Painted with Silk: The Art of Early American Embroidery

From the 17th to the 19th century, embroidery was central to the education of young women in America – and it was freighted with the cultural values of the time. This exhibition assembles 80 delicate works of embroidery – some by girls as young as nine years old – that date from between 1740 and 1830 (13 December–15 June 2025). These are interspersed with work by the New York artist Elaine Reichek, who since the 1990s has been specialising in needlework samplers – sewn works in which images are accompanied by often pointed or ironic text. One of her samplers from 1993, for example, features the maxim ‘Don’t be loud. Don’t be pushy. Don’t talk with your hands’, though some of her work simply revels in wordplay: Sampler (Moby Dick) (1997) features the sewn subtitle ‘A Sailor’s Yarn’.

Find out more from the Detroit Institute of Art’s website.
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Sacred to the Memory of Isabella Clarke (c. 1795), member of the Clarke family, Richmond, Massachusetts. Collection of Suzanne and Michael Payne

The Finding of Moses (c. 1810), student of Mrs Lydia Bull Royse’s School, Hartford. Collection of Suzanne and Michael Payne

Sampler (H.R.) (1993), Elaine Reichek. Jewish Museum, New York. © Elaine Reichek