Pincushion

Description:

Cream-colored dress silk pincushion made by Eliza Lucas [Pinckney] as a young girl. It is stuffed with a tightly packed mixture of various types of animal fur, primarily rabbit and sheep. The silk is a slight ribbed plain weave with evidence of a self-colored float pattern of florals. The front is studded with wrapped-head pins. On the reverse is a needlecase formed of a flap of the same silk and stiffened with cardboard. There is a small portion of a brocaded green-and-cream leaf. The edges are bound in bright red thread and the inside of the needlecase is a light pink plain-woven silk.

Eliza Lucas was raised in Antigua on Cabbage Palm Plantation, a sugar plantation in the British colonial "West Indies.? At age 10, she was sent to Mrs. Pearson?s boarding school in London, England. There she would have created this pincushion, marked "C B / EL / FEB / 1736" with a central palm tree ? likely a cabbage palm in honor of her home.