- 273
Rare Needlework Sampler, Martha Avery (1773-1800), Norwich, Connecticut, Dated 1786
Description
- Norwich, Connecticut
- silk, linen
See catalogue note at sothebys.com
Provenance
Condition
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.
Catalogue Note
By the eighteenth century, the township of Norwich, Connecticut, was comprised of adjoining settlements, or societies, which looped in a curve from the Yantic River Falls in the west, along the lakelet called the Cove, around in a slim band below the hills where the Shetucket River flows into the Thames, and east to the Quinebaug-a distance of some six miles. Prominent citizens built their houses facing the village green, but ship masters preferred spacious tracts of land on the bluff in Chelsea Society where their property spread down in swag of meadowland that met the Shetucket shore. This arrangement offered a splendid view of the joining rivers and afforded each captain an opportunity to keep watch on his ship. Participating in the exceedingly lucrative triangular West Indies trade of slaves, rum, and sugar, they sailed to Demerara on the coast of South America, England, and the Continent, ending back in the safe, protective waters of the Cove.1 In the decades before the Revolution, life in Norwich was gracious and easy. Goods were imported, and fashions for the higher circles bordered on the extravagant. Norwich residents treasured their British heritage and exalted English culture. As the struggle for liberty approached, however, all imported ornaments were discarded and women appeared in society in simple costumes of brown homespun cloth and checked handkerchiefs.2 Shipping, a major commercial enterprise became increasingly hazardous. Norwich shipmasters braved the blockades and indulged in reckless privateering. Wealth and reputation followed a successful voyage, and a merchant aristocracy soon emerged.3 the first village, or common, school was planned for the children of Norwich in 1677. By 1745, the exact location of each of the town schools had been decided and the length of each session determined, even to the number of months and days. The town fathers, after much consideration, gave girls permission to attend the district school "early in the morning before the boys arrived and after they had gone home in the evening."4 If the schoolteacher were a woman, her pay was to be "but half that of the master" but the "time was to be doubled."5 By 1782, a common school for both boys and girls was constructed with a high wooden belfry above a gambrel roof at the bequest of Dr. Daniel Lathrop.6 However, it was in the fashionable private academy that embroidery and the art of the needle prevailed. The daily arrival of ships brought many talented young women seeking posts as schoolmistresses to the daughters of the newly established gentry. Many of these daughters were routinely sent to Boston boarding schools. Early historians have sadly neglected to record the names of Norwich schoolmistresses, but there is evidence that "Miss Sally Smith," who taught at the Landing, and "Miss Molly Grover of the Town-plot" were remembered with fondness by the young schoolgirls of the town.7 An imaginative schoolmaster advertised in the Chelsea Courier, March 15, 1797, dangling prizes of "no less than a Silver or Gold Medal" before the eyes of the girls of Norwich. And from November 11 to the middle of December 1799, the Courierran an advertisement for "Mrs. Brooks, from London" who would offer courses in "Plain Work, Marking, Tambour, Embroidery & Dresden, along with Fillegree, Paint Work, and Maps."8 Lydia Huntley Sigourney, in Letters to My Pupils, writes about attending school in Norwich at the age of four, then later being enrolled in an embroidery school where she was tutored in ornamental needlework with "precision and elegance."9 Exquisite schoolgirl embroideries, samplers as well as canvas work pictures, of splendid composition and execution, were worked in the vicinity of Norwich. Antiquarians in the field of textile arts have often debated the source of instruction in this design center, where such exceptional pieces were developed. Newspapers of the period add little to our knowledge, leaving us to assume that the teachers were well-known figures in the community with no need to publicize their superior accomplishments.10 the samplers of Martha Avery and Lucy Coit are recognizably similar in form and style, and both incorporate the town name of "Norwich," allowing unquestionable attribution to the same instructress. On Lucy's sampler, for example, a strawberry plant separates signature, biblical quotations, and aphorisms. While Martha Avery does not use this same formula, giving ample space instead to her delicate inscriptions, both embroideries display alphabet rows completed with similar geometric motifs. Most important, each sampler is adorned with a four-heart motif, worked in shaded tones of beige; the hearts are all joined together at their heartpoints to form a stunningly graphic design. Martha Avery has ambitiously cross-stitched the entire background of the linen in black silk thread; hers is one of