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Any of My Work For Sale

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During the second half of the Victorian era, the British soldier, when being conveyed to foreign shores, met with sailors and saw how they made their woolwork pictures. The same need to maintain uniforms meant that these soldiers were also skilled with needle and thread and so it was that they picked up on the idea of making woolwork pictures, initially copying the maritime output of the sailors but soon after developing their own styles.

An invalided soldier might supplement a meagre pension by making and selling such pictures, hence the two offered here. Inscribed in pencil along the fold of cotton at the stretcher edge ‘ANY OF MY WORK FOR SALE’. 

This pair of woolwork pictures, dating from around 1915, are probably soldier made rather than sailor, depicting RUSSIAN WAR-SHIP PERSVIET and H.M.S. BIRMINGHAM.

PERESVET was built at the Baltic Yard St. Petersburg in 1898 and launched in 1901. 

H.M.S. BIRMINGHAM was the lead ship of the Birmingham group of Town-Class Light Cruisers built for the Royal Navy. Laid down at Armstrong Whitworth, Elswick, in 1912 and launched May 1913.

Dimensions slightly at variance;

Both 22.75 in wide.

Birmingham 18.75 in high 

Peresvet 18 in high

 

Item Code: 4906

£ 2800

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