A woman, her dowry and needlepoint

There was a time when some girls stitched designs on sheets, pillowcases and tablecloths for their dowries. These could be either simple or intricate designs on household items they’d take with them into their marriage.

I see some of those crocheted and  needlepoint pieces – not sure if they’re from a dowry but merely from loving hands – at auctions from time to time. Last weekend, I saw some from an actual dowry, bequeathed to a niece by a woman now in her 70s and living in New York. I was at the home of a friend’s friend, and the woman shared her aunt’s handiwork.

The aunt started making the linens at the age of 16 when she was a girl in Vila Cha in northern Portugal, and made them until she was about 21. She moved to the United States in1965 at the age of 28, shipping much of her dowry pieces and bringing over the rest with her.

“You had to have a dowry so when it came time, you had everything you needed,” the niece told us.  “… That’s what everyone in their town did. They were getting their stuff together.”

Practically everything was embroidered, “even dishrags,” the niece said.

Her aunt also made pieces for other people in the town. The aunt learned the skill of crocheting and needleworking from her mother and aunts, but was self-taught in creating her own designs.

“They lived on a farm (and worked in the fields during the day),” the niece said. “They’d come home and put on the kerosene light and talk and needlepoint.”

The niece has two trunks of her aunt’s linens and her aunt has more at her own home. The niece is putting together a hope chest of the linens for her own teenage daughter. That got me to wondering if teens were interested in vintage linens and hope chests these days. Her daughter very much wants them, the niece said. A smart young woman, because these pieces were stunning. (I wrote a blog post earlier this year about how young girls used to make samplers as a rite of passage.)

In her dining room, the niece carefully pulled out round crocheted doilies, tablecloths and a twin-bed sheet with pink edges from a stack in the closet. We were awed by the artistry, the fine stitching and the patterns on what would be considered everyday items. One of them was something new to me: a round bowl-shaped white linen piece with decorated pockets and narrow crocheted trim around the edges. It was used to hold hot dinner rolls.

I don’t know her aunt, but I couldn’t help marveling at her talent. A lot of time, effort and love went into those pieces. It took her 40 hours to make the small ones, her niece said, and 60 hours for the larger ones.

These were ooh-and aah pieces (and more oohs and aahs all over again) as the niece took them one after the other from the closet and unfolded them on the dining room table. She uses them on occasion, bringing them out for special dinners and placing them beneath plates to give place settings a pop.

She also showed us the first piece of embroidery her aunt had made for her, when she was a baby. She’s not sure exactly how it was used, but it was a small piece with a Portuguese blessing on the front and a pocket on the back. She also has a linen piece with the initial “M” for Maria, her given name.

Her aunt doesn’t do much stitch-work now, the niece said, because of her failing eyesight. She and her husband had no children, so this niece became the beneficiary of her largesse. This is a very lucky niece. (Click on each photo below rather than viewing through PicLens.)

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