentation over insufficient financing of schools in Connecticut, in support of her call for a governmentally regulated education, fittingly contrasts the prosperity displayed in Patty’s sampler. The materials of the piece are incredibly expensive, luxurious goods even that demonstrate that Patty’s education was indeed well-funded. Another sampler made by her classmate, Peggy Ingraham, also showcases eager funding in the same opulent materials. While the disparity between the quality of education between regions and communities was still a massive flaw in early American female education, these two examples demonstrate that if the funds were available, they would be allocated.
That both samplers hail from the same school located in Bristol, Rhode Island- a very prosperous coastal community- does explain their expensive financing. While these samplers may not represent all communities in New England, they at least attest to the fact that one, Bristol, did value the education of their girls. It can also be seen as a demonstration of the centrality of the transatlantic slave trade to the Rhode Island economy, and the social importance of demonstrating this capital. The circulation of these materials, certainly imported and purchased with money gained from transatlantic trade to support the future of those in the business, into the hands of young girls, demonstrates how the primary societal value of patriotism was embedded heavily in this deeply problematic industry. It reveals how intertwined like the sampler’s threads the trading system was with all demographics, that there were truly no Americans who were “passive” in its effects. Furthermore, the identification of these materials within samplers from Quaker schools showcases how this social value even superseded religious values, as the American Quakers ideologically positioned themselves as early abolitionists in staunch opposition to slave trading.
Exploring the materiality of Quaker girls’ samplers as an amplifying element to visual understanding, in addition to considering it within the history of production, broadens the interpretational potential of such works to provide more nuanced and critical historical understandings. Let it no longer be stated that the only relevance to art historians of materiality is just recognising elements for enhancing designs.
Bibliography
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Elkins, James. “On Some Limits of Materiality in Art History (2008).” In Posthumanism in Art and Science, edited by Giovanni Aloi and Susan McHugh. 121–26. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.
Ivey, Kim, Carol Crown, and Cheryl Rivers. “Schoolgirl Samplers and Embroidered Pictures.” In The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. 184. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
Nash, Margaret A. “Rethinking Republican Motherhood: Benjamin Rush and the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia.” Journal of the Early Republic 17, no. 2 (1997): 171–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/3124445.
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Staples, Kathleen. Fancy Samplers of New Bedford and Fairhaven, Massachusetts, 1805-1835. The Magazine Antiques (1971). Vol. 173. New York: Brant Publ, Inc, 2008.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Margaret (Peggy) Ingraham Sampler,” Accessed 24 November 2024. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/14091.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Martha (Patty) Coggeshall Sampler.” Accessed 23 November 2024. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/14049.
Willard, Emma. A Plan For Improving Female Education. Middlebury, VT, 1819.
Wilson, Bronwen, and Angela Vanhaelen. “Introduction: Making Worlds: Art, Materiality, and Early Modern Globalization.” Journal of Early Modern History 23, no. 2–3 (2019): 103–20. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-12342631.
Yonan, Michael. ‘Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies’. West 86th 18, no. 2 (2011): 232-248.
Featured Image Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Martha (Patty) Coggeshall Sampler.” https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/14049.
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