SHIRLEY — The art and craft of textile work was central to the lives of early New England women, providing not only protection for the body and comfort for the home, but a representation of status and even a form of financial investment. Fashion and textile historian Lynne Z. Bassett will discuss a variety of “plain” and “fancy” needlework and the labor that produced it from about 1700 to 1850 at 2 p.
m. Sunday, Oct. 20, at the Shirley Historical Society Museum, 182 Center Road.
Items from the Lawton family textiles held by the Shirley Historical Society will be examined following a PowerPoint presentation. Bassett is an independent scholar specializing in New England’s historic costume and textiles. From 1995 until 2000 she was the curator of textiles and fine arts at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge.
She has been the guest curator of costumes and textiles for the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Conn. She holds a B.A.
in American studies from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. in costume and textile history from the University of Connecticut.
Her work with the Shirley Historical Society has been funded by the Anderson Foundation. For more information on this event, or other Shirley Historical Society events, visit shirleyhistory.org.
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