Letter 19

In the 1890s, women’s crafts filled homes in the United States and Canada with handmade things: embroidered linens, crocheted lace, knitted stockings, painted plates, scrapbooks, pressed flowers, and dolls sewn from cloth. Some crafts were practical and widely learned. Others belonged more to middle- and upper-class parlors, where a woman might paint china, burn a design into wood, or arrange paper scraps into a decorative album. What they had in common was the pleasure of making something ordinary feel personal. Nineteenth-century women’s handicrafts included everything from needlework to decorative painting, and Canadian publications from the period show the same lively interest in home crafts.

Embroidery and Fancywork

The queen of the workbasket

Embroidery was one of the great staples of women’s handwork in the 1890s. It could be useful, decorative, sentimental, or all three at once. A woman might embroider initials on household linens, flowers on a tea cloth, or ornamental stitches on a cushion. “Fancywork” was the broader term for this kind of decorative handwork, especially pieces meant to make the home look more refined and lovingly kept. One charming detail from the period is how often commercial needlework manuals doubled as advertising. Silk-thread companies published project books filled with patterns, turning the craft into a whole little industry of supplies, booklets, patterns, and mail-order inspiration.

Silk Embroidery of Western American Scenes and Fauna, Circa 1890's.

Crochet

Lace from one little hook

Crochet was popular because it was portable, flexible, and could look far more expensive than it was. With a hook and thread, women could make lace-like trims, baby garments, bags, and household ornaments. In Canada, a 1891 Toronto book, Home Work: A Choice Collection of Useful Designs for the Crochet and Knitting Needle, shows that crochet and knitting patterns circulated for home use there as well. One of crochet’s more dramatic historical turns came earlier in the century, when Irish crochet lace became tied to famine relief work in Ireland. Queen Victoria helped raise its status by promoting Irish crochet lace and learning to crochet herself. By the 1890s, crochet had become a perfectly respectable craft for everything from practical trimmings to delicate parlor lace.

A page from "The Art of Crocheting" 1891

Knitting

Warmth, usefulness, and a touch of fashion

Knitting was one of the most practical crafts on this list, especially in colder parts of the United States and Canada. Women knitted everyday garments and small accessories, but the craft was not only plain household labor. It followed fashion too. A late-1890s needlework manual included patterns for silk mittens, men’s half hose, baby socks, and fancy tops for golf and bicycle stockings. Yes, bicycle stockings. That small detail places knitting right in the middle of the 1890s bicycle craze, when women’s outdoor clothing was changing and old skills were being adapted to new habits.

Quilting

When a bedcover became a showpiece

Quilting was already an old household craft by the 1890s, but the late nineteenth century had its own spectacular fad: the crazy quilt. These quilts were made from irregular scraps of silk, velvet, ribbon, satin, and other rich fabrics, then decorated with embroidery stitches. Many were too delicate for everyday bedding and were made more as parlor showpieces. The craze was partly inspired by the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where Japanese design helped popularize asymmetry, fan motifs, and irregular “cracked” patterns. Commercial patterns and kits also helped spread the style. Some crazy quilts became almost memory books in fabric, preserving bits of wedding ribbon, dress silk, cigar ribbon, campaign ribbon, or embroidered dates.

"The Ladies of Alaska"

Quilt, Crazy-quilt style, 1888

The quilt was a farewell gift to Judge LaFayette

Dawson, District Court of Alaska, 1885-1888

China Painting and Porcelain Decoration

The fashionable craft that smelled of turpentine

China painting was a fashionable craft for women with the time, money, and equipment to pursue it. The maker painted porcelain blanks such as plates, cups, or vases, then had them fired so the decoration became permanent. It was especially popular among middle- and upper-class women; most created these works for themselves, though some women sold their pieces. The craze began in the United States in the late 1870s and lasted into the early twentieth century. It was refined, but not always dainty in practice. Edward Strahan, an American art critic, joked that the china-decorating mania had made “the loveliest and purest maidens” smell of turpentine. The image is perfect: a genteel woman painting roses on porcelain while surrounded by very noxious fumes.

