Sew What?

Around the World in Central American Samplers

June 08, 2020 Isabella Rosner Season 1 Episode 4
Sew What?
Around the World in Central American Samplers
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Isabella discusses how samplers from Spanish colonies are the intersections of needlework from around the world and across centuries. The first half of the episode focuses on a Guatemalan sampler at LACMA, while the latter covers motifs in Mexican samplers. At the beginning of the episode is a discussion about the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement. Here are just a few resources:

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Hi everyone. The release of this episode was postponed to make room for Black voices in the midst of Black Lives Matter protests in the US and around the world. I’m releasing the episode now, but the fight for racial justice is far from over. We need to continue to rise up against racism, white supremacy, and the police state. That involves protesting, donating, and educating yourselves and others. In the description of this episode is a list of organisations to donate to, both in the US and the UK, as well as anti-racist books, articles, podcasts, and films. Thanks for listening. 

 

Whatsup stitches!!! Welcome! Here we are! Together again! I’m super happy to have you here as we go on another needlework adventure. The theme of this episode is the question: “How did embroidery motifs travel across time and space?” Now, that makes it sound much more futuristic and theoretical than it actually is. Basically, I’ll be looking at Mexican samplers from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as one of the only known Guatemalan samplers. Surviving samplers from what used to be Spanish colonies are surprisingly helpful when it comes to understanding how needlework motifs travel across continents and centuries. They mix Mexican motifs and stitches with those from 16th-century Italy, 17th-century England, and 18th-century France. Samplers from the Americas are the delightful hybrid animals of the historic needlework world. Today we’ll see how and why. Onwards!

I was first introduced to colonial Spanish samplers during my time at LACMA and wrote a blog post about a few examples. A link to the blog post will be up on this podcast’s social media accounts, @sewwhatpodcast, should you like to read it. That’s where my interest in these samplers began. I embarrassingly didn’t even know that Mexican samplers existed or survived before a few years ago. Now that’s my own Eurocentric object bias there, which is a huge yikes!! We hate to see it. I am working to remedy that and to learn about needleworked objects from all over the world.

To begin, we need some context, so here’s a brief overview about Spain’s colonial holdings in the Americas. If you grew up in California like I did, you spent a lot of time in school learning about the Spanish conquistadores (aka conquerors) who first travelled to the Americas and consequently overthrew the native societies, specifically the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas. The Spanish conquerors brought with them Christianity and small pox. So much small pox. The Spanish wiped out huge percentages of the native American populations. There’s obviously no words to express the level of screwed up-ness. Oy? Yikes? Ugh? All of the above? Other European powers tried their hands at colonies in the Americas, but besides the obvious British exception, the Spanish ones were the ones that really stuck. France, Portugal, and the Netherlands had portions over time, but the Spanish really won the colonialism game in the Americas in terms of land mass. The Spanish created and controlled the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which included what is now Mexico, 10 full US states and parts of 8 additional states, part of Canada, all of Guatemala, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, the Philippines, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Caroline Islands, Micronesia, Palau, the Marshall Islands, part of Tawian, and part of Indonesia. Hoo boy. Note Mexico and Guatemala in that list, since they’re the countries we’re focusing on today. After a long struggle for independence, New Spain fell apart and its holdings became sovereign nations in 1821. All of the samplers we’ll be looking at today were made after this, but as you’ll see, Spanish colonialism was felt and seen in needlework long after independence was gained. 

The first object I wanna talk about is a Guatemalan sampler in LACMA’s collection. It’s one of only two Guatemalan samplers I know of in public collections, but I’m assuming there are others in private collections and collections in Guatemala and Central America more generally. 

Now I do need to say here that the idea of samplers is really Eurocentric. That term and its history only really takes into account samplers made in Europe and later the United States. Or perhaps that’s just my own experience. Whenever I’ve learned about or researched or talked to people about samplers, the focus has always been on those made in Europe and the US. There seems to be very little English-language scholarship about samplers outside of these regions. We gotta remedy that, yall. Anyhoo, onwards.

The sampler I’ll be discussing today is from 1841 and is now in LACMA’s collection. The other known Guatemalan sampler is in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, and dates to 1738. It was made by a girl named Antonia Sanchez when she was 10 years old, four years before she married. Yikes. 

The LACMA sampler, the focus of this episode, was made by a gal named M. Dolores Zea in 1841. I’ll give you an overview of what the sampler looks like before we delve into more specifics. This bad boy (or good girl? Whatever you wanna call it) is a cheeky 30 ¾ by 23 ½ inches (or 78.11 by 59.69 centimeters yikes I feel like these numbers will never be easy for me to say). It’s divided horizontally into three horizontal sections. The first features two landscape scenes that frame an inscription in a deluxe cartouche, which itself is just a word for fancy frame. The cartouche is made of sequins and now oxidized metallic thread. When it was originally stitched, before the metal threads turned black, that cartouche would’ve been sparkly and shiny and straight up glamorous. 

The middle band consists of 32 squares with different stitches and colours. It’s a literal sampling of stitches and we love to see it!!!! The bottom of the sampler features bands of drawn work, a lacemaking technique that reached its peak in 17th-century Europe. The drawn work was made by removing selected warp and weft threads from the ground fabric, and then wrapping them with silk thread to add colour and create the bands’ opulent geometric and floral patterns. Also, for those of you not familiar with fabric lore, the warp and the weft are the two components of weaving. Warp threads go up and down and weft threads go left and right. The more you know!! 

Okay so that’s a brief overview of what the M. Dolores Zea sampler looks like. But who was she? Sadly I don’t have a clue. I wish I did. When I was first researching this object, I spent A LOT of time trying to identify the maker but sadly had no luck. Chances are that “M” probably stands for “Maria,” and “Maria” is so common that finding the right person was just never going to happen for me. She inscribed her sampler “Por La Senorita M. Dolores Zea En la Escuela de las SS. Espana Guatemala Ano de mil ochocientos cuarenta y uno,” which translates to made by miss M. Dolores Zea at the SS Spain school, Guatemala, in the year 1841. Now what is this SS Spain school? I also couldn’t tell you that, sadly! I can’t find information about it anywhere. It haunted my dreams for months. If you’re listening to this and you know happen to know anything about it, please contact me and help solve what hopefully will not become a life long mystery. 

Most girls who lived in New Spain during and after the Spanish Conquest learned how to stitch samplers in convents or at escuelas de amiga, schools for girls whose families could not afford convent educations. Given the really fine materials featured in this sampler, M. Dolores Zea likely received a convent education. Sequins and metallic threads were pretty much fancy person exclusive. 

M. Dolores Zea’s sampler is a really good example of the kind of mixing of stitches and motifs from various centuries and countries, something that is also seen in Mexican samplers.  I’ll talk about those charmers a bit later. 

The two landscapes scenes at the top of the sampler are a lot like embroidered pictures of the 18th century. By the middle of the 19th century Berlin wool work was in style in the US and Europe. Berlin wool work was much more stylized – it’s like today’s needle point. It’s made using wool yarn on canvas. The fine detail and shading of the landscape scenes Zea stitched is more similar to the embroidery seen on men’s waistcoats from the second half of the 18th century. I’m thinking specifically about the weird but delightful trend of embroidering monkeys on waistcoats in France in the 1780s and 90s. An example of that joyous trend is on the sewwhatpodcast Instagram and Twitter. Anyhoo, that little tangent is to say that Zea’s mid-19th century Guatemalan stitching looks a lot like European stitching of the previous century. 

The middle section of Zea’s sampler includes embroidered squares, some of which involve a technique called Aztec stitch. Aztec stitch is a stitch that’s limited to samplers from the Americas. It’s thought that the Aztec stitch is limited to Mexican samplers but this Guatemalan sampler has the same thing. It’s likely actually a regional stitch that has been considered exclusive to Mexico because samplers from other countries in the region haven’t been studied in depth. It’s pretty impossible to explain how this stitch works, but I’ll try. I’m also posting a photo of an example so you can see for yourself what it looks like. It starts with stitching squares and then taking some threads out of the ground fabric. That second step is pretty much just like the drawn work I’ll explain in a few minutes. The embroidery thread is then wrapped around the remaining ground fabric threads. And then that embroidery thread is stitched diagonally. It ends up looking like a series of concentric circles that also creates the illusion of diagonals. It is wild. And totally unique to samplers from Spain’s colonial holdings in the Americas. In Zea’s sampler, amongst all of these typically European stitching styles, is stitching native to the Americas. Zea’s sampler is the meeting point for embroidery that’s native and embroidery that’s foreign. Even though so much of what’s in these American samplers came from Europe, the embroidery unique to this region still shines through. 

