NEW PUBLICATION
JESSIE CARSWELL’s SAMPLER CHARTED
Q-JE004 1876 Jessie Carswell sampler
Small sampler with upper- and lowercase alphabet, name and date. Symmetrical design, potted flowers, trees, fruits, birds in trees, small animals.
For original photos, see E-CO004.
Images donated by ebay seller cockleheart, edited by Sytske Wijnsma, charted by Jessie Elias.
Samplers were a great way to copy useful and decorative patterns in a time when people didn’t have the easy access to pattern books that the internet has given us. Most samplers were made by young girls, but there’ve been samplers made by boys as well. The maritime boards with examples of all kinds of useful knots and splices served the same purpose, to preserve useful knowledge and patterns, and to teach them to next generations. There’ve been samplers of crochet stitches, knitting work, openwork embroidered seams, but the ones mostly preserved are those made by children of primary school age. That shows us how these early pieces of work were valued by their makers. Jessie Carswell’s sampler was kept for 150 years.
I do wonder how many of our readers actually did embroider a sampler themselves when at school. I did, a small sampler with embroidery stitches, no alphabets, no motifs, just rows of embroidery stitches of which the first one was cross-stitch. That was when I was ten and I heartily resented the boys who were allowed to do woodwork and make birds nesting boxes and other small items. It was forty years before I ever picked up an embroidery needle again. How about you?
FUNDRAISING