Books and Manuscripts

A Very Rare and Early Irish Needlework Specimen Workbook

Arley Cottage (County Cavan, Ireland), 1833. 8vo. Comprising 16 printed pages with 22 (of 23) unique mounted needlework specimens of increasing complexity, completed by female students of the Farnham School. Contemporary quarter red morocco over marbled paper-covered boards, extremities, spine, and boards rubbed, remnants of silk ties present; paper label mounted at bottom of title-page obscuring end of title ("Kildare Place, Dublin"), with added calligraphic flourishes in ink: "Arley Cottage. 1833"; the word "Model" in printed title blocked out in ink; names of students added in ink above or below each specimen; many sheets starting or loose; scattered offsetting; final specimen on page 22 wanting ("Twelfth Class").

A remarkable survival. A rare and superb early Irish needlework specimen workbook, completed by 16 female students at the Farnham School, a country school at Arley Cottage, an estate in southern County Cavan, Ireland.

This impressive and fragile workbook features 22 needlework specimens of increasing complexity, beginning with a simple straight stitch and advancing in 12 lessons through patchwork, hand-appliqué, joining and gathering, darning, cross-stitching, tucking and whipping, and culminating with three examples of miniature clothing combining the preceding techniques, including a dress, shirt, and sock. Of particular note is a large full-page cross stitch sampler in vibrant colors featuring lettering and numbering, as well as foliate designs and ornaments surrounding the name of the school. This book was likely used alongside the 1833 Kildare Society printed textbook, A Concise Account of the Mode of Instructing in Needle-Work, as Practised in the Female Model School, Kildare Place Dublin. The work executed here would have taught these students the sewing skills they would have used at home or in the workplace, such as mending and constructing clothing and linens.

The Farnham School was located on the estate of Arley Cottage in the Parish of Ballymachugh in southern County Cavan, near Lough Sheelin. The school was named after the Farnham barony (then under John Maxwell-Barry, 5th Baron Farnham) whose seat was in Arley Cottage. By the mid 1830s the area was the site of a Sunday School and five daily schools, totaling about 228 female students.

This blank workbook was printed in Kildare Place, Dublin, headquarters of the Kildare Place Society (formally known as The Society for the Promotion of the Education of the Poor in Ireland), a philanthropic and largely Quaker organization established in 1811. The Society offered non-denominational Christian education for both men and women, provided educational grants, ran a teacher training institution in Dublin, and also printed standardized workbooks and textbooks, for both pupils and teachers, like this example. One of its prime aims was to help local schools by providing information and assistance for establishing schoolhouses, as well as providing qualified teachers. Although the Society's work was superseded after the creation of the National Board of Education in 1831, it was instrumental in establishing the rudiments of a national system of primary education in Ireland. The Society established a Female School at its Dublin headquarters in 1824 and, along with basic courses in reading and arithmetic, it placed a strong emphasis on the domestic arts and household management including cooking, laundry, housekeeping, and, as seen in this workbook, sewing and textile work. Blank needlework workbooks were also published under the auspices of the National Board of Education, but earlier books like this one clearly served as their model.

Examples of these workbooks are rare in the marketplace, and this one represents the earliest extant example we have been able to locate.