Embroidery, Wellbeing and Hair Oil!

Detail from great-grandma's tablecloth.

I received my National Trust magazine on Saturday and I opened it to find an article about a quilt made by volunteers at Killerton House in Devon. This gorgeous work of art, known as the Pride of Killerton, took two years to make and was created by volunteers. The Pride of Killerton quilt is decorated with images of apple trees as Killerton has its own orchards and makes cider from its apples (see our blog posts on cider-making and apple varieties). For more information on the quilt visit http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/article-1355854006193 

I was delighted to see the article because I volunteered at Killerton as a room steward several years ago and I loved spending time in the vintage clothing exhibition they have at the house. Many of the dresses on display were decorated with intricate and beautiful embroidery, representing many hours of painstaking work. For more on the Killerton fashion exhibition visit http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/killerton/things-to-see-and-do/events/exhibitions

Killerton House also has lovely gardens and serves excellent food so a visit to the house, and to other National Trust properties, is a great way to restore one’s feelings of wellbeing. October is the perfect time to visit as the trees are dressed in their autumn colours and there is nothing more restorative than a walk through woodland on bright and chilly day followed by afternoon tea. I have always felt thankful that the creation of the National Trust has provided access to this country’s most beautiful houses and gardens for everyone – a most civilised and British form of common ownership. In 1944 Sir Richard Acland (who was a socialist who believed in common ownership) donated Killerton House and gardens to the Trust. Sir Richard also sold some of the surrounding land to the Trust to raise money for the Common Wealth Party that he founded. I think that, perhaps, the National Trust today offers us Common Wellbeing – the opportunity to appreciate beauty both natural and man-made, to take exercise in the fresh air, to enjoy good food in attractive surroundings with our friends and to take time out from busy and stressful lives. It is also focal point for community activities, environmental conservation and volunteering – all of which are key aspects of wellbeing.

Creative hobbies also contribute to our wellbeing. Several of the embroidery techniques employed in making the Killerton quilt are described in our new book – Lillie London’s Needlework Book. The book includes lessons on embroidery, cutwork, appliqué and quilting, as well as over 80 projects from the 1930s. My grandmother (who was a skilled tailor and dressmaker) and my great-grandmother (who made some of the items in the photographs below) would have made the cushions, tablecloths, chairbacks, etc. from pre-stamped fabric kits that they bought by mail order. However, this is not to detract from the needlework skills they had to employ to produce such high quality results. The slideshow below shows examples of vintage embroidery created using the skills that are described in Lillie London’s Needlework Book.

By the way, the chairbacks were earlier known as antimacassars. Oiled hair was fashionable in Victorian and Edwardian times for both men and women and Macassar oil was often used to achieve the desired look.  It was so named because it was reputed to have been manufactured from ingredients (such as coconut or palm oil and ylang ylang oil to make it smell nice) purchased in the port of Makassar in Indonesia. However, it left nasty greasy marks on the back of chairs and sofas. Therefore, an antimacassar was used to protect upholstery as it was easier to remove the antimacassar and wash it than it was to clean your chair and sofa fabric. Antimacassars are still used on trains, planes and coaches today to preserve the life of the upholstery and for reasons of hygiene.

Vintage embroidered tablecloth. The crinolined lady was a popular motif and appears in our Lillie London Needlework Book.

Embroidered dressing table or ‘Duchess’ set.

Another dressing table set.

A pretty embroidered vintage tray cloth.

Embroidered linen napkins by my grandmother on another tablecloth worked by my great-grandmother.

Vintage appliqué and cutwork tray cloth or small tablecloth.

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A corner of a cut-work tablecloth embroidered by my great-grandmother.

The centre of the cut-work tablecloth made by my great-grandmother.

1865-1872 carte de visite photo of a fashionable young man in suit and tie by John Eastman Palmer, of 58 Union Street, Stonehouse, Plymouth, Devon, England. His hair is long enough to cover the top of his right ear, where it is oiled and swept back from the front.

What's on the Menu for your Chickens? Chicken Wisdom from 1918

I was really delighted to receive October’s edition of Your Chickens magazine yesterday as it includes a lovely review of our book on Poultry-Keeping by Jeremy Hobson (see below).

As Jeremy says, much of the advice given in Poultry-Keeping is as relevant today as it was when the book was first written in 1918. In fact, as I was flicking through the rest of Your Chickens I noticed a striking example of this. The magazine includes an article entitled ‘Are You Our Mother?’ about using a chicken to hatch turkey chicks. Our book includes a section on raising turkeys and the authors have the following to say about brooding turkey eggs:

Some breeders, Mr Cattell included, prefer putting the turkey eggs under fowls, allowing these to hatch them, and then transferring the day-old chicks at night to turkeys which have been broody about fourteen days. The turkeys usually take to the chicks all right, and certainly make the best mothers, as they find the youngsters so much natural food. An advantage of this plan is that as many as twenty-five turkey chicks can be given to one turkey hen to mother, and there is less risk of the eggs being crushed by a fowl than by a turkey, which is often a clumsy although a good sitter.

So, back in 1918 it was recognised practice to use chickens to brood turkey eggs, particularly where the turkey hen is a first-time mother.

Your Chickens magazine also includes adverts for modern chicken feed that includes all the nutrients chickens require to live healthy lives. In 1918 too, chicken keepers were very concerned to keep their chickens well-nourished. Poultry-Keeping provides extensive daily menus, which vary month by month, in order to ensure chickens had a varied diet that incorporated all the ingredients to keep the birds fit, well and laying successfully throughout the year. For example, in September and October the authors recommend that chickens kept in confined earth runs are fed:

SUNDAY, TUESDAY AND THURSDAY—Breakfast, 8 a.m., stout white oats or white Canadian peas. Dinner, 1 p.m., meat scraps and cooked vegetables, such as cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, or carrots, but not potatoes. Also green food each day. Last feed of day, at 5.30 p.m., to be wheat, if oats given at breakfast time; but if peas are given for breakfast, then let the last feed be oats.

MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY—Breakfast, soft food, biscuit and meat meal and fine bran; scald these together and let stand for a few minutes, then add sufficient middlings to make the whole crumbly. If biscuit and meat meal are not procurable, then use equal parts pea meal, ground oats, and fine bran, scalded, and dried off as above, and to this should be added a cup of granulated meat or meat greaves to every four cupfuls of meal, and this meal should be scalded well with boiling water before adding it to the meal and before the latter is scalded. When this is done, there will be no necessity to give cooked animal food at noon. The same applies to biscuit and meat meal. Dinner, green food, such as cabbage leaves or cauliflower leaves, hung up in the run about two feet from the ground. Last feed, oats, wheat, or peas, alternate nights, but do not give mixed.

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY—Soft food as on Monday; but should the weather be cold or wet add a handful or two of maize meal to the biscuit meal and bran before scalding—about half the quantity of the biscuit meal—and this must be allowed a little extra time to swell before adding the thirds or middlings.

It looks as though the early twentieth-century chicken keeper had to be a chef and run a restaurant for his fowls! It is much easier today when you can just open a sack of ready-mixed chicken feed. By the way, middlings are a by-product of the wheat milling industry – the coarse-ground wheat and bran that is left over after making flour – and meat greaves is an edible by-product of rendering animal carcases. Therefore, chicken-keepers in 1918 were feeding their birds the unprocessed leftovers that are today processed for inclusion in animal feed (which looks and smells a lot nicer than the basic ingredients from which it is made!).

A bronze turkey (one of many beautiful illustrations in our title Poultry-Keeping)