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Fig. 10.—Sampler by Charlotte Brontë.Dated 1829.Mr Clement Shorter.
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Fig. 11.—Sampler by Emily Jane Brontë.Dated 1829.Mr Clement Shorter.
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Fig. 12.—Sampler by Anne Brontë.Dated 1830.Mr Clement Shorter.
But the lengthiest task of all was set to six poor little mortals in the Orphans’ School, near Calcutta, in Bengal, East Indies. These wrought six samplers “by the direction of Mistress Parker,” dividing between them the longest chapter in the Bible, namely, the 119th Psalm. It was evidently a race against time, for on each is recorded the date of its commencement and finish, being accomplished by them between the 14th of February and the 23rd of June 1797. At the top of each is a view of a different portion of the school; one of these is reproduced inFig. 3.
Returning to the chronological aspect of sampler inscriptions. As the eighteenth century advances we find verses coming more and more into fashion, although at first they are hardly distinguishable from prose, as, for instance, in the following of 1718:—
“You ask me why I love, go ask the glorius son, why it throw the world doth run, ask time and fat [fate?] the reason why it flow, ask dammask rosees why so full they blow, and all things elce suckets fesh which forceeth me to love. By this you see what car my parents toock of me. Elizabeth Matrom is my name, and with my nedell I rought the same, and if my judgment had beene better, I would have mended every letter. And she that is wise, her time will pris (e), she that will eat her breakfast in her bed, and spend all the morning in dressing of her head, and sat at deaner like a maiden bride, God in His mercy may do much to save her, but what a cas is he in that must have her. Elizabeth Matrom. The sun sets, the shadows fleys, the good consume, and the man he deis.”
“You ask me why I love, go ask the glorius son, why it throw the world doth run, ask time and fat [fate?] the reason why it flow, ask dammask rosees why so full they blow, and all things elce suckets fesh which forceeth me to love. By this you see what car my parents toock of me. Elizabeth Matrom is my name, and with my nedell I rought the same, and if my judgment had beene better, I would have mended every letter. And she that is wise, her time will pris (e), she that will eat her breakfast in her bed, and spend all the morning in dressing of her head, and sat at deaner like a maiden bride, God in His mercy may do much to save her, but what a cas is he in that must have her. Elizabeth Matrom. The sun sets, the shadows fleys, the good consume, and the man he deis.”
More than one proposal has been made, in all seriousness, during the compilation of this volume, that it would add enormously to its interest and value if every inscription that could be found upon samplers were herein set out at length. It is needless to say that it has been altogether impossible to entertain such a task. It is true that the feature of samplers which, perhaps, interests and amuses persons most is the quaint and incongruous legends that so many of them bear, but I shall, I believe, have quite sufficiently illustrated this aspect of the subject if I divide it into various groups, and give a few appropriate examples of each. These may be classified under various headings.
These are, perhaps, more frequent than any others. Especially is this the case with those referring to Easter, which is again and again the subject of one or other of the following verses:—
“The holy feast of Easter was injoinedTo bring Christ’s Resurrection to our Mind,Rise then from Sin as he did from the Grave,That by his Merits he your Souls may save.“White robes were worn in ancient Times they say,And gave Denomination to this DayBut inward Purity is required mostTo make fit Temples for the Holy Ghost.”Mary Wilmot, 1761.
Or the following:—
“See how the lilies flourish wite and faire,See how the ravens fed from heaven are;Never distrust thy God for cloth and breadWhile lilies flourish and the Raven’s fed.”Mary Heaviside, 1735.
Or the variation set out onFig. 19.
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Plate VI.—Portion of Sampler by Elizabeth Creasey.Dated 1686.The Late Mr A. Tuer.
This Sampler, of which only the upper half is reproduced, is remarkable not only for the decorative qualities of its design but for its perfect state of preservation. It consists, besides the four rows which are seen, of one other in which the drawn work is subservient in quantity to the embroidery, and of seven rows in which the reverse is the case. The inscription, which is set out below, alternates in rows with those of the design. The butter colour of the linen ground is well reproduced in the plate. The original measures 32×8.INSCRIPTION.“Look Well to that thou takest inHand Its Better Worth Then houseOr Land When Land is gone andMoney is spent Then learning is most ExcelentLet vertue Be Thy guide and it will keep the out of pride Elizabeth CreaseyHer work Done in the year 1686.”
