FIG. 77.—OLD WORKBOX FITTINGS.
(In the Author's collection.)
Old Samplers.
Old samplers may well be regarded as educational, belonging to the schoolroom as well as to the workbox. They were intended to teach needlework, and served as reminders of alphabets, sums, and mapping. Many worked in silk on yellow linen in the eighteenth century were quite elaborate pieces of needlework. Those of the seventeenth century, chiefly of linen, were much cruder and simpler in design. During the latter half of the eighteenth century samplers were mostly worked on canvas or sampler cloth, a material which was used almost as long as samplers were in fashion. Different stitches were employed; there was the early drawn and cut work, and then the silk embroidery showing the girl's acquirement of the darning stitch.
Some early tapestry maps are numbered among the educational curios in which samplers are so prominent. The Yorkshire Philosophical Society own two unique specimens of sixteenth-century tapestry, formerly in the possession of Horace Walpole. They measure about 16 ft. by 12 ft., the sections including Herefordshire, Shropshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and a part of Berkshire. These remarkable maps are vividly coloured and show excellent pictorial scenes indicating villages, parks, and country seats. Such maps are rare, but now and then really interesting examples of needlework mapping are met with.
Collectors keep an eye on preservation, but they are keen on dated specimens, and those with ornate and quaintly picturesque borders. The condition adds to the beauty, but not always to the value, for many of the older and less well-preserved samplers are now becoming scarce. They have been retained by those who have no interest in antiques because they bore the name of some fair ancestress who lived and worked on her sampler more than a century ago, leaving it behind as a memorial of her skill in the use of a needle for future generations to admire. How many ladies of the twentieth century are preparing permanent records of their skill in needlework for those who are to come to hand on to generations unborn? is a question some may like to ponder.