Sampler Design: Hearts
This emblem, which one would have imagined to be a much more favourite device with impressionable little ladies than the crown, is more seldom met with. In fact, it only figured on four of the hundreds of samplers which composed the Exhibition, and in three of these cases it was in conjunction with a crown. When it is remembered how common the heart used to be as an ornament to be worn, and how it is associated with the crown in foreign religious Art, its infrequency is remarkable. The unusually designed small sampler (the reproduction being almost the size of the original), [Fig. 22], dated 1751, simply worked in pale blue silk, on a fine khaki-coloured ground, has a device of crowns within a large heart. [Fig. 23] shows a sampler in the form of a heart, and has, in conjunction with this symbol, anchors. It is dated 1796.
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.