I thought you guys might find this one interesting and I haven't seen these come up on this forum before. A while ago, I fell in love with this- It is a stitchery, made of tabacco silks, featuring portaits of actresses from about 1910, along with each one's signature.
Back around the turn of the century, the tabacco industry started including these printed silks in their packaging. The idea was that if they put something into their packaging that the ladies liked, they would want to collect them and would encourage their husbands to smoke more, so that the could collect enough of these to make this kind of stitchery. It worked like a charm, and business boomed. At one time, this appears to have been a pillow top, before it was framed. When I got it, I removed the old frame, which was a cheap plain painted frame with chips in it, (nothing nice) and mounted it on acid-free backing.
...That's when I found the surprise!
Hidden inside the frame was an antique embroidery transfer, which seems to date to about the 1940's or thereabouts! I thought that was kind of cool. It shows nursery rhyme characters in the circular pattern. It was never used and I have no idea what it was doing in there. I guess it was originally intended to be stitched and put into the old frame, since it seemed to fit it.
I also had a lot of fun looking up each of the actresses in the collection, learning about their careers, their love lives and their downfalls. It was very easy to date the stitchery because all the actresses were at the height of their careers about 1910.
Here are the silks:
This is the embroidery transfer:
And this is one of the actresses featured in the silks named Anna Held. Now that gal could wear a corset!!
