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Family Record
Harriot A. Raymond (Boston, Massachusetts, United States)
about 1819
- Medium
- Linen, plain weave; embroidered with wool and silk in cross stitches
- Classification
- Textile
- Dimensions
- 44.1 × 42.2 cm (17 3/8 × 16 5/8 in.)
- Culture
- Boston
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Textiles
- Credit line
- Gift of Sarah E. Raymond Fitzwilliam
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This early American family record lists births, marriages, and deaths in the Raymond family. It pays special tribute to George Raymond; a poem stitched in the lower-right column suggests that he died as a child. The work was sewn by Harriot Augusta Raymond—who may have been George’s sibling—when she was 11 years old.
The fine black thread used to stitch early family records is often the first material to deteriorate. The iron in the black dyes reacts strongly to light and environmental conditions. As a result, the dates, names, and verses for which samplers are known and cherished slowly disappear.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