The bottom of the sampler shows three bands of drawn thread work, a lacemaking technique that reached its peak in 17th-century Europe. Drawn work was made by removing selected warp and weft threads from the fabric. Once the threads are removed, you then wrap them with silk embroidery thread to add colour and create patterns. It’s a bit like the Aztec stitch without the actual stitching part. The act of wrapping silk threads around the remaining ground fabric seems to be unique to samplers from former Spanish colonies, but drawn thread work itself goes back centuries. The earliest surviving examples of this technique are from ancient Egypt. There are examples from Germany and Switzerland in the 1200s. Drawn thread work really hit its stride in the 16th and 17th centuries. You can see it everywhere from lengths of Spanish and Italian lace to English band samplers. By the time the 19th century rolled around, drawn thread work was pretty much out of fashion. Machines could make lace, so the need to do it by hand faded away.

So Zea’s sampler involves needlework techniques and styles from as far as Egypt and as close as her own backyard. Mexican samplers are similar to Zea’s Guatemalan one, but there is an even more apparent mixture of what is European and what is American. And when I say American, I mean the Americas, not the United States, if that wasn’t clear already. 

19th-century Mexican samplers have a really fascinating mix of European and native American motifs. There’s a lot of overlap because of Christianity, basically. The European motifs of yore are often based on religious imagery and the symbols on 18th- and 19th-century Mexican samplers offer a Catholic twist on that. The first motif I wanna talk about is the pelican in her piety. That is just the proper term for the image of a pelican pecking at its breast to feed its young its blood. This symbol is veeeery common in samplers the world over. And in art generally. In one of the most famous portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, aptly called the pelican portrait, the queen wears a pendant with the pelican right in the middle of her chest. The pelican in her piety can even be seen on the earliest dated and named sampler, made by Jane Bostocke in England in 1598. It’s everywhere, on samplers from Germany and the Netherlands, too. And two centuries later here it is, on samplers made in Mexico! That’s undoubtably because of its Christian connotations – it was a symbol of Christ sacrificing himself for man. 

Another bird-centric motif seen on both European needlework and Mexican samplers is the double headed eagle. This bad boy is just how it sounds – an eagle with one body and two crowned heads facing opposite directions. These double-headed eagles may represent the Habsburg dynasty or refer to ancient Aztec iconography such as Aztec eagle warriors or Quetzalcoatl—the plumed serpent. If the double-headed eagle was meant to represent the Habsburgs, then that is veeeeery interesting because that’s essentially stitching the emblem of the family who ruled Spain at the peak of its colonial powers. The Habsburgs ruled Spain between the early 1500s and 1700, so they hadn’t ruled Spain for more than 100 years by the time the Spanish colonial samplers were made. But perhaps Habsburg imagery was such a part of Spanish visual culture that the family’s coat of arms was still being depicted many years after their fall from power. OR maybe samplers included the Habsburg eagle because they were still in power when girls in Spanish colonial holdings were first taught European stitching techniques in the 1700s. It’s unclear and undoubtably really complicated, but it’s an interesting idea that these samplers may have this symbol associated with arguably Europe’s most powerful family. Does the inclusion of that symbol, if it is indeed the Habsburg eagle, mean that sampler makers were stitching the symbol of their distant colonisers? It’s obviously not that clear cut or easy to discern, but it is something that is worth thinking about.  

It’s absolutely possible the double headed eagle has some sort of significance without being a reference to the Habsburgs or Aztec eagle warriors. It may be something scholars (myself included) just haven’t figured out yet. I for one would LOVE it to actually be a depiction of Quetzalcoatl or Aztec eagle warriors. If the eagle is meant to represent the Habsburgs, though, it illustrates that the presence of Spain was felt even after its former colonies gained independence. 

A motif unique to Mexican samplers is the Virgin Mary. When she’s stitched on Mexican samplers, she’s usually embodying the Immaculate Conception. As Immaculate Conception, she has a halo of 12 stars around her head. Sometimes, she’s flanked by mirrors and cypress and palm trees, all symbols of her piety. Clearly, even though so much of what was stitched on Mexican samplers came from other parts of the world, the specific Catholic symbolism of the Virgin Mary present in these samplers was unique to Mexican examples. I’ve never seen a Spanish sampler with the Virgin Mary on it, so I think that symbol may actually be exclusive to Mexico. That is exciting, as it shows that within this whole tradition of being taught needlework primarily from Europe, Mexican sampler makers were able to make their work unique to their own community and spaces. 

