Rare 17th-Century Paper Cuttings Survive to Tell a Heartwarming Tale

The Little Chamber at Sutton House.

© National Trust Images/Dennis Gilbert

Every collector dreams of unearthing something interesting from the dust of an old house. When the house in question has been in use since the 1500s, you might find something especially rare. Sutton House was built in Hackney, now a borough of London, England, in 1535 for Ralph Sadler, secretary to Thomas Cromwell and later Secretary of State to Henry VIII. Today, it is a museum owned by the National Trust. It has served many purposes throughout its history, including a girls’ school in the mid-1600s, which is really where our story begins.

One of the most recent finds at the house is a small collection of tiny papercrafts, now on display until December. The carefully cut pictures, one decorated with scraps of silk and a miniature folded star, are believed to have been made by students in the 17th century.

Paper cuttings at Sutton House.

© National Trust images/James Dobson

Paper cutting was a popular craft at the time, especially for women and girls. Its influence is seen in more recent crafts like decoupage, scrapbooking, and paper dolls. In her book, The Gentlewoman’s Companion, a book on household management published c. 1670, author Hannah Woolley included “cutting of Prints, and adorning Rooms, or Cabinets, or Stands with them” among popular crafts like “all works wrought with a Needle, all Transparent works, Shell-work, Moss-work.” Woolley may have taught these arts at Sutton House.

These little scraps of paper were discovered by volunteers sorting through bags of scraps left over from a renovation in the 1980s. Ephemera collectors know that paper collectibles are extremely fragile and easily damaged by anything from light to heat to fumes to touch. Most paper collectibles, like labels or postcards, were meant to be used briefly and then discarded; that’s what “ephemera” means. But these cutouts were extraordinarily well preserved, including the tiny, intricate shapes, the hand-applied colors, and even the 17th-century spellings identifying the birds in the pictures as a “Nightingail” and “Hean.”

A close-up of a 17th-century papercutting depicting a hen.

© National Trust Images/James Dobson

Of course, we don’t know the names of the students who made the cuttings, how old they were, or if they made them for a lesson or for leisure, but these paper cuttings provided tiny, precious glimpses into people’s lives of more than 300 years ago.

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