a group of at least five related samplers with embroidered grounds that fool the eye into believing they are worked on colored fabrics.11 Of the two, however, it was Lucy Coit who controlled her needle with a particularly skillful hand. Their elusive schoolmistress taught the daughters of wealthy Norwich citizens for at least twenty years beginning about 1764. But the stylish patterns that she designed lived on well into the nineteenth century on at least one surviving example: a sampler worked by Phebe Esther Copp of Stonington. Dated 1822, it displays many of the earlier characteristic motifs. It seems, therefore, that this tradition continued as a regional pattern well after these endearing samplers were made and this influential schoolmistress had departed the scene.12 Martha Avery was born on August 22, 1733, in Preston or East Society, the second of eight children to James Avery and Martha Smith.13 Lucy Coit, ninth and last child of William Coit and Sarah Lathrop, was born on September 9, 1773, directly across the Shetucket River by way of a narrow wooden horse bridge. Late in 1780, William married Elizabeth Palmes Coit.14 Thus the two young girls probably spent much time together scanning the sailing vessels anchored at their doorway, for both fathers were involved in shipping. Judging by the dates stitched on their samplers, the girls were attending school during the winter of 1785 and September 1786. Lucy finished her embroidery almost a year before Martha. Little else is known of their childhood years. Martha Avery married Moses Benjamin (b. 1774), a ship captain, in 1798. They lived for a time in a house on Back Street in Chelsea. Their first son was born in 1798; but after their second child was born in 1800, Martha failed to recover. Although Moses purchased an elegant house at 23 Washington Street, it is doubtful that Martha ever enjoyed the lovely five-bay mansion, for she died on September 12, 1800. Both sons died without issue in Demerara. 15 Lucy Coit remained unmarried, probably devoting most of her days to the execution of the needlework at which she was so highly skilled. She died in January 1845, leaving a considerable estate valued at $922.16
1. Frances Manwaring Caulkins, History of Norwich, Connecticut (Norwich, CT: Pequot Press, 1976),356, 406.
2. Ibid., 482.
3. Ibid., 333-335.
4. Woody, History of Women's Education, vol. 1: 92.
5. Caulkins, History of Norwich, 275. See also Mary E. Perkins, Old Houses of the Ancient Town of Norwich, 1660-1800, vol. 2 (Norwich, CT, 1895), 375.
6. Joan Nafie, To the Beat of a Drum (Norwich, CT: Old Town Press, 1975), map berween 91-92. See also Marian K. O'Keefe and Catherine Smith Doroshevich, Norwich Historic Homes and Families, (Stonington, CT: Pequot Press, 1967), 19.
7. Caulkins, History of Norwich, 541, 542.
8. Ibid, 542.
9. L. H. Sigourney, Letters to My Pupils (2nd ed., New York, NY: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1853), 153.
10. The anonymously worked "Chandler Wedding Tapestry" (private collection) is usually given simply a New England attribution, but many textile historians believe it to be a Norwich, Connecticut, piece. See Mirra Bank, Anonymous Was a Woman (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1979), 68. Closely related to this tapestry is a sampler worked by Margret Calef of Middletown, Connecticut (private collection), who may have attended school in Norwich;. See Bolton and Coe, American Samplers, opp.66.
11. Ring, American Needlework Treasures, 22. Ilustrated are the samplers of Elizabeth Lord, 1764 (collection, Betty Ring), and her sister, Naby Lord, 1765 (collection, Betty Ring). Both samplers have solidly embroidered backgrounds. In 1765, Esther Copp worked her related sampler (collection, National Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.); see Grace Rogers Cooper, The Copp Family Textiles (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971),11. See also Nabby Fitch's sampler, 1766 (private collection), in Susan Burrows Swan,”Appreciating American Samplers: Part 2," Early American Life (April 1984): 45. This sampler has been embroidered with varying shades of bluedyed threads, probably of indigo, giving it a patchworked appearance. The gem-like sampler worked by eleven-year-old Ruth Huntington, 1787 (location unknown), was stitched in a rectangular shape, but the ground has been covered with cross-stitches.
12. Phebe Esther Copp's sampler is in the collection of the National Museum of History and Technology (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, D.C.; see Cooper, Copp Family Textiles, 12.
13. Elroy McKendree Avery and Catharine Hitchcock (Tilden) Avery, The Groton Avery Clan, vol. 1 (Cleveland, OH: 1912),229.
14. F. W. Chapman, the Coit Family (Hartford, CT: Chase, Lockwood and Brainard, 1874), 62, 63. See also PerkinS', Old Houses of NOT'{Q,ich, vol. 2: 162.
15. Avery and Avery, Avery Clan, 364. See also Norwich Land Records, vol. 31: 340, and Nafie, To the Beat of a Drum, opp. 68.
16. Chapman, Coit Family, 63. See also Town of Norwich Estate Records of Lucy Coit, administered by her brother-in-law, Joseph Williams.