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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.