This Sampler, of which only the upper half is reproduced, is remarkable not only for the decorative qualities of its design but for its perfect state of preservation. It consists, besides the four rows which are seen, of one other in which the drawn work is subservient in quantity to the embroidery, and of seven rows in which the reverse is the case. The inscription, which is set out below, alternates in rows with those of the design. The butter colour of the linen ground is well reproduced in the plate. The original measures 32×8.
INSCRIPTION.“Look Well to that thou takest inHand Its Better Worth Then houseOr Land When Land is gone andMoney is spent Then learning is most ExcelentLet vertue Be Thy guide and it will keep the out of pride Elizabeth CreaseyHer work Done in the year 1686.”
As also in that by Kitty Harison, in our illustration,Fig. 13.
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Fig. 13.—Easter Sampler by Kitty Harison. Dated 1770.
The Christmas verse is usually:—
“Glory to God in the Highest”;
but an unusual one is that in Margaret Fiddes’s sampler, 1773:—
“The Night soon past, it ran so fast. The DayCame on Amain. Our Sorrows Ceast Our HopesEncreast once more to Meet again A Star appearsExpells all Fears Angels give Kings toKnow A Babe was sent With that intent toConquer Death below.”
Ascension Day is marked by:—
“The heavens do now retain our LordUntil he come again,And for the safety of our soulsHe there doth still remain.And quickly shall our King appearAnd take us by the handAnd lead us fully to enjoyThe promised Holy Land.”Sarah Smith, 1794.
Whilst Passion Week is recognisable in:—
“Behold the patient Lamb, before his shearer stands,” etc.
The Crucifixion itself, although it is portrayed frequently in German samplers (examples in The Fine Art Society’s Exhibition were dated 1674, 1724, and 1776), is seldom, if ever, found in English ones, but for Good Friday we have the lines:—
“Alas and did my Saviour bleedFor such a worm as I?”
Amongst all the verses that adorn samplers there were none which apparently commended themselves so much as those that dedicated the work to Christ. The lines usually employed are so familiar as hardly to need setting out, but they have frequent varieties. The most usual is:—
“Jesus permit thy gracious name to standAs the first Effort of young Phoebe’s handAnd while her fingers on this canvas moveEngage her tender Heart to seek thy LoveWith thy dear Children let her Share a PartAnd write thy name thyself upon her Heart.”Harriot Phoebe Burch, aged 7 years, 1822.
A variation of this appears in the much earlier piece of Lora Standish (Fig. 43).
Another, less common, but which again links the sampler with a religious aspiration, runs:—
“Better by Far for MeThan all the Simpsters ArtThat God’s commandments beEmbroider’d on my Heart.”Mary Cole, 1759.
Verses to be used upon rising in the morning or at bedtime are not unfrequent; the following is the modest prayer of Jane Grace Marks (1807).
“If I am right, oh teach my heartStill in the right to stay,If I am wrong, thy grace impartTo find that better way.”
But one in my possession loses, by its ludicrousness, all the impressiveness which was intended:—
“Oh may thy powerful wordInspire a breathing wormTo rush into thy kingdom LordTo take it as by storm.Oh may we all improveThy grace already givenTo seize the crown of loveAnd scale the mount of heaven.”Sarah Beckett, 1798.
Lastly, a prayer for the teacher:—
“Oh smile on those whose liberal careProvides for our instruction here;And let our conduct ever proveWe’re grateful for their generous love.”Emma Day, 1837.
The fact that “Religion never was designed to make our pleasures less” appears seldom or never to have entered into the minds of those who set the verses for young sampler workers. From the earliest days when they plied their needle their thoughts were directed to the shortness of life and the length of eternity, and many a healthy and sweet disposition must have run much chance of being soured by the morbid view which it was forced to take of the pleasures of life. For instance, a child of seven had the task of broidering the following lines:—
“And now my soul another yearOf thy short life is pastI cannot long continue hereAnd this may be my last.”
And one, no older, is made to declare that:—
“Thus sinners trifle, young and old,Until their dying day,Then would they give a world of goldTo have an hour to pray.”
Or:—
“Our father ate forbidden Fruit,And from his glory fell;And we his children thus were broughtTo death, and near to hell.”
Or again:—
“There’s not a sin that we commitNor wicked word we sayBut in thy dreadful book is writAgainst the judgment day.”
