Agnes Richter (1844–1918) was a Victorian-era seamstress who is remembered for an embroidered jacket she made while being held in Heidelberg psychiatric hospital.
Pieced together from brown wool and coarse institutional linen, the jacket is covered in deutsche schrift, a script which has largely fallen out of use.
The lines of red, yellow, blue, orange, and white threaded text are difficult to read, overlapping and obscured through continual use.
[2] Embracing these technologies in a manner, Richter assembled a jacket that now bear the marks of its use, including sweat stains and a darted back that may have been meant to accommodate a physical deformity or hunchback.
Similar examples of asylum artistry from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries include Lorina Bulwer's samplers[5] and Myrllen's Coat.