47 Star American Flag Silk Embroidered Picture With Roses, Circa 1912

Details

Description

47 Star American Flag Silk Embroidered Picture with Roses, Circa 1912

A hand-embroidered silk picture of the American flag with … Read more 47 Star American Flag Silk Embroidered Picture with Roses, Circa 1912

A hand-embroidered silk picture of the American flag with a rare and unofficial count of forty-seven stars, worked in the weeks after New Mexico became the forty-seventh state on January 6, 1912. Arizona followed on February 14, and because stars are added to the flag only on the Fourth of July, the 47-star flag was accurate for just thirty-nine days and never became official. The few 47-star flags that survive were mostly made commercially; a homemade needlework picture with the count is a much scarcer thing.

The Stars and Stripes ripples from a staff topped with a gold eagle, with a thorny rose briar twining up the pole, two full roses in salmon pink and crimson, two buds, gray-green leaves, and a ribbon bow at the foot of the staff outlined in pale silvery silk. The flag is carefully done, with thirteen correctly ordered stripes worked in short staggered stitches that give the texture of bunting, a canton of long laid stitches now softened to gray-tan, and forty-seven satin-stitched stars scattered freehand across it. The roses are shaded in the long-and-short stitch of American art needlework of the years around 1900. The composition follows the silk flag pictures sold to American sailors in Japan at the time, but the stitching is American home work in that manner.

Set within a dark mat in a bird’s-eye maple frame with a gilt slip and newly glazed with Museum UV glass. Good color with no tears or damage. It hangs well on its own in a hall or study and holds its own among earlier Americana.

Dimensions (framed)
Height: 23 inches (58.4 cm)
Width: 27½ inches (69.9 cm)
Depth: 1 inch (2.5 cm)

Condition
Good color with no tears or damage. Now glazed with Museum UV glass.

(Ref: NY11168-krpx) See less