Let The Hand Be Seen

My latest piece was inspired by the exhibit “Karin Larsson: Let The Hand Be Seen” at the Swedish American Museum. Karin Larsson was the wife of the Swedish artist Carl Larsson, and it’s as much her textile work as his paintings that “came to shape the country’s national identity” as a recent article in the New York Times Style Magazine* put it.

The exhibit included recreations of Karin’s textiles, which were impressive, and I snapped pictures of some of them.

This picture is from the New York Times article* and shows the original weaving in situ.

At the exhibit, I was also taken with the cross-stitch lettering that appeared on the signs and on embroidery hoops throughout the exhibit.

This sign explains the origin of the title of the exhibit, “While helping weave mats for the Larsson family home, one local weaver made a mistake to which Karin simply said, go on…the hand should be seen.”  It almost begged me to embroider it! When I transferred the letters from the sign to graph paper, I realized they were too big to embroider on 20 count linen, so I adapted them, and I added a border on top so it would work in the frame I found for it. I thought it was ironic that as I was stitching, I was fixing any mistakes I made, so when I realized I had miscounted both when graphing and stitching the border, I decided not to take it out and redo it.

I mentioned a putchase from the Ukranian National Museum in a previous post, but I don’t think I mentioned that while I was there I also bought two boxes of vintage DMC embroidery thread from a “make us an offer” basket. I was surprised when I took out the black thread to use on the “Alternative to Appropriation” piece to find that it had four rather than six strands. I also found while stitching this piece that it left a bit of red on the linen when I removed stitches – another reason for leaving the border as it was.

This piece also seems like it belongs on the workroom shelves.

*The Hand-Embellished Countryside HomesThat Helped Define Scandinavian Style” Nancy Hass, New York Times Style Magazine 3/20/25