In days gone by, all household linen was embroidered with the family initials or with the name of the young women of the house. There are several reasons for this: the tradition exists for practical reasons as much as for symbolic ones.
First of all, embroidering linen was part of a young woman's education. As she learned to embroider, she built up her trousseau through her adolescence. Then she married and left the family home carrying her embroidered trousseau, which held the bed linen, the bath linen, the tablecloths, the handkerchiefs, and in the nineteenth century came napkins, tea towels, aprons... It was a kind of dowry. So every young woman learned to embroider. Depending on their social class, some made a profession of it and went on to embroider the linen of noble families. Putting that trousseau together was therefore, symbolically, the passage from childhood to adulthood and the "preparation" for leaving the nest!
The practical reasons rest on the fact that the linen had to be told apart during the great spring washes that the servants took care of. When all the sheets had been washed and hung out to dry, there could be no getting into a muddle! That way the different family or household trousseaux never got mixed up. A distinction is made between marking and embroidery: marking means embroidering the initials (the practical side), while embroidery is ornamental, there to decorate and to underline social standing. It can be added on top of or around the marking. Among the nobility this craft was carried on and the linen was handed down. In country houses you often come across pieces embroidered with the initials of ancestors, on tea towels in particular.
Later on, the trousseau having rather gone out of fashion, the tradition carried on for practical reasons. On clothes above all: at nursery, at boarding school, at summer camp or at school, children are asked to have their clothes marked so they do not get mixed up. Sometimes a label is sewn in with the first name and surname, sometimes it is embroidered straight onto the garment.
Today, old embroidered linen is sought after more and more and turns up regularly at antique fairs, all the more so because the pieces were of such quality that they have often barely aged!
Photo: Diane Moulenc
