Moravian Ribbonwork Embroidery at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts

Lauren Bradshaw, WPAMC ’25

The Dianne H. Furr Moravian Decorative Arts Gallery at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina contains over 150 objects created by Moravian settlers living in Wachovia between 1753 and 1850.¹ This collection includes a variety of textile and needlework objects, several displaying the makers’ skills in ribbonwork, an intricate embroidery technique involving stitches in silk ribbon. Many 18th and 19th-century needlework pictures included painted imagery by separate artists in conjunction with embroidery done by young women and girls who would have learned these skills by stitching samplers as part of their early education.² Some of the composite works housed at MESDA attribute the painted portion to Daniel Welfare, such as these two compositionally similar ribbonwork pictures by Elizabeth Cloyd and an unknown maker. 

Left: Needlework picture, Elizabeth Cloyd, 1830, Silk ribbon, crepe, chenille, and paint on silk, 14 x 14 in. Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 3914. Right: Needlework picture, Unknown maker, 1825-1835, Silk ribbon, crepe, chenille, and paint on silk, 16 x 13 in. Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 5800.4.

Additionally, there is a ribbonwork picture by Elizabeth Frances Stamps that is nearly identical in imagery to Elizabeth Cloyd’s work in the Stitched in Time exhibition at the Len and Cyndy Alaimo Gallery of Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia. Elizabeth Cloyd (1816-1869) was from Montgomery County, Virginia and attended Salem Female Academy from 1829-1832, while Elizabeth Frances Stamps (1813-1896) was from Halifax County, Virginia and attended from 1825-1826.³ It has been suggested that both needlework pictures could have been painted by local Salem artist, Daniel Welfare (1796-1841), but the facial features, arms, and hands of the two girls depicted are in stark visual contrast with one another. Another important factor in the speculation that the needlework picture by Elizabeth Frances Stamps was painted by Daniel Welfare is its creation date of 1825-1826. In March 1824, Daniel Welfare traveled to Philadelphia to study painting under Thomas Sully and did not return to Salem until November 1825, and Elizabeth Frances Stamps only attended Salem Female Academy until May 1826, meaning there is only a short window of time in which he could have painted the needlework picture in Salem.⁴

Left: Needlework picture, Elizabeth Frances Stamps, 1825-1826, Silk ribbon, crepe, chenille, and paint on silk, 15 x 14 in. Colonial Williamsburg, 2005.601.1. Right: An Evening Lesson, B. Branmell, 19th century, Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center, Pennsburg, Pennsylvania.

Many needlework pictures of this era also borrowed their imagery and compositions from a variety of print sources as may be the case with these works. The catalog entry for the Elizabeth Cloyd ribbonwork at MESDA suggests that the source of this image could be a 19th-century print by B. Branmell within the collection of the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania. This print depicts a girl with a similar hairstyle and facial features holding a book with a cat in her lap while posing in a similar position to the figures in the needleworks. Additional research is needed in order to reach definitive conclusions but this brief inquiry has been an interesting glimpse into composite objects, painting attributions, and print sources within the context of 19th-century needlework as well as Moravian culture and education.

1. Collection: Virtual Tour: Furr Moravian Decorative Arts Gallery, https://www.oldsalem.org/lp/collection/virtual-tour-furr-moravian-decorative-arts-gallery/ . ↩︎
2. Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850 (A. A. Knopf, 1993). ↩︎
3. Needlework Picture by Elizabeth Frances Stamps, https://emuseum.history.org/objects/78633/needlework-picture-by-elizabeth-frances-stamps?ctx=5fd42734fa121e650395802dd06e540270f1701e&idx=0. ↩︎
4. Carol Crown and Cheryl Rivers, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 23: Folk Art (The University of North Carolina Press, 2013). ↩︎