Monday, March 6, 2017

Beaded Baskets - A Series!

New Unmarked Basket - Bonhams Lot 353 15 March 2017
Last year I remember talking in the blog about the beaded basket of my friend, Anita Schorsch, that was up for auction and matched a basket that was in the V&A collection.  Both were marked with the names of the maker and were made in the same year, 1659.

V&A Basket - Worked by Sarah Gvrnall Avgust 24 1659
Amazingly another basket has come up for auction next week at Bonhams and it matches these two.  It took a bit of investigation of the pictures to realize that it was NOT the same basket and we had found a third in the series!  If you look closely, the three baskets have the same bead colors, but the girls put the colors in different places on the motifs.  That is the telling difference.   This is fantastic and shows how there were teaching pieces or kits being worked together by many people at the same time with some level of individual choice in application of the bead colors, and in the case of the one below, some larger beads being inserted into rows like pokka-dots.   Spend some time going back and forth between the three - you will see the similarities and the differences!  And if you have quite a bit of money to spare, you can own one of them in a few days.
Anita's Basket - Worked by Mary Blomfield Anno 1659


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