The Borders to Samplers
The sampler with a border was the direct and natural outcome of the sampler in “rows.” A case, for instance, probably occurred, as in [Fig. 24],[6] where a piece of decoration had a vacant space at its sides, and resort was at once had to a portion of a row, in this case actually the top one. From this it would follow as a matter of course that the advantage, from a decorative point of view, of an ornamental framework was seen and promptly followed. The earliest border I have seen is that reproduced in [Fig. 25], from a sampler dated 1726, but it is certain that many must exist between that date and 1700, the date upon the sampler in [Fig. 24] just referred to. The 1726 border consists of a pattern of trefoils, worked in alternating red and yellow silks, connected by a running stem of a stiff angular character; the device being somewhat akin to the earlier semi-border in [Fig. 24].
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Fig. 24.—Drawn-work Sampler by S. W. a.d. 1700.
Mrs C. J. Longman.
It is astonishing with what persistency the samplerists followed the designs which they had had handed to them in the “row” samplers, confining their attentions to a few favourites, and repeating them again and again for a hundred and fifty years, and losing, naturally, with each repetition somewhat of the feeling of the original. We give a few examples which show this persistency of certain ideas.
Fig. 25.—Border of Mary Lounds’s Sampler. a.d. 1726.
Fig. 26.—Border of Mary Heaviside’s Sampler. a.d. 1735.
The border in [Fig. 26] is dated 1735, and presents but little advance from a decorative point of view. It is the production of Mary Heaviside, and is upon an Easter sampler, which bears, besides the verse to the Holy Feast of Easter, the Lord’s Prayer and the Belief. The border may possibly typify the Cross and the Tree of Life.
Fig. 27.—Border of Elizabeth Greensmith’s Sampler. Aged 10. July ye 26, 1737.
Elizabeth Greensmith’s sampler ([Fig. 27]), worked two years later, in 1737, is more pretentious in form, the body of the work being taken up with a spreading tree, beneath which repose a lion and a leopard. The border consists of an ill-composed and ill-drawn design of yellow tulips, blue-bells, and red roses. The stem, which runs through this and almost every subsequent design, is here very feebly arranged; it is, however, only fair to say that the work is that of a girl in her tenth year.
Fig. 28.—Border of Margaret Knowles’s Sampler. Aged 9. a.d. 1738.
Margaret Knowles’s sampler ([Fig. 28]), made in the next year—A.D. 1738—is the earliest example I know of the use on a border of that universal favourite the pink, which is oftentimes hardly distinguishable from the corn blue-bottle. In the present instance it is, however, flattened almost out of recognition, whilst the design is spoilt by the colossal proportions of the connecting stem. In the second row of the sampler, [Fig. 24], it is seen in a much simpler form, and it will also be found in [Plate VI.]
Fig. 29.—Border to Sampler by Elizabeth Turner. a.d. 1771.
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Plate XI.—Sampler by Ann Chapman. Dated 1779.
Mrs C. J. Longman.
Incongruity between the ornament and the lettering of a Sampler could hardly be carried to a more ludicrous extreme than in Ann Chapman’s, which is here reproduced in colour. The two points of Agur’s prayer, which fills the panel, are that before he dies vanity shall be removed far from him, and that he shall have neither poverty nor riches. Yet as surroundings and supporters to this appeal we have two figures posing as mock shepherd and shepherdess, and decked out in all the vanities of the time. Agur’s prayer was apparently often selected, for we see it again in the Sampler of Emily Jane Brontë ([Fig. 10]), but there it has the quietest of ornament to surround it, and it is worked in black silk; whereas in the present case there is no Sampler in the collection where the whole sheaf of colours has been more drawn upon.
The remaining illustrations of borders are selected as being those where the design is well carried out, and as showing how the types continue. The first ([Fig. 29]), worked by Elizabeth Turner in 1771, represents a conventional rose in two aspects; the second, by Sarah Carr ([Fig. 30]), in 1809, is founded on the honeysuckle; whilst the third ([Fig. 31]) is a delightfully simple one of wild strawberries that is frequently found in samplers from the earliest (in [Plate II.]) onwards. In that from which this example is taken, worked by Susanna Hayes in 1813, it is most effective with its pink fruit and green stalks and band. It will be noticed that it even crossed the Atlantic, for it reappears in Mr Pennell’s American sampler, [Plate XIII.]
Fig. 30.—Border to Sampler by Sarah Carr. a.d. 1809.
Fig. 31.—Border to Sampler by Susanna Hayes. a.d. 1813.
How even the border degenerated as the nineteenth century advanced may be seen in the monotonous Greek fret used in the three samplers of the Brontës ([Figs. 10], [11], [12]), and in that of Mary Anderson ([Fig. 19]).
Miscellanea respecting Samplers
Under this heading we group what remains to be said concerning samplers, namely:—