Ex-votos, small metal objects often in the shapes of human figures or specific parts of the body, are presented as gifts to supernatural beings in thankful reciprocation for favors received. Drawing on examples from the Alexander Girard Collection at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this book describes the actual uses and ritual of the objects by people around the world who embrace different systems of faith and follow distinct cultural and ritual practices. The contributors, comprising an international group of historians, curators, folklorists, and anthropologists, focus on select pieces collected from Mexico, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Spain, Italy, Byzantium, Greece, Poland, Morocco, Senegal, Ghana, Ethiopia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Japan.

    Reflecting Maryland’s rich mix of ethnic and religious cultures, they provide glimpses into the lives of young women from Colonial times to the eve of the Civil War.Some samplers contain registers of family history; others are memorial or mourning samplers. Poems, moral precepts and biblical verses abound. Especially engaging are the samplers with "busy yards," populated by animals, birds and people. Exquisite silk pictorial embroideries were created under the tutelage of the Sisters of Charity at Saint Joseph’s Academy in Emmitsburg. Unique to Maryland are the embroideries worked by the children of free African-Americans taught by the Oblate Sisters, the world’s first order of black nuns. Quaker samplers are distinguished by broad compartmentalized borders filled with pairs of gorgeous flowers, butterflies and birds. Embroidered maps, all worked between 1797 and the early 1800s, form their own recognizable group.Students of women’s history will be fascinated by the role of needlework in early female education. Modern day embroiderers will find inspiration in the designs. Collectors and antiques dealers have long awaited such a book.

    He demonstrates this in two case studies, one from the Five Points excavation in New York City focusing on an immigrant Irish population, the second from a Chinese laundry in Stockton, California. Orser argues that race has not always been defined by skin color; through time, its meaning has changed. The process of racialization has marked most groups who came to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; this book demonstrates ways that historical archaeology can contribute to understanding a fundamental element of the American immigrant experience.

    Mary's quilt, and the letters that she penned over the years to Peleg Congdon, first her fiance and then her husband, provide both an elegant framework for interpreting the outstanding quilt collection at Winterthur and a fascinating glimpse into life in nineteenth-century America. The themes of each chapter are drawn from Mary's letters, which describe how her life was affected by politics and war, the volatility of international trade and the growth of the American textile industry. Her letters also describe the literature she read, her decision to marry a man whose motives she questioned, the social difficulties she later experienced living apart from her husband and the pride she took in her family heritage, which is reflected in her quilt - the only known example of an American quilted coat of arms. With the strength of the collection falling into the period of the late 1700s and early 1800s, these rare survivals are themselves a grouping of unusual depth and beauty. young woman from a previous century and discover, through her quilt and letters, that the passing of time does little to alter human nature.

    Beaudry mines archaeological findings of sewing and needlework to discover what these small traces of female experience reveal about the societies and cultures in which they were used. Beaudry’s geographical and chronological scope is broad: she examines sites in the United States and Great Britain, as well as Australia and Canada, and she ranges from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution.The author describes the social and cultural significance of “findings”: pins, needles, thimbles, scissors, and other sewing accessories and tools. Through the fascinating stories that grow out of these findings, Beaudry shows the extent to which such “small things” were deeply entrenched in the construction of gender, personal identity, and social class.