The Bright World of Susan Colesworthy, Angler & Broideress

A call last fall from the Nantucket Historical Association brought this spectacular embroidered mantlepiece to Museum Textile Services for remounting and reframing.​ Made of silk, wool, and metal-wrapped threads on linen, it is attributed to Susan Colesworthy, c 1765. Referred to as a ‘fishing lady’ embroidery, it is one of a series of works that stands out in the realm of American Colonial needlework for its focus on women’s courtship and agency.

Overall front of Fishing Lady mantlepiece by Susan Colesworthy, 1765, before conservation. Image by MTS. Courtesy Nantucket Historical Association.

​When MTS Associate Conservator Morgan Blei Carbone removed Sarah Colesworthy's embroidery from its 20th century board and flipped it over, the original yarn colors were revealed to be much more vivid than expected. Absence of light and inherent chemical stability had preserved a snapshot of the true Colonial color palette. What had first appeared to be a silver or white frock coat on the man turned out to be cochineal pink, defying modern beliefs of gender norms. Together, the yellows of the woman’s dress, the blue of the sky, and the greens of the landscape, transform the image from bucolic to dramatic. The original colors would have been magnificent over a mantel, as originally intended.

Detail of reverse of Susan Colesworthy embroidery, before conservation. Note the original vibrancy of the unexposed threads.

Most works of early New England embroidery are samplers, meant to showcase skill, or practical items like wallets and linens. A smaller quantity are pastoral scenes and art pieces, meant instead to display affluence. The known fishing ladies probably number around twenty examples and were made across the length and breadth of New England between 1730-1790. Almost all known examples use the same motif of a woman at a fish pond who is holding a rod and has a basket full of fish at her feet, looking toward a male figure who seems to be interrupting her idyllic (and successful) work. The two are dressed luxuriously and surrounded by rolling hills. An embroidered mantlepiece is a larger work of art, meant for ostentatious display. The Nantucket example, which is intact and not a fragment, may have been intended as part of a triptych, like the MFA example appears to be. 

Embroidered mantlepiece by Eunice Bourne with original frame, 1745–50. Wool, silk, metal-wrapped thread, glass beads on linen. Museum of Fine Arts.

Author Andrea Pappas in her seminal work “’Each Wise Nymph that Angles for a Heart’: The Politics of Courtship in the Boston ‘Fishing Lady’ Pictures,”  theorizes how the series represents the fleeting time during courtship in which women have control: when a man has been ‘hooked’ – declared his intent and offered his hand – and the woman may accept or reject him. Various artists illustrate this in different ways, with figures, background, and background activities altering to suit their purpose. ​We know that Susan Colesworthy never married, and yet she gave birth to a daughter in 1773 – perhaps she so firmly believed in the moment of freedom emphasized in her embroidery that she never wanted it to end. 

Fishing lady embroidery, Boston, 1745–50. Wool, silk, glass beads on linen. Historic New England.

​Fishing lady embroideries invariably show these women as skilled, with baskets full of fresh fish that were caught before the man ever wandered over. This motif stands out clearly when compared with contemporary prints of fishing activities made by male engravers, in which women are shown being helped and overseen by men.

Sarah Colesworthy's fishing lady mantlepiece, after conservation with reproduction frame. Image by MTS. Nantucket Historical Association.

The Nantucket embroidery was humidified and blocked to reduce the inherent slant of overcast, or tent stitching. MTS Director Camille Myers Breeze then mounted it to an acid-free, fabric-covered board with hand stitching. To complete the treatment, Morgan located a modern frame in a similar style as that seen on the MFA's fishing lady mantlepiece.  Sarah Colesworthy is one of the few Colonial American women whose names managed to remain with their work over the generations, and we are fortunate to play a role in her embroidery's preservation.
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Kenna Libes is a Public Humanities MA student at Brown University. She got her start at the Smithsonian, and then fell in love with New England while sewing at Plimoth Plantation. She is looking forward to starting the FIT program this fall in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice.