Print Work Mourning Embroidery Dedicated to Major Green
1800-1810
Physical Qualities
Silk embroidery threads, paint, graphite, on silk ground with bast fiber canvas backing, Framed (Original): 14 3/8 × 12 3/8 × 1 1/2 in. (36.5 × 31.4 × 3.8 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. Donald Houghton Hooker, Baltimore, in Memory of her Mother, Mrs. James D. Harrison
Object Number
1985.111
"Maj[o]r Green," to whom this "print work" memorial is dedicated, has not been identified. Print work was a demanding and tedious form of pictorial silk embroidery that imitated black and white engravings. Popular in England by 1783, it was mentioned in American advertisements from 1799 until the mid-1820s, but appears to have had limited appeal. This example was probably worked in the nineteenth century rather than at the time of Green's death in 1797.
Baltimore Museum of Art by gift, 1985; Mrs. Donald Houghton Hooker, Baltimore, MD.
Anita Jones, Baltimore, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Jean and Allan Berman Textile Gallery, "Mournful Maidens: Love and Loss in American Embroidery," (September 9, 2009-February 21, 2010), no catalog.
Witty, Merrill. "In Loving Memory," Mid-Atlantic Country, July 1991, p. 42, illus. (Identified incorrectly as Hicks memorial.)
Inscribed: Drawn on urn atop tomb in script letters: "T. G." Drawn on front face of plinth part of tomb in block letters upper and lower case: "Majr. Green /obit 2 Feb/ 1797."