A child was not even allowed to wish for length of days. Poor little Elizabeth Raymond, who finished her sampler in 1789, in her eighth year, had to ask:—
“Lord give me wisdom to direct my waysI beg not riches nor yet length of daysMy life is a flower, the time it hath to lastIs mixed with frost and shook with every blast.”
A similar idea runs through the following:—
“Gay dainty flowers go simply to decay,Poor wretched life’s short portion flies away;We eat, we drink, we sleep, but lo anonOld age steals on us never thought upon.”
Not less lugubrious is Esther Tabor’s sampler, who, in 1771, amidst charming surroundings of pots of roses and carnations, intersperses the lines:—
“Our days, alas, our mortal daysAre short and wretched tooEvil and few the patriarch saysAnd well the patriarch knew.”
A very common verse, breathing the same strain, is:—
“Fragrant the rose, but it fades in timeThe violet sweet, but quickly past the PrimeWhite lilies hang their head and soon decayAnd whiter snow in minutes melts awaySuch and so with’ring are our early joysWhich time or sickness speedily destroys.”
And the melancholy which pervades the verse on the sampler of Elizabeth Stockwell (Fig. 14) is hardly atoned for by the brilliant hues in which the house is portrayed.
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Plate VII.—Sampler by Hannah Dawe.17th Century.Formerly in the Author’s Collection.
This is a much smaller specimen than we are wont to find in “long” Samplers, for it measures only 18 × 7¼. It differs also from its fellows in that the petals of the roses in the second and third of the important bands are in relief and superimposed. The rest of the decoration, on the other hand, partakes much more of an outline character than is usual. As a specimen of a seventeenth-century Sampler it leaves little to be desired. It is signed Hannah Dawe.
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Fig. 14.—Sampler by Elizabeth Stockwell. 1832.The late Mr A. Tuer.
The gruesomeness of the grave is forcibly brought to notice in a sampler dated 1736:—
“When this you see, remember me,And keep me in your mind;And be not like the weathercockThat turn att every wind.When I am dead, and laid in grave,And all my bones are rotten,By this may I remembered beWhen I should be forgotten.”
Ann French put the same sentiment more tersely in the lines:—
“This handy work my friends may haveWhen I am dead and laid in grav.” 1766.
It is a relief to turn to the quainter and more genuine style of Marg’t Burnell’s verse taken from Quarles’s “Emblems,” and dated 1720:—
“Our life is nothing but a winters day,Some only breake their fast, & so away,Others stay dinner, & depart full fed,The deeper age but sups and goes to bed.Hee’s most in debt, that lingers out the day,Who dyes betimes, has lesse and lesse to pay.”
This verse has crossed the Atlantic, and figures on American samplers.
But the height of despair was not reached until the early years of the nineteenth century, when “Odes to Passing Bells,” and such like, brought death and the grave into constant view before the young and hardened sinner thus:—
ODE TO A PASSING BELL“Hark my gay friend that solemn tollSpeaks the departure of a soul’Tis gone, that’s all we know not where,Or how the embody’d soul may fareOnly this frail & fleeting breathPreserves me from the jaws of deathSoon as it fails at once I’m goneAnd plung’d into a world not known.”Ann Gould Seller, Hawkchurch, 1821.
Samplers oftentimes fulfilled the rôle of funeral cards, as, for instance, this worked in black:—
“In memory of my beloved FatherJohn Twaites who died April 11 1829.Life how short—Eternity how long.Also of James TwaitesMy grandfather who died Dec. 31, 1814.How loved, how valu’d once, avails thee notTo whom related, or by whom begot,A heap of dust alone remains of thee,’Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.”
Curiously enough, whilst compiling this chapter the writer came across an artillery non-commissioned officer in the Okehampton Camp who, in the intervals of attending to the telephone, worked upon an elaborate Berlin woolwork sampler, ornamented with urns, and dedicated “To the Memory of my dear father,” etc.
That the young person who wrought the sampler had very much choice in the selection of the saws and rhymes which inculcate obedience to parents and teachers is hardly probable, and it is not difficult to picture the households or schools where such doctrines as the following were set out for infant hands to copy:—
“All youth set right at first, with Ease go on,And each new Task is with new Pleasure done,But if neglected till they grow in yearsAnd each fond Mother her dear Darling spares,Error becomes habitual and you’ll find’Tis then hard labour to reform the Mind.”
