The perfectly embroidered Victorian Home

Chances are that you smiled at the title as it conjured up the picture of the prim Victorian housewife in her perfectly cleaned home where the furniture and the floors gleamed, and the antimacassars were all carefully placed on the padded armchairs. Chances are you also envisioned a number of samplers carefully hung on the walls too. If you have Victorian home lovers in your gift list, many of these items will please enormously!

First, what in the heck are antimacassars? Well, those were the lace and cloth that dutiful Victorian wives placed on the backs of any padded furniture to prevent “Macassar” unguents used on men’s hair from everlastingly disfiguring the permanent upholstery. Those who revere the Victorian “look” now search for those to complete their parlors! Many of them were carefully embroidered with flowers and other dainty works of embroidery.

Interestingly enough the Victorian home did not always have thick draperies, in fact often they were made out of scrim. The biggest point was that any and all draperies had to give complete and utter privacy so that not one portion of the window could be seen. Often Victorian drapes were ornamented by beautiful appliqués that had been embroidered and thus provided the ornamentation that seemed to be necessary for a proper Victorian feel. You will find that most of these appliqués were rather large, as much as 3 ½ inches across and usually consisted of careful work detailing a flower, though multiple flowers were also common on appliqués. A type of ecru linen drape was often used as an underdrape too, and at times it too had embroidery on it, though not as bright, using a more understated coloring.

Portieres were common then too. Basically this is a doorway curtain that can be pulled closed to keep the heat in one room when it is cold in other portions of the house. Most of these had a repeated pattern embroidered on them, or at least had a border of embroidery at the very bottom of the portiere. Deep reds, dark golds, deep blues, and black were often used as colors for portieres. Crewel type stitches were often used when embroidered.

Dresser scarves were of course “de rigueur” for dressers, and even today no Victorian bedroom is complete without dresser scarves. It would not have been proper either to use a dresser scarf that did not have a modicum of embroidery on it, and even heavily embroidered pieces were often seen.

Along similar lines of dresser scarves, were the ubiquitous mantel drapes. Mantel drapes were especially used around Christmas times, since the Christmas tree skirt and the mantel drapes frequently matched and all were of course, carefully embroidered!

You may not even be aware of this, but most of the picture frames in a Victorian home were covered in material that had…you guessed it, a load of embroidery on it! Whereas we keep our pictures in albums, pictures were not that plentiful in Victorian times, and were therefore to be highly cherished, thus even the frames were carefully embroidered.

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