A lot of Mexican samplers also have a specific drawn thread work band that is clearly taken from a pattern book published more than 200 years earlier. In 1597, a German guy named Johann Sibmacher published a pattern book called Schon Neues Modelbuch. It was MASSIVELY influential and you can see samplers from all over Europe with bands taken directly from that book. Mexican samplers show that at some point in needlework history, Sibmacher’s patterns crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

And then there’s one motif that appears again and again in Mexican samplers and it’s a bit funky. This specific motif is a checkerboard stag with a rose in its mouth. Wait, did I say checkerboard stag? Yes, indeed. Deer with checkerboard patterned skin are all over those good good Mexican samplers. It’s wild, it’s weird, and I love to see it. There’s a book called IN OCTACATL, IN MACHIYŌTL: DECHADOS DE VIRTUD Y ENTEREZA that coincides with an exhibition that was held at the textile museum of Oaxaca in 2015. So sorry if I butchered that Spanish, I am really out here trying, I promise. Anyway, it explains this checkerboard rose-bearing deer phenomenon better than anywhere else. According to that book, these checkerboard deer are likely actually from Chinese art!!! What the heck!! The checkerboard is a stylised representation of the mottled fur of sika deer. In Chinese folk art, a deer with a blooming branch on its back represents bureaucratic prosperity. The founding of the Chinese city of Wenzhou involves a deer with a flower in its mouth. Gazelles and deer are frequent symbols in Spanish embroidery, but never with their heads cast back, biting roses. Maybe somehow Chinese art and symbolism got to Mexico directly. Or maybe it got there through a European model. Either way, the Chinese-Mexican connection requires further research. If you have any thoughts or knowledge about this very specific and very thought provoking symbol, please let me know! Like the SS Espana mystery, this mystery will haunt me forever. 

As you can see, samplers from former Spanish colonies in the Americas are great examples of how needlework travels around the world. Motifs and stitches seen on lace in 16th century Italy or 17th century England are seen again on samplers from 19th century Mexico and Guatemala. That is very cool. But how did needlework ideas travel? That is a really good question, one that actually deserves its own PhD dissertation. That’s a topic I was considering for my PhD. Listeners, if any of you wants to do a PhD in textile history, may I recommend doing it in the transport and trade of needlework knowledge? I would lose my mind if that happened. Anyways, it’s likely these styles and symbols came to the New World via needlework teachers. The first round of teachers likely came to the colonies from Spain and taught future generations what was being stitched in continental Europe. It’s possible and maybe even likely that pattern books came from Europe alongside the needlework teachers. It’s unclear if the symbols taken directly from the Sibmacher book, for example, came directly from copies of the book still in circulation or from just generation after generation stitching adapted symbols from the same source. The power of books!! The power of people!! The power of people with needlework knowledge!! Truly bonkers. We looooove to see it.

A discussion about samplers from Spanish colonies or samplers from almost any colony would be incomplete and unjust without a discussion about colonial power dynamics. The samplers I’ve looked at today, while fascinating and beautiful examples of the international transfer of needlework, are intimately tied up with the power dynamics of colonialism. And they inevitably show the colonial power of Spain over its indigenous colonial populations. Those who made samplers in Mexico and Guatemala and everywhere else in colonial Spain were probably at least partially taught to make samplers in order to seem more European. To control and quote civilise them. Perhaps sampler making was so universal or so ingrained in certain echelons of colonial Spanish society by the time girls came to make their samplers that the girls didn’t think twice about it, but we can see from the 21st century that sampler making in colonies was not simply a means to teach girls to stitch. It also taught them obedience to the prevailing colonial culture, which was European. That’s why I get really excited when I see motifs and stitches on these samplers that are native to the Americas. Those symbols and stitches are still present despite the overwhelming presence of European content. Colonialism and empire through needlework is a really important topic that deserves more discussion. The same can be said for power dynamics through needlework more generally. I will continue to bring these topics up as I delve into samplers from British India and schools for African Americans and Native Americans in the US. 

So to speedily summarize, samplers from Guatemala and Mexico encapsulate hundreds of years and thousands of miles. They showcase both native stitching and motifs, as well as the travel and transfer of needlework knowledge around the world via people and books. The result is a hybrid European-American needlework style. And while that hybrid is stunning, it wasn’t necessarily by choice. These samplers have the powers of colonialism and empire stitched into their very fabric.  

And that’s all for today’s episode of “Sew What.” If you liked this show, please subscribe to it, review it, follow it on social media, or whatever else. I really appreciate your support. Seriously! So much. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Aaaaand get ready because next episode will feature this podcast’s first interview. It’ll be with Susan Kay-Williams, Chief Executive of the Royal School of Needlework. That’s a huge deal for me and anyone who likes needlework. I’m freaking out in the best way possible. What a delight!!

Now go out and stitch some stories. Or rather wear a face mask and Zoom with your friends while stitching some stories. Bye!

Special shout out of thanks to Francisca Valenzuela for her help with Spanish and Nahuatl pronunciations. Hopefully I didn’t butcher any words too badly.