My happiest surprise find of the week, at an antiques shop in southern Maine--this is quite a marvelous and special feeling thing. The embroidery--hand-dyed silk thread on laid paper--is an early one, early 19th century I believe, depicting my personal favorite Biblical scene, "the Visitation," when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visits her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. The scene is wonderfully, tenderly depicted here, the two heads of the two women touching, and hands crossing, with Elizabeth placing one hand on the belly of Mary, in blue. And what a sense of life blooming, with flowers and vines  lavishly encircling them on all sides.

l presume the adjustable brass pole screen is original to it, with the embroidery sandwiched behind glass on either side; certainly the screen is 19th century, but not my expertise! A screen like this would I believe have been used to protect a woman's face from the heat of the fire--with the scale of this one suggesting it would be be set on a table or vanity rather than on the ground--and I would  guess, with its subject matter, that this one was made to live in a lady's chambers.

Difficult to photograph, this is much better in person, with softer and finer color to the embroidery than photos convey, and paper less yellow and rippled than photos suggest.  The glass on one side cleanly cracked into three pieces at some point, but is stable.  It also appears to me that the oval frame holding the embroidery could fairly easily be removed from the stand if desired; it is just two screws attaching them, as detailed. I love it just as it is, including for the marriage of form and content: the virgin on a screen (a veil, of sorts) broadcasting chastity, even while a screen like this seems to have been all about vanity, too. 

Oval frame: 7 3/4" x 6 3/4". Embroidery sight: 7 1/2" x 6 1/4". Overall: 20 3/4" t at lowest x 4 1/4" across at base of stand. Notes about condition in paragraph above. The embroidery itself is overall in very good condition, with some toning and edge rippling to the paper, but less pronounced in person.