Enfilade

Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company, detail of the reproduced silk used in Cynthia Chin’s replica of a gown owned by Martha Washington
(Image courtesy of Cynthia Chin)

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

Upcoming at the Wadsworth Atheneum:

Cynthia Chin | Off the Dressmaker’s Needle: Recreating Martha Washington’s Purple Silk Gown and Recovering the Lives Within
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, 15 September 2024, 2pm

Cynthia Chin, Gown and petticoat, 2024, Silk, linen, and wool. The gown is a reproduction of a garment owned by Martha Custis Washington. The original was made in the the early 1760s when Washington was in her thirties, remade around the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), and possibly worn during her tenure as First Lady (1789–1797). The original gown is now in the collection of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

The recent work of art and material culture historian Cynthia Chin involves an in-depth study of a purple silk gown owned by Martha Custis Washington (1731–1802). Chin reveals how her research and recreation of the textile and garment illuminate the stories of the people who made, wore, and cared for it. Join us before the lecture to view Chin’s colorful replica of Washington’s gown, on view in New Nation, Many Hands. Free with reservations encouraged.

As Dr. Chin notes in her Maker-Scholar Statement: “Recreating this garment as it may have appeared when new, unworn, and unaltered honors the forced labor of the enslaved seamstresses who tended the original object, including Caroline Branham (1764–1843), Charlotte, and Ona ‘Oney’ Judge (1773–1838). I commissioned the textile specifically for this project. It was reproduced by the Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company in Suffolk, UK. This gown and its replication methodology reveal new evidence of how the original dress changed over its lifespan, and how Martha Washington may have appeared when she was young. It remembers all unseen and forced labor—the ‘many hands’ that created our new American democracy.”

Cynthia E. Chin is an art and material culture historian of Vast Early America and Britain in the eighteenth century, specializing in dress, textiles, identity, and collecting. As a researcher at the University of Glasgow, Cynthia examines collections of dress, textiles, and art from around 1600 to 1830 in order to understand how private collections, individual collectors, and museum acquisitions strategies shaped notions of ‘early America’.

Presented with support from the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation Fund at the Wadsworth Atheneum.

Elizabeth K. Bennett, Mourning Picture, 1801–07, polychrome silk embroidery, metallic threads, gouache and watercolor paints, plain-weave silk ground (Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum, gift of Miss Jane W. Stone, 1938.236).

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

Upcoming at the Wadsworth Atheneum:

Ned Lazaro | The Mourning Embroidery of Elizabeth K. Bennett
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, 8 September 2024, 1pm

Needlework was an important part of a young girl’s education in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. Mourning embroideries often depicted figures overcome with sadness and weeping willow trees. Ned Lazaro, Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles, discusses the ongoing significance of a particular example. Free with museum admission.