cardboard; cotton; polished cotton (faded); paper backings on beadwork; glass seed beads size 12?: clear, translucent red and golden/mustard, greasy blue; blue bugle beads, larger black beads for the owls eyes; cotton thread.

Cardboard covered with cotton, sewn together. Decorated with raised beadwork. Fringe at the bottom.

It is decorated with five-petaled flowers and small trefoils in clear and blue beads, similar to the light blue of forget-me-nots. Vines run vertically on both sides, adding a colourful and fresh contrast to the faded beige cotton base upon which they are sewn. In the space at the top sit two owls, leaning into each other like old friends. Along the bottom, a message is beaded: the date “1893,” stitched along the bottom is the phrase “Remember Me”.

Some of the clear beads are irregularly shaped. On the back of the frame, the names of three women are written: - Mrs. Pr?ck? Hill // Helen Hill // Mrs. Mt. Pleasant. The looped fringe along the bottom is decorated with tubular beads called sprengperlen, which were manufactured in Bohemia, in factories that closed in 1917. Beaded photograph frames were most commonly made between 1870 and the 1930s. The applique and raised beadwork styles, the colourful choices in beads, the floral and animal motifs, the messages and dates – these are all characteristics of the beadwork of souvenir arts, created for the Victorian tourist trade. The date beaded on the frame made by Mrs. Henry – 1893 – places it within a particular stylistic period of beadwork which art historian Beverly Gordon has called “Baroque.”

The year 1893 is beaded on the frame.

In Beverly Gordon’s study, she examined 24 frames in total, three of which were attributed to the period when Mrs. Esther Henry’s was made, 1881-1900. Beverly Gordon, "The Niagara Falls Whimsey: The Object as Symbol of Cultural Interface," (PhD Diss., University of Wisconson-Madison, 1984).

This record was made during a GRASAC and dissertation research visit to the Woodland Cultural Centre, July 4-8 2011.

Researchers present: Stacey Loyer and Joanna Miller.