Objects made by previous generations of women should be valued more highly
Domestic crafts do not build monuments to their makers, nor do they create wealth, and too often they have not survived. In consequence, the domestic crafts produced by mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers in New Zealand are often overlooked. But needlework should be preserved, for it helps to convey a sense of people's identity and past beliefs in these remote islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Women of previous generations expected to sew; they had to dress their families in an item when few people could afford to buy what they were capable of making. For some women this work may have been unwelcome drudgery, but for others it was an opportunity to explore their identities, beliefs and dreams with the only means readily at hand-a needle, some thread, and a piece of fabric.
Textiles are frustrating to collect. They are fragile; they stain; they develop rust marks; they fray and rot. If they are used, they deteriorate; yet if they are merely stored, the owner does not fully enjoy the pleasure of possession. That is probably why they have not been a popular thing to collect compared, for example, to antique furniture or fine china, which are more durable investments. It is also true that domestic crafts are seldom signed. We like signatures because we can more readily assign value-and high prices-if we can identify the maker. But most women at this time would never have considered signing their work. They were not expecting it to be seen outside their homes, where the creator's identity was never in doubt. And they probably did not even expect it to last very long.
It does not help that such work falls into the category of crafts either, rather than fine arts, because crafts are looked on too often as a poor cousin to true creativity. Worse, they are made in a domestic context, so do not belong in the consciously elevated tradition of craft objects which compete with the arts, such as furniture. If things are made to be useful, especially only within the home and by ordinary housewives, we seem to have agreed they cannot be art. Why not?
It might be argued that the collector of textiles is a little like an archaeologist. Archaeology is a combination of history and detective work, and it involves treasure that is often beautiful. Likewise, digging for the past is what textile collectors do in junk shops, and the objects they find are a way of understanding the past through physical evidence.
The domestic crafts of this period, the 1930-1950, cannot be separated from the women's magazines that were so popular at the time. The purpose of these publications was to allow women to glimpse how more prosperous people lived, by showing them photographs of the interiors of their houses. In these days before television, magazines provided realistic and achievable inducements to social betterment. In parallel to this, women were provided with much more down-to-earth and useful means of improving their homes in the form of printed patterns, which were readily available from fabric shops at low cost from the 1920s and 1930s onwards. Mostly, such patterns were for everyday items that fulfilled some domestic often keep-officials from their purpose - aprons, tea cosies, curtains, bedspreads, chair covers and the like. With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to distinguish this regulated tradition of needlework, governed by printed patterns, from the more individual work that women dreamed up themselves and whose form and execution were reflections of their own ideal and imagination. Although both schools have their merits, it is surely the latter tradition that will provide the collector with the greatest enjoyment. Most intriguing of all is work which suggests serendipity, even a certain element of chance, the piece having taken on a life of its own, determined perhaps by what resources were available at the time and the skill levels of the item's maker. When it comes to needlework, flaws can be enjoyable, even failure may bring pleasure, and in this respect needlework can be contrasted with other art forms, where successful completion is paramount.
Some people collect out of a sense of nostalgia, a desire to evoke a comforting time that seems gentler than the present. But nostalgia should not always be trusted as it can be a sanitised form of history that blots out harsh reality. However, if a certain degree of nostalgia can be felt for the fabrics of the past, it is because they remind us of the care and attention with which women selected them. The texture of certain abstract patterned fabrics from the 1950s has the power to transport us all back to the dress and fabric shops of that time where women agonised over which choices to make, though they probably loved every minute of it. Old patchwork quilts in particular are evocative, because they represent an unknown family's compressed history: pyjamas, ball gowns, smart summer frocks, school dresses, all thrown together, a veritable of decorative traditions, past ceremonies and dreams. Women of the past would often keep offcuts their dressmaking and use them for patchwork, as a means of recording their family's story for others to appreciate.
These may sound like nostalgic thoughts, but we should also remember how hard women's lives were, that family life was not always idyllic, and that having no money was no fun. Such fabrics, then, should be seen as a wish for ideals and imaginations, although both something better, a way of daydreaming about a life that would turn out well in the end.