A Quick History of Antique Samplers
“The decorative functional objects women made often spoke in a secret language, bore a covert imagery. When we read these images in needlework, in paintings, in quilts, rugs, and scrapbooks, we sometimes find a cry for help, sometimes an allusion to a secret political alignment, sometimes a moving symbol about the relationships between men and women”
Miriam Schapiro, Miriam Schapiro: Femmages, 1971 - 1985
Why Are Antique Samplers Important Today?
An expertly crafted antique sampler is more than just a gorgeous objet d’art – it is also a revealing historical artifact with a message from its creator blazing through the ages. In times when young girls and women were so often unable to express themselves naturally due to the restrictions of the societies they lived in, the careful needlework on a sampler was an artistic way for them to fully express their identity and assert their true selves in a world which frowned upon such unfeminine behavior.
This makes antique samplers a fascinating subject! Each sampler is a world of its own when the form, style, and references can reveal something about the creator and their life. Often, not just their own life, but also the lives of those around them. As such, they go beyond just interesting historical artifacts and become significant, giving historians a rich primary source of information about the culture and times in which the antique sampler creator lived.
What Are Antique Samplers and Who Made Them?
Samplers are the needlework world’s equivalent of a notebook. Just as you might write something down to remember later, a sampler is a simple way to remember and practice a new needlework pattern.
Antique samplers were typically square or rectangular and made from linen, wool, or silk and embroidered with patterns and motifs using silk thread. These antique samplers typically belonged to young girls of all socioeconomic classes undergoing domestic education, though there are rarer examples from young boys, many of whom lived with the schoolmistress who taught the girls, or from adult women.
Why Did So Many Girls Make Antique Samplers?
Beyond the obvious benefits of learning practical stitchery, samplers were part of a girl’s formal education in what was known as the ‘genteel arts,’ in turn a part of their domestic education.
Samplers made by younger girls are often simple ones, featuring alphabet work as they learned the basics of cross stitch, needlepoint, and other embroidery patterns. As the girls get older, the complexity of the antique samplers increases. While an alphabet may still be present, a canvas may also feature designs, motifs, and sayings.
In many families, these complex samplers were a source of pride, often framed in strategic locations at the family home; a showcase. More than just art, they also indicated their daughter’s skills to potential suitors. In the pre-industrial age, this skill meant new clothes could be made, holes in old clothes could be fixed, and, if all else failed in life, their family home could at least be decorated with beautiful, embroidered art!
When Were Antique Samplers First Made – And Why Did They Stop Making Them?
The first samplers that still exist today come from the Middle Ages. Known as examplars, these were needlework samplers created simply to record new patterns. By the end of the medieval period (1500s), samplers were a common practice across England and Europe.
Their popularity ensured that samplers made the hazardous cross-Atlantic journey with the colonizers; in a new world where self-sufficiency was even more of a necessity than the old, sewing was an important skill within the community.
As the new world developed, so did its needs. After 1850, women’s education in the United States had formalized, broadening its horizons at the same time. Girls and young women now received a more comprehensive education beyond the ‘genteel arts’ of embroidery and needlecraft. While these two skills were still taught, the focus had moved on, toward painting and drawing.
By the turn of the century, it was not just the Victorian era that was drawing to a close; the creation of samplers was also in steep decline as women turned to Berlin wool work (chemically dyed wools on heavy linen canvas). This new form of embroidery was easier to work with, and the now-obsolete art of sampler-making fell into obscurity with few women continuing the tradition as their voices increasingly joined the public sphere.