The foregoing is taken from the otherwise delightful sampler worked by a child with the euphonious name of Ann Maria Wiggins, in her seventh year, that is reproduced inPlate XII.
Preceptors also appear to have thought it well to early impress upon pliable minds the dangers which beset a child inclined to thoughts of love:—
“Oh Mighty God that knows how inclinations leadKeep mine from straying lest my Heart should bleed.Grant that I honour and succour my parents dearLest I should offend him who can be most severe.I implore ore me you’d have a watchful eyeThat I may share with you those blessings on high.And if I should by a young youth be Tempted,Grant I his schemes defy and all He has invented.”Elizabeth Bock, 1764.
Samplers were so seldom worked by grown-up folk that one can hardly believe that the following verse records an actual catastrophe to the peace of mind of Eleanor Knot:—
ON DISINGENUITY“With soothing wiles he won my easy heartHe sigh’d and vow’d, but oh he feigned the smart;Sure of all friends the blackest we can findAre those ingrates who stab our peace of mind.”
A not uncommon and much more agreeable verse sets forth the duties of man towards woman in so far as matrimony is concerned:—
“Adam alone in Paradise did grieveAnd thought Eden a desert without Eve,Until God pitying his lonesome stateCrown’d all his wishes with a lovely mate.Then why should men think mean, or slight her,That could not live in Paradise without her.”
Samplers bearing the foregoing verse are usually decorated with a picture of our first parents and the Tree of Knowledge, supported by a demon and angel.
The parent or teacher sometimes spoke through the sampler, as thus, in Lucia York’s, dated 1725:—
“Oh child most dearIncline thy earAnd hearken to God’s voice.”
Or again:—
“Return the kindness that you do receiveAs far as your ability gives leave.”Mary Lounds.
“Humility I’d recommendGood nature, too, with ease,Be generous, good, and kind to all,You’ll never fail to please.”Susanna Hayes.
Amongst these may be noted:—
“Happy is he, the only man,Who out of choice does all he canWho business loves and others better makesBy prudent industry and pains he takes.God’s blessing here he’ll have and man’s esteem,And when he dies his works will follow him.”
Of those dealing with wealth or poverty none, perhaps, is more incisive than this:—
“The world’s a city full of crooked streets,And Death’s the market-place where all men meet;If life was merchandise that men could buyThe rich would always live, the poor alone would die.”
An American sampler has the following from Burns’s “Grace before Meat”:—
“Some men have meat who cannot eatAnd some have none who need it.But we have meat and we can eat,And so the Lord be thanked.”
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Plate VIII.—Sampler by Mary Postle. Dated 1747.Mrs C. J. Longman.
An early specimen of a bordered Sampler, dated 1747, the rows being relegated to a small space in the centre, where they are altogether an insignificant feature in comparison with the border. Some of the ornament to which we have been accustomed in the rows survives, as for instance the pinks, but a new one is introduced, namely, the strawberry. Here are also the Noah’s Ark animals, trees, etc., which henceforward become common objects and soon transform the face of the Sampler. The border itself is in evident imitation of the worsted flower work with which curtains, quilts, and other articles were freely adorned in the early eighteenth century.
The following dates from 1740, and has as appendix the line, “God prosper the war”:—
“The sick man fasts because he cannot eatThe poor man fasts because he hath no meatThe miser fasts to increase his storeThe glutton fasts because he can eat no moreThe hypocrite fasts because he’d be condemnedThe just man fasts cause he hath offended.”
An American version of this ends with:—
“Praise God from whom all blessings flowWe have meat enow.”
That self-conceit was not always considered a failing, is evident from the following verses:—
“This needlework of mine may tellThat when a child I learned wellAnd by my elders I was taughtNot to spend my time for nought,”
which is concentrated and intensified in one of Frances Johnson, worked in 1797:—
“In reading this if any faults you seeMend them yourself and find no fault in me.”
In a much humbler strain is this from an old sampler in Mrs Longman’s collection:—
“When I was young I little thoughtThat wit must be so dearly boughtBut now experience tells me howIf I must thrive, then I must boweAnd bend unto another will,That I might learn both arte & skill.”
