Textiles of Lithgow: Handmade to Factory Industry
To celebrate the Shared Stories theme of this year’s National Trust Heritage Festival, Eskbank House Museum has developed an exhibition of textile related collection objects including samplers and embroidery, underwear and handbags, blankets and quilts, tools and machinery.
The exhibition will run from 11 April to the end of 4 June 2023 and feature the nationally significant Sutton/Leake Crazy Patchwork Quilt, handmade c.1893 by members of the Leake family in Pennsylvania, USA and brought to Australia by David Leake in 1924 for his daughter Emma Sutton (nee Leake) to celebrate the birth of her first child.
Other objects relating to Emma Sutton and family will be on display and include hand embroidered pillow cases, a handmade evening bag and another beautiful evening bag with a tortoiseshell handle. Also on exhibition is a sewing Sampler by Sarah Wildgoose, aged 8 in 1852. Usually hung the Child’s Bedroom, this framed needlework will be displayed in the courtyard gallery area for up close inspection by visitors.
Many objects from the Lithgow Woollen Mills, Andrew Brown inscribed books presented to school children, corsetry from the Berlei textile factory and many handmade and repaired items of clothing.