Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Thanksgiving Embroidered

Last weekend I attended an antiques show in Minneapolis. There I picked up a copy of the November 2006 issue of "Old Times," a free newspaper about antiques. This issue has a cover story on the three-panel "Churchmen of the New World" embroidery at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis.

The embroidery is 16.5 feet by 25 feet and took three years between 1971–1974 to complete. The center panel depicts the original Thanksgiving feast. The design is based on a watercolor by the English illustrator Pauline Baynes. Beneath the scene are the words "After God had carried us safe to New England and we had reared convenient places for God's worship one of the next things we looked for was to advance learning."

Today I was surprised to find that I have a postcard of this embroidery—I have no idea when I got it. The card has a copyright date of 1971 and shows dates of 1971 and 1972 on the picture (the newspaper picture shows a date of 1974 instead of 1972). A closeup detail is shown at left. Apparently the dogs were included because the illustrator liked dogs.




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