Owing to the portrayal of an insect, which was not infrequently met with in days gone by, upon the face of the sampler which bears the following lines, it has been suggested that they were presumably written by that creature:—
“Dear DebbyI love you sincerelyMy heart retains a grateful sense of your past kindnessWhen will the hours of ourSeparation be at an end?Preserve in your bosom the remembranceof your affectionateDeborah Jane Berkin.”
The following, coming about the date when the abolition of the slave trade was imminent, may have reference to it:—
“THERE’S mercy in each ray of light, that mortal eye e’er saw,There’s mercy in each breath of air, that mortal lips can draw,There’s mercy both for bird, and beast, in God’s indulgent plan,There’s mercy for each creeping thing—But man has none for man.”Elizabeth Jane Gates Aged 12 years, 1829.
Riddle samplers, such as that of Ann Witty, do not often occur:—
Here, too, is an “Acrostick,” the first letters of whose lines spell the name of the young lady who “ended” it “Anno Dom. 1749.”
“A virgin that’s Industrious Merits Praise,Nature she Imitates in Various Ways,Now forms the Pink, now gives the Rose its blaze.Young Buds, she folds, in tender Leaves of green,Omits no shade to beautify her Scene,Upon the Canvas, see, the Letters rise,Neatly they shine with intermingled dies,Glide into Words, and strike us with Surprize.”E. W.
As illustrations of tales the sampler of Sarah Young (Fig. 15) is an unusual example. It deals with Sir Richard Steele’s story of the loves of Inkle and Yarico. Inkle, represented as a strapping big sailor, was cast away in the Spanish Main, where he met and loved Yarico, an Indian girl, but showed his baseness by selling her for a slave when he reached Barbadoes in a vessel which rescued him. The story evidently had a considerable, if fleeting, popularity, for it was dramatised.
Whilst important clues to the age of a sampler may be gathered from its form and legend, its design and colouring are factors from which almost as much may be learnt.
Design can be more easily learned from considering in detail the illustrations, which have been mainly chosen for their typifying one or other form of it, but certain general features are so usually present that they may be summarised here.
No one with any knowledge of design can look through the specimens of samplers selected for this volume without noting, first, that it is, in the earlier specimens, appropriate to the subject, decorative in treatment, and lends itself to a variety of treatment with the needle. Secondly, that the decoration is not English in origin, but is usually derived from foreign sources. Indeed, if we are to believe an old writer of the Jacobean time, the designs were
“Collected with much praise and industrie,From scorching Spaine and freezing Muscovie,From fertile France and pleasant Italie,From Poland, Sweden, Denmarke, Germanie,And some of these rare patternes have been setBeyond the boundes of faithlesse Mahomet,From spacious China and those Kingdomes EastAnd from great Mexico, the Indies West.Thus are these workes farre fetch’t and dearly bought,And consequently good for ladyes thought.”
Thirdly, that after maintaining a remarkable uniformity until the end of the seventeenth century, design falls away, and with rare exceptions continuously declines until it reaches a mediocrity to which the term can hardly be applied.
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Fig. 15.—Sampler by Sarah Young. About 1750.Mrs Head.
The same features are noticeable in the colouring. The samplers of the Caroline period are in the main marked by a softness and delicacy, with a preference for tender and harmonious shades of pinks, greens, and blues, but these quickly pass out of the schemes of colouring until their revival a few years ago through the influence of Japan and the perspicuity, of Sir Lazenby Liberty. This delicacy is not, as some suppose, due to time having softened the colours, for examination shows that fading has seldom taken place, in fact one of the most remarkable traits of the earlier samplers is the wonderful condition of their colouring (see Mrs Longman’s sampler of 1656,Plate IV., as an example). Towards the end of the seventeenth century the adoption of a groundwork of roughish close-textured canvas of a canary hue also militated against this ensemble of the colour scheme, which is now and again too vivid, especially in the reds, a fact which may, in part, be due to their retaining their original tint with a persistency that has not endured with the other dyes.
During the early Georgian era sampler workers seem to have passed through a stage of affection for deep reds, blues, and greens, with which they worked almost all their lettering. The same colours are met with in the large embroidered curtains of the time; it is probably due to the influence of the tapestries and the Chinese embroideries then so much in vogue.
In the opening years of the eighteenth century a pride in lettering gave rise to a series of samplers of little interest or artistic value, consisting, as they did, of nothing else than long sentences, not readily readable, and worked in silks in colours of every imaginable hue used indiscriminately, even in a single word, without any thought bestowed on harmony or effect of colouring.
