I was recently browsing the furniture space at an auction house, something I do pretty often because I usually spot such lovely antique pieces. I don’t buy, I just admire. I’m amazed at the awesome furnishings that some people were fortunate enough to live with.
As I walked some wide aisles and squeezed through others, I spotted a stool with a needlepoint cushion of flowers and curlicues. Lovely, I thought, spending a few minutes with it and then moving on. Not far away, I saw a burgundy armchair with a needlepoint back and seat. A trend?
Then I began to wonder if there were other such chairs and stools, and started searching for them inside the auction house and on the pavement outside the building. I looked around inside and found this:
I looked outside and found this stool:
Once I got hooked, I began to earnestly look for furniture with needlepoint cushions when I visited this auction house and others. I continued to comb the aisles at each and found this:
And this:
It was like “Give away my needlepoint furniture” season. Either owners had wearied of the pieces and wanted a new look for their homes or families were unloading them as part of estate clean-outs. All the cushions appeared to be manufactured, and not done by hand.
At auction, I sometimes buy sewing items – sewing kits, buttons, thimbles, old needle packs – and I used to sew, but I never got into needlepoint or crocheting or knitting or other needlework. And I had never considered furniture with needlepoint cushions. I could imagine myself living with a chair or footstool, though, just because of their warm colors and flower designs that harken to the outdoors.
At the auction houses, I saw so many needlepoint pieces in such a short period of time that I began to wonder when this type of furniture was prevalent. So, I went searching on the web.
I found that the craft of needlepoint itself goes back to the ancient Egyptians, according to wikipedia and other sites that repeated the same history. Upholstered needlepoint furniture apparently became popular in the 17th century. Retailers on the web were selling needlepoint-cushioned armchairs and footstools that they described as Victorian and French. They dated some of the pieces to the mid-1800s and early 1900s. Another site mentioned needlepoint and tapestry among the styles of fabric used in colonial times.
An article on the Metropolitan Museum of Art site noted that needlework furniture seats rarely survived the ages. It showed pictures of several pieces in its collection, including an 18th-century easy chair and chair back, both of which were very detailed and beautiful.
The article surmised that the embroidered pieces may have been made by teenage girls of marriage age or wealthy married women. During the 18th century, some of the embroidered items for household use were professionally made, according to the article.
