Pieces

Oilily (Netherlands)
Infant's Romper
1987
cotton
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Oilily (Netherlands)
Child's Dress
1989
cotton
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Anonymous European Maker
Infant's Cap
ca. 1750
silk embroidery on silk, edged with gold bobbin-lace
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous British Maker
Child's Dress
17th century
embroidered linen (white on white)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous British Maker
Child's Dress
ca. 1720
silk-satin
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Folding Purse
18th century
embroidered silk trimmed with metallic lace and dyed raffia
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory, France
Handbag
1928
silk tapestry
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory, France
Handbag
1928
silk tapestry
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Sloan & Co., Newark, NJ
Egyptian Revival Reticule
ca. 1880
gold mesh on gold frame
with turquoise scarab
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Leah Shenandoah
Handbag
2009
rabbit skin with satin lining and handle of silver beads
National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC

Auguste Malpertuy
for Furnion Père & Fils Ainé (Lyon)
Napoleon III
1855
woven portrait in silk jacquard
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Neyret Frères after Paul Hermann Wagner
Bons Amis
ca. 1880-90
woven picture in silk jacquard
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Timney Fowler Ltd. (London)
Heads
1983
screenprinted cotton furnishing fabric
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous American Maker
Fortune-Telling Apron
ca. 1875-1925
embroidered silk-satin
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous Paraguayan Maker
Handkerchief Border
ca. 1880
cotton (ñandutí lace)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous French Weavers
Fabric Panel - Directoire Motifs
ca. 1795-99
silk-satin
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Front Section of Waistcoat
ca. 1730-40
silk embroidery on silk satin
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

    Eternal things are raised far above this orb of generation and corruption, where the first matter, like a still flowing and ebbing sea, with diverse waves, but the same water, keepeth a restless and never tiring current.  What is below, in the universality of the kind, not in itself, doth abide; Man a long line of years hath continued, this man every hundredth is swept away.  This air-encircled globe is the sole region of Death, the grave, where everything that taketh life must rot, the lists of fortune and change, only glorious in the inconstancy and varying alterations of it; which, though many, seem yet to abide one, and being a certain entire one, are ever many.  The never-agreeing bodies of the elemental brethren turn one in another: the earth changeth her countenance with the seasons, sometimes looking cold and naked, other times hot and flowery.  Nay, I can not tell how, but even the lowest of those celestial bodies, that mother of months and empress of seas and moisture, as if she were a mirror of our constant mutability, appeareth (by her great nearness unto us) to participate of our alterations, never seeing us twice with that same face, now looking black, then pale and wan, sometimes again in the perfection and fulness of her beauty shining over us.  Death here no less than life doth act a part; the taking away of what is old being the making way for what is young.  This earth is as a table-book, and men are the notes; the first are washen out, that new may be written in.  

– William Drummond of Hawthornden, from A Cypress Grove (London: Hawthornden Press, 1919, reprinting the original edition of 1623)