Textile Folk Art

“Woolies”

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Produced from around the 1830′s, sailor’s woolwork illustrations, known as “Woolies” continued to be popular into the beginning of the 20^th century. Like scrimshaw – the art of carving and illustrating ivory, whalebone and Sperm Whale teeth – woolwork was the result of sailors attempting to fill their idle time with an activity that was both creative and occasionally lucrative. Although sailors made Woolies and other mementos of ships on which they served for themselves and loved ones ashore there is no doubt they also sold these objects to augment meagre wages.

Most Woolies are naïve representations of ships at sea incorporating many standard stitches, cross-stitch, chain stitch, long stitch and “trapunto” – borrowed from quilting and darning. Sailors acquired their stitching skills from the need to repair sails and, as uniforms were not standard until quite late in the 19^th century, their own clothing.

Woolies were rarely signed so we know little about the artists, most of whom would have been illiterate, but the ships were usually named somewhere within the work which was also occasionally dated. Unfortunately new owners often changed the name of a vessel when they acquired it; shipyards built several vessels of the same class, with the same name and owners often commissioned replacement vessels with the same name as a predecessor. With the introduction of steam many sailing ships were converted, adding to the confusion and making positive identification of a particular ship even more difficult. Stitches can be a guide to dating, as long stitch was rarely used before 1840, but because almost no contemporary literature on Woolies exists dating undated Woolies will always be a problem.

The schooner Caledonia, depicted in this Woolie, is probably one of several schooners named “Caledonia” built at Dunbarton, Scotland during the second half of the 19^th century.

For further reading see “Woolies – The Art Of The British Sailor by Paul Vandekar.

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