Later on, towards the middle of the century, more sober schemes of colour set in, consisting in the abandonment of reds and the employment of little else than blues, greens, yellows, and blacks (seePlate IX.), which are attractive through their quietness and unity. Subsequently but little praise can be bestowed upon samplers so far as their design is concerned. Occasionally, as in that of Mr Ruskin’s ancestress (Plate X.), a result which is satisfactory, both in colour and design, is arrived at, but this is generally due to individual taste rather than to tuition or example. In this respectsamplers only follow in the wake of all the other arts—furniture and silversmiths’ work, perhaps, excepted, as regards both of which the taste displayed was also individual rather than national.
An evil which cankered later sampler ornamentation was a desire for novelty and variety. The earliest samplers exhibit few signs of attempts at invention in design. A comparison of any number of them shows ideas repeated again and again with the slightest variation. The same floral motives are adapted in almost every instance, and one and all may well have been employed since the days when they arrived from the Far East, brought, it may be, by the Crusaders. But it is in no derogatory spirit that I call attention to this lack of originality. A craftsman is doing a worthier thing in assimilating designs which have shown their fitness by centuries of use, patterns which are examples of fine decorative ornament that really beautifies the object to which it is applied, than in inventing weak and imperfect originals. No architect is accused of plagiarism if he introduces the pointed arch, and the great designs of the past are free and out of copyright. The Greek fret, or the Persian rose, is as much the property of anyone as the daisy or the snowdrop, and it was far better to make sound decorative pieces of embroidery on the lines of these than to attempt, as was done later on, feeble originals, which have nothing ornamental or decorative in their composition. The workers of the East, when perfection was arrived at in a design, did not hesitate to reproduce it again and again for centuries.
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Plate IX.—Sampler by E. Philips. Dated 1761.Author’s Collection.
Were it not that this Sampler was produced by little Miss Philips at the tender age of seven, there would be a probability that it was unique through its containing a portrait of the producer. For in no other example have we so many evidences pointing to its being a record of actual facts. For instance, there is clearly shown a gentleman pointing to his wife (in a hooped costume), and having round him his five girls of various ages, the youngest in the care of a nurse. In the upper left corner is his son in charge of a tutor, whilst on the right are two maid-servants, one being a woman of colour. This fashion for black servants is further emphasised by the negro boy with the dog. That these should be present in this family is not remarkable, for by the lower illustration it is evident that Mr Philips was a traveller who had crossed the seas in his ship to where alligators, black swans and other rare birds abounded. The work was executed in 1761, the second year of George the Third, whose monogram and crown are supported by two soldiers in the costume of the period. It has been most dexterously carried out by the young lady, and it is conceived in a delicate harmony of greens and blues which was not uncommon at that time. Size, 19 × 12½. An adaptation of this Sampler has been utilised as the drop scene to the play of “Peter Pan.”
But the mistress of a ladies’ improving school would hardly like her pupils to copy time after time the same designs—designs which perhaps resembled those of a rival establishment. Such a one would be oblivious to the fact that an ornamentalist is born not made, that the best design is traditional, and that pupils would be far more worthily employed in perpetuating ornamentation which had been invented by races intuitively gifted for such a purpose,than in attempting feeble products of her own brain. So, too, results show that she was, as a rule, unaware that good design is better displayed in simplicity than in pretentiousness. As that authority on design, the late Lewis Day, wrote in his volume on Embroidery, “The combination of a good designer and worker in the same person is an ideal very occasionally to be met with, and any attempt to realise it generally fails.”
Samplers show in increasing numbers as the end approaches that their designers were ignorant of most of the elementary rules of ornamentation in needlework, such, for instance, as that the pictorial is not a suitable subject for reproduction, nor the delineation of the human figure, nor that the floral and vegetable kingdom, whilst lending itself better than aught else, should be treated from the decorative, and not the realistic point of view.
We will now pass on to consider generally the forms of decoration most usually met with.
Whilst embroideries in imitation of tapestries deal almost entirely with the portrayal of the human figure, samplers of the same period, and that the best, for the most part avoid it. This is somewhat remarkable, for the design of the Renaissance, which was universally practised at the time upon which we are dwelling, was almost entirely given up to weaving it into other forms, and the volumes which treat of embroidery show how frequently it occurs in foreign pieces of needlework. The omission is a curious one, but the reason for it is, apparently, not far to seek. If we examine the earlier pieces we shall see that practically one type of figure only presents itself. Save in exceptional pieces, such as Mrs Longman’searly piece (Plate IV.), where the figures are clearly copied from one of the small tapestry pieces so in vogue at that date (1656), or Mrs Millett’s piece (Fig. 16), the figures which appear upon samplers are all cast in one mould, and in no way improve but rather mar the composition.
