mourning embroidery with urns and weeping willows

Weeping willows and urns in mourning art

This embroidered mourning picture was created with silk thread on a linen background between 1805 and 1820 in Massachusetts. It features two elements common to most mourning imagery of the time – urns and weeping willows. The man and woman in the picture are mourning the deaths of Hannah (Phipps) Smith (1763–1813) and her grandson William Smith Humphreys (1810–1811), the son of Catherine Smith Humphreys (1786–?) and George Humphreys, who married in Boston in 1804. It was made by an unidentified member of either the Smith or Humphreys families. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/193391/mourning-sampler

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.