Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries Part 13

Materials

Linen, bleached or unbleached, but, of course, always hand-woven, is the foundation material of the early samplers. It varies greatly in texture, from a coa.r.s.e, canvas-like kind to a fine and closely woven sort of about the same stoutness as good modern pillow-case linen. The st.i.tchery of these oldest samplers is executed in linen thread or a somewhat loosely twisted silk, often scarcely coa.r.s.er than our nineteenth-century "machine silk," although, on the other hand, a very thick and irregularly spun type is occasionally seen.

About 1725 linen of a peculiar yellow colour and rather harsh texture came into vogue; but this went out of fashion in a few years, and towards the end of the eighteenth century the strong and durable linen was almost entirely superseded by an ugly and moth-attracting stuff called indifferently tammy, tammy cloth, bolting cloth, and, when woven in a specially narrow width, sampler canvas. The st.i.tchery on samplers of this date is almost invariably executed with silk, although in a few of the coa.r.s.er ones fine untwisted crewel is subst.i.tuted. Tiffany, the thin, muslin-like material mentioned in connection with darning-samplers, was at this period used also for small delicately wrought samplers of the ordinary type.

Early in the nineteenth century very coa.r.s.ely woven linen and linen canvas came into fashion again, and for some time were nearly as popular as the woollen tammy; while, about 1820, twisted crewels of the crudest dyes replaced in a great measure the soft toned silks. Next followed the introduction of cotton canvas and Berlin wool, and with them vanished the last remaining vestige of the exquisite st.i.tchery and well-balanced designs of earlier generations, and the sampler, save in a most degraded form, ceased to exist.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The picture also shows that the princ.i.p.al decorations of the walls of the schoolroom were framed examples of attainments with the needle.

[2] In the original all the small pieces of work in the upper corner near the initials are varieties of gold thread design, and almost all the grey colour throughout, in the reproduction, is silver thread.

[3] It was claimed by its late owner, Mrs Egerton Baines, that almost every line of this sampler contains Royalist emblems. For instance, the angel in the upper part is supposed to be Margaret of Scotland wearing the Yorkist badge as a part of her chatelaine; beside her is the Tree of Life, on either side of which are Lancastrian S's, the whole row being symbolical of the descent of the Stuarts from Margaret of Scotland, daughter of Henry VII. The next row of ornament is also the Tree of Life, represented by a vine springing from an acorn, by tradition a symbolical badge of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. The next two rows are made up of roses, acorns, and Stuart S's, which S's again appear in the line beneath, linked with the Tree of Life. We refer elsewhere (p. 62) to the figures in the bottom row (the whole of the sampler is not shown here), and these are supposed to be Oliver Cromwell as a tailed devil. The sampler is neither signed nor dated, but it clearly belongs to the first half of the seventeenth century. The silks employed are almost exclusively pink, green, and blue, and the work is of the open character found in that ill.u.s.trated in Plate III.

[4] In one by Hannah Lanting, dated 1691, the orthography is "with my nedel I rout the same," and it adds, "and Juda Hayle is my Dame."

[5] The lower portion of Fig. 18 opposite introduces us to an early and crude representation of Adam and Eve and the serpent, and to the bird and fountain, and flower in vase, forms of decoration which became at a later date so very common. The name of the maker has been obliterated owing to dirt getting through a broken gla.s.s, but the date is 1742.

[6] This sampler is interesting owing to its drawn-work figures, which are directly copied from two effigies of the reign of James I., and may stand for that Monarch and his Queen. This portion of the sampler might readily be mistaken for that date were it not that it bears on the bar which divides the figures the letters S.W., 1700. The border at the side of the figures is in red silk, that at the top and the alphabet are in the motley array of colours to which we are accustomed in specimens of this date.

[7] A map of Europe, formerly in the author's possession, had the degrees marked as so many minutes or hours east or west of Clapton!

[8] "Samplers," by Alice Morse Earle.

[9] It first appeared in the _Lady's Magazine_, 1819, and in the first collected edition, 1824, Vol. I. pp. 67, 68; also in Bohn's Cla.s.sics, 1852, pp. 138, 139.

[10] These latter, with their figures standing out in relief, could never have been used for cushions, and can only have been employed as pictures.

[11] The difficulty of a.s.signing a close date to tapestry embroideries is a considerable one, for dress is practically the only guide, and this is by no means a reliable one, for a design may well have been taken from a piece dated half a century previously, as, for instance, when the marriage of Charles I. is portrayed on an embroidery bearing date 1649, the year of his death. Those, therefore, which have a genuine date have this value, that they can only represent a phase of art or a subject coeval with, or precedent to, that date. Hence the importance of the pieces ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 60 and in Fig. 68, dated six years later.

[12] Mr Davenport considers that this rounded, padded work is a caricature of the raised embroidery of the _opus Anglicanum_, and that the earliest specimens of it are to be found at Coire, Zurich, and Munich.

[13] The fondness for decking the dress with pearls is quaintly portrayed in these pictures, where they are imitated by seed pearls. As to these there is an interesting extract extant, from the inventory of St James's House, nigh Westminster, in 1549, wherein among the items is one of "a table [or picture] whereon is a man holding a sword in one hand and a sceptre in the other, of needlework, prettily garnished with seed pearls."

[14] A very good example of a sampler in drawn-work, in which the floral form of decoration is entirely absent, save in the sixth row (the pinks), which is in green silk, the rest being in white. That the sampler was intended as a pattern is evident from some of the rows being unfinished.