This last-named drawn-work sampler is a specimen altogether apart for beauty of design and workmanship. Doubts have been expressed as to its English origin, but portions of the ornament, such as the acorn, and the Stuart S in the lowest row, are thoroughly English; besides, as we have seen, design in almost every one of the seventeenth-century samplers is infected with foreign motives. The uppermost panel is supposed to represent Abraham, Sarah, and the Angel. To the left is the tent, with the folds worked in relief, in a stitch so fine as to defy ordinary eyesight. Sarah, who holds up a hand in astonishment at the angel’s announcement, has her head-dress, collar, and skirt in relief, the latter being sewn with microscopic fleurs-de-lis. The winged angel to the left of Abraham has a skirt composed of tiny scallops, which may represent feathers. A rabbit browses in front of the tent. The centre of the second row is occupied by a veiled mermaid, her tail covered with scalloped scale in relief. She holds in either hand a cup and a mask. The lettering in the two flanking panels is “S.I.D. 1649 A.I.” The decorative motive of the outer panels is peapods in relief, some open and disclosing peas. Roses and tulips fill the larger square below, and these are followed by a row (reversed) of tulips and acorns. Four other rows complete the sampler, which only measures 18½ × 6¾. In order to give it a larger size the lowest row is not reproduced. I have seen another drawn-work sampler which antedates that just described by a year. It is of somewhat coarse texture but is good in design, and bears in a panel at the side initials and the date. The Victoria and Albert Museum has also two somewhat similar drawn-work samplers—one by Elizabeth Wood, dated 1666, which contains the Stuart S’s; the other (undated) has the arms of James I.
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Fig. 16.—Drawn-Work Sampler by S. I. D.Dated 1649.Mrs C. F. Millett.
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Fig. 17.—Sampler by Jean Porter. 1709-10.
A type of figure prevalent in early samplers has puzzled collectors who possess specimens containing it. It wears a close-fitting costume and has arms extended, and has received the name of a “Boxer,” presumably from its attitude and costume. It and a companion are continuously depicted for nearly a century, finally disappearing about 1742, but maintaining their attitude with less variation than any other form of ornament, the only alteration being in the form of the trophy which they hold in one hand. It is this trophy, if we may use such a term, that negatives the idea of their being combatant figures, and it almost with certainty places them in the category of the Greek Erotes, the Roman Amores, or the Cupids of the Renaissance. It is difficult to give a name to thetrophy in most of the samplers, and the worker was clearly often in doubt as to its structure. In some it resembles a small vase with a lid, in others a spray with branches or leaves on either side. In one of 1673 it takes the form of a four-petalled flower, and in one of 1679 that of an acorn, which is repeated in samplers of 1684, 1693, and 1694, this repetition being probably due to the acorn being a very favourite subject for design under the Stuarts. In a sampler of 1693 acorns are held in either hand. In one of 1742 (Fig. 18), the object held is a kind of candelabra. The little figures themselves preserve a singular uniformity of costume, which again points to their being the nude Erotes, clothed, to suit the times, in a tight-fitting jerkin and drawers. These are always of gayest colours. On occasions (as in a sampler dated 1693) they don a coat, and have long wigs, bringing them into line with the prevailing fashion.
When these figures disappear their place is taken by those of our first parents in the Garden of Eden, the incongruity of which is well depicted in the sampler illustrated inFig. 17. This piece of work, which took nearly a year to complete—it was begun on 14th May 1709, and finished on 6th April 1710—is unlike any other that I have seen of that period, for it antedates, by nearly half a century, the scenes from real life which afterwards became part and parcel of every sampler. Adam and Eve became quite common objects on samplers after 1760.[5]
Mention need only be made here of the dressed figures which occur in samplers dated during the reign of George the Third. They are sometimes quaint (as inPlates IX.andXI.), but theyhardly come into any scheme of decoration. The squareness of the stitch used in later samplers renders any imitation of painting such as was attempted altogether a failure.