The Age of a Sampler
The approximate date of any sampler, which is not more than two hundred and fifty years old, should, from the illustrations given in this volume, be capable of being arrived at without much difficulty, and it is, therefore, only those undated specimens which, from their appearance, may be older than that period that call for consideration here. They are but few in number, and a comparison of one or two of them may be of service as indicating the kind of examination to which old specimens should be subjected.
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Fig. 4.—Sampler of Cut and Embroidered Work.
Early 17th Century.
The late Canon Bliss.
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Plate III.—Portion of Long Sampler by A. S.
Dated 1648.
Author’s Collection.
Owing to its great length this Sampler is not shown in its entirety. A portion of the upper part, which consists of various unconnected designs, and figures of birds, beetles, flies, and crayfish, has been omitted. In the portion illustrated is a man with a staff followed by a stag bearing a leaf in its mouth, a unicorn and lion, and the initials “A.S.,” with date 1648. The bands of ornaments which follow are in several instances those which find a place nearly two centuries later as the borders of Samplers still. The lower portion is interesting for the changes which are rung upon the oak leaf and acorn. The silks of which it is made are in three colours only—blue, pink, and a yellowish green—which are worked upon a coarsish linen. Size, 34¾ × 8½. It is in the author’s collection. A somewhat similar Sampler, dated 1666, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The earliest samplers present but little of the regularity of design which marks the dated ones. They were made for use and not for ornament, a combination which was probably always aimed at in those where regularity and order marked the whole. They would resemble that illustrated in [Plate II.], which bears evidence that it was nothing more or less than an example, whence a variety of patterns could be worked, for in almost every instance the design is shown in both an early and complete condition. It is somewhat difficult to assign a date to it, but the employment of silver and gold wirework to a greater or lesser extent in almost every part,[2] the coarse canvas upon which it is worked, and the colours, point to its being of the Elizabethan or early Jacobean period, the linked S’s in [Fig. 5] perhaps denoting the Stuart period. One of the two specimens of 1648 ([Plate III.]) continues in its upper portion this dropping of the decoration in a haphazard way on the canvas, although the greater part of it is strictly confined to rows of regular form. At first sight [Fig. 4] should for the same reason be assigned to an earlier date than 1648, for the greater, and not the lesser, portion of it is embroidered without any apparent design. But more careful consideration discloses the fact that the sampler was evidently begun at the top with thorough regularity, and it was only at a later stage that the worker probably tired, and decided to amuse herself with more variety and less formality. Nor can an earlier date be assigned to [Fig. 5] on account of the irregularity and incompleteness of the lines, which have evidently been carried out no further than to show the pattern.[3]
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Fig. 5.—Portion of Sampler. 17th Century.
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Fig. 6.—Portion of Sampler of Cut and Embroidered Work.
17th Century.
The late Mrs Head.
The forms which the lettering takes will probably be found to be one of the best guides to the age of the early samplers, and on this ground [Fig. 6], with its peculiar G and its reversed P for a Q, may be earlier than 1650, although the stags and the pear-shaped ornament beneath them are closely allied to those in [Plate III.], dated 1648.
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Fig. 7.—Samplers in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Dated 1643, 1667, and 1696.
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Plate IV.—Sampler by Elizabeth Calthorpe.
Dated 1656.
Mrs Charles Longman.
This small Sampler (it measures only 17 × 7) is a remarkable testimony to the goodness of the materials used by our ancestors, and the care that has been taken in certain instances to preserve these early documents of family history. For it is over two hundred and sixty years since Elizabeth Calthorpe’s very deft fingers produced what even now appears to be a very skilled performance, and every thread of silk and of the canvas groundwork is as fresh as the day that it emerged from the dyer’s hands. The design is one of the unusual pictorial and ornamental combinations, the pictorial representing the Sacrifice of Isaac in two scenes.
Texts and mottoes also furnish a clue to age, for they extend backwards beyond 1686 on but one known sampler, namely that of Martha Salter in the Victoria and Albert Museum, dated 1651, which has the maxim, “The feare of God is an excellent gift,” although on such articles as purses and the like they are to be found much earlier, and the “Sonnet to Queen Elizabeth,” to which we have referred, shows that they were in vogue in 1612.
Age may also be approximated by the ornament and by the material of which the sampler is made, which differs as time goes on. The following table has been formed from many specimens that have come under my inspection; it shows the earliest date at which various forms of ornament appear on dated samplers so far as I have been able to trace them.
| Adam and Eve, figure of | 1709 | |
| Alphabet | 1643 | |
| Border enclosing sampler | 1726 | |
| Border of flowing naturalistic flowers | 1730 | |
| Boxers (and until 1758) | 1648 | |
| Crown | 1691 | |
| Eyelet form of lettering (? Anne Gover’s, circ. 1610) | 1672 | |
| Fleur-de-Lys (see, however, [Plate III.]) | 1742 | |
| Flower in vase | 1742 | |
| Heart | 1751 | |
| House | 1765 | |
| Inscription | 1662 | |
| Motto or text | 1651 | |
| Mustard-coloured canvas | 1728 | |
| Name of maker (? Anne Gover’s, circ. 1610) | 1648 | |
| Numerals | 1655 | |
| Rows of ornament (latest 1741) | 1648 | |
| Stag (but only common between 1758 and 1826) | 1648 | |
| The Spies to Canaan | 1804 | |
| Verse (? Lora Standish, circ. 1635) | 1696 |