Last Tuesday we had an up
close and personal look at
paper samples published in Ackermann's Repository.
That page of samples was accompanied by the following article, which I thought
NineteenTeen readers might find interesting. It’s a little long, but bear with
me:
OBSERVATIONS ON FANCY-WORK, AS
AFFORDING AN AGREEABLE OCCUPATION FOR LADIES
It is not long since needle-work was considered, in our schools for
young ladies, as one of the greatest accomplishments; and if a girl had gone
home for the half-year holidays without either an alphabet, a map, a name, a
flower, or perhaps some wretched figure, the parents would have looked upon the
system of the school as extremely deficient, and miss would certainly not have
been sent back to so imperfect a seminary. Exclusive of the injurious effects
of this branch of education on the health of children, when kept for hours
together stooping over one object during the whole six, and, in a larger piece,
perhaps twelve months, how was it possible that, with the vivacity natural at
that tender age, they could be otherwise than disgusted with continually
looking at the same thing over and over again! Consequently, nothing but force
and threats on the one had, and promises of going home for the holidays on the
other, could prevail on them to apply to such tedious occupations.
It is impossible to congratulate our fair countrywomen too warmly on
the revolution which has of late years taken place, when drawing and fancy-work
of endless variety have been raised on the ruins of that heavy, unhealthy, and
stupefying occupation, needlework.
Drawing, the ground-work of refined taste in the arts, is now
considered, and very justly, as an indispensable requisite in the education of
both sexes. In that of females in particular, it has opened a prodigious field
for the excursions of imagination, invention, and ingenuity. Here the young
mind is not easily tired, because fancy-works are frequently begun one day and
finished the next; and perhaps the completion of the most considerable job will
not take a fortnight. What pleasure it
must afford to a young lady to see her work advance so rapidly! Sometimes she
sits to it, and at others stands; and by way of ascertaining its effect, she
steps to the distance of some yards, returns with a new idea; and frequently
before one object is half finished, her fertile imagination has suggested an
additional ornament for the parlour or drawing-room of her beloved parents, or
for distant friends or relatives.
Let us also for a moment reflect on the good consequence which a
fondness for fancy-works is calculated to produce in future. Ladies who have
once engaged in this innocent and amusing occupation, which daily affords such
abundant scope for new inventions, will never relinquish it. From ornamental
subjects they are led imperceptibly to the making of useful articles; so that
it is no uncommon thing to enter a drawing, breakfast, or dining-room, where
the fire-screens, card-racks, chimney-ornaments, boxes, picture-frames, and a
variety of other objects of utility or embellishment, are made, painted, and
decorated by the ingenious mistress of the house or her daughters.
To enumerate all these different productions of female industry and
invention would be an endless task; but we shall occasionally recur to some of
them in our future numbers. The annexed wood-cut, with patterns of various
fancy-papers and borders, is here introduced for the convenience of those
ladies, who either cannot go out shopping themselves, or reside in a part of
the country where they cannot meet with such articles as they want. The
insertion of such patterns from time to time, will, it is presumed, facilitate
the procuring of the materials for fancy-works*, and also make their various
uses and the method of applying them more generally known.
*It is requested, when orders are given, to specify the number or
description of the pattern, as well as the number of the Magazine.
Okay, that article was a tad
self-serving...after all, Mr. Ackermann was
selling
these fancy papers, right? Furthermore, needlework certainly hadn’t gone out of
fashion—Ackermann’s as well as most of the other popular magazines were
regularly publishing needlework patterns.
But it’s also a pretty cool link between the present and the past:
girls and women were being “crafty” even then, and I’m sure would have been all
over DeviantArt and Etsy with their paper crafts if they’d had the internet. Now we know where all the “fancy-work”
that was sold in the endless church and Ladies’ Aid Society bazaars and
jumble-sales to support missionaries came from...something I’d always assumed
was more a Victorian phenomenon, but evidently not! And it illuminates that after-dinner conversation from
Pride and Prejudice when Jane is taken ill at Netherfield and Lizzie comes to stay to nurse her at the
invitation of the good-hearted Mr. Bingley and his less-than-goodhearted
sister Caroline:
"It is amazing to me," said Bingley,
"how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are."
"All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles,
what do you mean?"
"Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint
tables, cover screens, and net purses. I scarcely know anyone who cannot do all this, and I am sure I
never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed
that she was very accomplished."
I wonder if those very accomplished young
ladies of Mr. Bingley’s acquaintance purchased their screen-covering papers at
Ackermann’s? ☺
It’s been a while since I discovered another nineteenth
century lady worthy of being part of our ongoing series, but a friend recently
gave me the book I Married Adventure,
and I simply had to include Osa Johnson as a real-life woman who could have
been a romance heroine.
