Embroidered
Coats of Arms

Not as well-known as the stereotypical schoolgirl embroideries of colonial America (such as embroidered samplers and canvaswork pictures), schoolgirls in New England embroidered heraldic panels that displayed their skill with a needle and the family's heraldry – or at least their families’ heraldic pretensions.

There’s a particularly good discussion of these embroideries in With Needle and Brush:

The most lustrous and elaborate of all the embroideries worked in the eighteenth century by schoolgirls were coats of arms. The lozenge-shaped coats of arms, unique to New England, were created in Boston, first as canvaswork in the 1740s and then in silk and metallic thread on a black silk background by the early 1750s. They were sophisticated accomplishments intended as decoration to demonstrate a family’s prestige in society. Though visually similar to funereal hatchments, which were painted on wood and hung over the door of the deceased, the social functions of the two objects were very different.

The Needle’s Eye has more on these embroideries:

One project that was particularly popular among young women of wealthy New England families finishing their education was the embroidering of a family coat of arms. These heraldic needleworks, generally worked in gold, silver, and colored silk threads on a black, diamond-shaped ground, are among the most impressive examples of needle art. Expensively framed and displayed in a home’s most public spaces, they signaled the owner’s wealth, education, leisure, and privilege, communicating a family’s ability to do without a daughter’s labor while she attended school and to select and enroll her in a school filled with well-heeled students. The working of the piece conveyed a family’s membership among the leaders of society, while the heraldic imagery signaled the supposed duration of that membership. At the same time, the products of these young women’s labor allowed select citizens of the colony and then early republic to assert their English heritage. As Betty Ring has observed, “undeterred by either republicanism or nationalism,” these objects represented a desire, among New England’s elite, “for purely English emblems of family pride and prestige.”

Historic Deerfield provides additional context:

By the mid 18th century, the rising merchant class wanted to display status symbols, and coats of arms became a popular subject for needlework pictures wrought in Boston. Embroideries depicting true or pseudo-coats of arms (few New England families were entitled to bear them) done in girls’ embroidery schools were probably some of the most costly done. The city was home to at least six school mistresses who taught this kind of embroidery, advertising in local papers during the 1750s, 1760s, and 1770s. By 1730, Boston heraldic painters had access to a number of publications that illustrated coats of arms from which to copy or combine elements. The schools were provided with patterns and stencils from shops operated by these heraldic painters, such as John Gore, the largest provider in Boston. Based on a 2010 article by Angela Duckwall, these kinds of embroidered coats of arms from Boston were marked on the fabric before being embroidered with color instructions. The threads were probably imported from England, and the girls’ choices were governed by what their families could afford. Heraldic embroidery provided the perfect forum for displaying needlework, education, leisure, status, elite heritage, and family allegiance. Nearly all the Boston coats of arms appear to be in basically the same form, but the earlier ones seem to be more lavishly embroidered in metallic material.

Following is a roughly chronological outline of these embroidered coats of arms. (A page on heraldic embroidery of the 13th-17th centuries appears on the old website.)