Modèles à Broder – TWENTY ALPHABETS
M-YS006 Modèles à Broder
French title, but text of several motifs is German. Twenty alphabets, some numbers, and recurring numbers 6 12 and 24. No indication whatsoever of publisher or publication date.
Scans donated and edited by Sytske Wijnsma.
Rarely has there been so little information about a publication, and that little is contradictory. If I had to guess, I’d say that these alphabets were designed in Germany, as they look like the simpler Heinrich Kuehn alphabets, but it can’t be more than a guess. The alphabets are sized for marking linens, simple, straightforward, not complicated and fairy small. I think I have seen a flannel shirt once marked with the same letter H as on page 11, at the center front right under the collar, where it could be seen if the shirt had been folded up. That was on ebay, I saved the image but can’t find it now. The numbers would be used to mark the towels and napkins in a trousseau, from 1 to however many there might be, so they could be counted when sent out for washing. I have a damast towel that’s marked 65 that must have been from a rich household, even nowadays when textiles are cheap there won’t be many households that own so many identical towels. Usually there were a few rolls of linen in the linen cupboard to make more towels when they wore out, but this 65 was made before the first towel ever got any use, or there’d been no reason to have the numbers go so high.