Paper Scrap Work and Scrapbooks

Victorian stickers before stickers

Paper scrap work was the art of arranging colorful printed images, trade cards, greeting cards, and embossed paper “scraps” into albums or onto decorative objects. It was popular because it was accessible, collectible, and visually delightful. The scraps were often chromolithographed and die-cut, sometimes sold in sheets with the pieces held together by tiny paper tabs. A scrapbook could become a personal museum of pretty things: advertisements, cards, poems, jokes, tokens of affection, and images carefully pasted into patterns. The best modern comparison is stickers, though Victorian scraps often had a richer, embossed look. The modern trend of junk journaling has a similar spirit: saving labels, tickets, notes, illustrations, and found bits of paper, then turning them into a personal, layered keepsake.

From Rosa Wolfe's autograph book (1886)

"Label on pastedown endpaper (inside the front cover)"

of one of Mark Twain's scrapbooks

Decorative Painting

Turning household objects into art

Decorative painting covered many home arts, from painted wood and textiles to decorated frames and household objects. It was usually more of a middle- or upper-class pursuit than an everyday necessity, since it required instruction, supplies and suitable surfaces. The point was not only to make a picture for the wall, but to make ordinary objects look artistic. This interest was strong enough to support magazines such as The Art Amateur, an American publication devoted to “the cultivation of art in the household.” That phrase captures the feeling of the craft perfectly: art was not only something to visit in a gallery, but something to place on a table, hang near a mirror, or use every day. Period craft magazines also featured oil and watercolor lessons.

Pyrography, or Pokerwork

Drawing with fire

Pyrography, also called pokerwork, meant burning designs into wood with a heated metal point. It was more unusual than embroidery or knitting, but it had the thrill of novelty. A woman could decorate a box, frame, or small piece of furniture with flowers, initials, or scenic designs. The name itself made the craft sound adventurous: “writing with fire.” A 1893 article in The Girl’s Own Paper explained “Pyrography, or Poker-Work” to young women, comparing the heated point to an etching needle. Commercial tools and prepared wooden blanks helped make the craft easier for amateurs, and pyrography remained popular into the early twentieth century.

Doll-Making

Homemade toys beside factory dolls

By the 1890s, store-bought dolls with bisque or porcelain heads were widely admired, but they could be expensive and fragile. Homemade dolls still had an important place. Women and girls made cloth dolls and doll clothes, often from leftover fabric, and the results could be sturdier and more personal than a fancy imported doll. Surviving examples can be wonderfully individual. One American folk-art rag doll dated to about 1895 was appraised on Antiques Roadshow, a PBS television series; it had a painted oilcloth face, oversized hands, and the unmistakable character of a one-of-a-kind object. Factory dolls could be beautiful, but handmade dolls carried the maker’s hand in every seam.

Pressed-Flower Work

Keeping a walk, a visit, or a bouquet

Pressed-flower work involved drying flowers, leaves, ferns, or seaweed flat, then arranging them in albums, cards, framed pictures, or keepsake books. One could use a wooden field press with screws or straps to tighten flowers between blotting paper, but often a heavy book was used instead of the press. The appeal was partly artistic and partly sentimental. A pressed flower could preserve a walk, a visit, a courtship, a holiday, or a place. Queen Victoria herself kept albums of pressed flowers from 1834 to 1900. One surviving page includes flowers from a bouquet presented to her at her Diamond Jubilee in 1897; even faded, the flowers can still be identified as irises, lily of the valley, and ferns. Pressed flowers were small, fragile souvenirs, but they could hold a surprisingly large memory.

 

Travel Album of Pressed Flowers

Old Crafts, New Hands

The crafts of the 1890s were not all the same kind of work. Knitting, crochet, and embroidery belonged naturally to the workbasket and could be done in quiet moments. Quilting could be useful, sentimental, or dazzling. China painting, decorative painting, and pyrography required more specialized supplies and often belonged to the parlor. Scrapbooks and pressed flowers turned collecting into art. Doll-making made playthings personal in an age when factory dolls were becoming more available.

What makes these crafts feel surprisingly modern is that many of them are alive again. Crochet, knitting, embroidery, quilting, scrapbooking, pressed flowers, miniatures, and woodburning all have strong communities today. There is a real renewed interest in tactile, screen-free crafts. The tools have changed, and patterns now travel by video, PDF, and social media instead of by mail-order booklet. But the old attraction remains: a person takes thread, paper, paint, wood, fabric, or flowers, and turns them into something that feels worth keeping.