In the 18th and 19th centuries, young women from well to do New England families could attend academies where, in addition to traditional academic pursuits, they could learn forms of ornamental and decorative arts. At these schools, young women could be instructed in arts such as painting, waxwork, Japanning, painting on glass, quillwork, feather-work, and ornamental needlework. Among these endeavors, quillwork such as Mary Woodbury’s stands out, not only for its complexity and beauty, but from the sheer cost of the materials required to create one—on top of the cost of tuition. Brandy Culp, writing of the Wadsworth Athenaeum’s sconce, estimated that the cost of producing it could have been as much as $2000 in today’s money!

At its most basic, quillwork (also called quilling or quillery) is a process of rolling narrow strips of paper into tight or loose rolls either freehand or around a quill, gluing, then pinching the edges to make teardrops, eyes, and other shapes, pushing the centers up out of the rolls to create cone shapes, and then fashioning the tiny shapes together into elaborate designs like Mary’s. Although these days, paper can be purchased in long narrow strips and myriad colors to produce designs, things weren’t so easy for 18th century schoolgirls. In her Young Ladies School of Arts published in 1767, Hannah Robertson describes part of the process:

Filligree is very pretty work, and when executed with judgment, will last hundreds of years, and may be made to represent various figures such as beasts, birds, houses, flowers, trees, coats of arms, &c. The first thing proper to be done is to stain paper fit for the purposes with the various colours you chuse … when dry, let it be glazed over; then delivered to a book-binder to be gilded and cut in very narrow slips; after which your own judgment, or a pattern, will direct you, whether you intend for picture or glass frames, boxes, &c. … Take care not to let any of the glue fall on your work after the filligree is laid on; because it will dim the gilding …

Quillwork was just the beginning of Mary’s labors, however. The sparkling flowers each had to be fashioned petal by petal. Although the exact process is difficult to determine, artificial flowers at the time were fashioned of wax, gum Arabic, or isinglass. Other contemporary quillworks are embellished with wax figures, shells, and other materials (see “For further reading” for links to works in other institutional collections).

The intricacy and beauty of these quillwork pieces belie the age of the maker. According to Hannah Robertson, “I know it by experience, that a child of eight or nine years of age will learn to make flowers better than at any time of life, and will learn their sowing [sewing] better at ten and eleven than sooner.” We’re not sure exactly how old Mary was when she created her sconce, but probably younger than one would think.

Who was Mary Woodbury?

Mary Woodbury was born in Beverly, Massachusetts in 1717, the daughter of Josiah and Lydia (Herrick) Woodbury, both descendants of founding families on the North Shore of Massachusetts. In 1737, she married Dr. Benjamin Jones of Beverly, a prominent physician. Mary died one day shy of her birthday in 1748, leaving four children under the age of 10. Her husband remarried twice, yet held on to her sconce and other artworks, which were then passed down through the family of their daughter Lydia and given to the MHS in 1931.