1940s Cotton Handkerchief of Young Women Athletes

1946. Near Fine. Colorful and fun handkerchief depicting young women, college aged, playing tennis, basketball, and golf, riding horses, running and swimming. The single exception is a vignette of two women lying comfortable in a tree's shade, both reading a book, a Greek colonnaded building, suggestive of a university building, in the background. N.d., but from the hair styles and fashion clearly from the 1940s, and probably from just after the end of the Second World War. The design of the hankie is a deft and seamless collage. Supplementing the figurative vignettes of the active women -- we would say there are seven separate such vignettes, each with one or two women engaged in the particular activity -- the tree that forms the center is dotted with small vignettes of objects integral to some of the activities -- tennis racquets, golf clubs, books. Acting to separate the larger figurative vignettes from one another are enlarged abstracted oak leaves which we believe are deliberately shaped to suggest swans. This being a hankie celebrating active vigorous women, men may be absent from the artwork but are of clearly on the minds of the nubile women, as suggested by the carved initials and heart on the tree trunk! The hankie is about 50 cm square, or not quite 20 inches square. We do not know who made this hankie, nor how many might have been made. Surely there are few, if any, survivals of it. We spot two tiny pinprick holes in the fabric. Nothing of the design is lost, and the colors remain vibrant. (Inventory #: 20026)