“Spain is well represented in my collection. For beauty of colouring and designs I think that it stands far ahead of any other country. Spanish samplers are generally large; they are sometimes square, sometimes long in shape. They are as a rule entirely covered with border patterns, which in the square shape are worked along the four sides parallel to the edge; and which in the long shape runs in lines across the sampler, with a break in the middle, where the border changes to another pattern, thus giving the impression that the sampler is joined up the centre. The patterns of the borders vary a great deal; I have counted thirty different ones on one sampler. They are mostly geometric, and not based on any natural objects, but the designs are so skilfully handled and elaborately worked out as to take away any appearance of stiffness; and in them the prim acorn, bird, or trefoil of the English and German border patterns are never seen. I have one Spanish sampler, dated 1738, of a quite different type to all my others. It is divided into three panels. The top panel is filled with floral designs, the centre with a gorgeous coat of arms, and the lower panel contains a representation of St George and the Dragon.
“The colours used in Spanish samplers are very striking, and their blending in the different borders is very happy and effective. Most of the early specimens are worked almost entirely in satin-stitch, although cross-stitch and back-stitch are also sometimes introduced. The samplers are usually hem-stitched round the edge, and occasionally contain some drawn work. I have one early specimen in which the drawn part is worked over in coloured silks.
“The Spanish samplers that I have seen seldom have the alphabet worked on them, and are rarely dated. On the other hand, they often have the name of the worker signed in full.
“Portugal is only represented in my collection by samplers worked in the nineteenth century; it is therefore hardly fair to compare these specimens with the earlier ones of other countries, for everywhere samplers began to deteriorate in that century. The Portuguese samplers that I possess are eminently commonplace and can well be described as ‘Early Victorian.’
“It must be remembered that my remarks on foreign samplers are based on specimens belonging to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With few exceptions I have not tried to collect modern ones, which approximate much more to each other in the different countries.
“Looking back over this brief survey, and comparing foreign samplers with English, one or two differences at once stand out. The foreign samplers are seldom worked in a pictorial form. They hardly ever, except in France, have verses or texts worked on them. The age of the worker is never given. This is much to be regretted, as in these three things lies much of the personal interest of the English sampler.
“On the other hand, from a practical point of view, if one goes to one’s samplers as to pattern-books for good stitches, designs and effects of colour, England no longer takes the first place, and one would turn for these to the samplers of Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, and Italy.”
Indian Samplers
Many of the Anglo-Indian mothers who reared and brought up families in the East Indies in the days when the young ones had to pass all their youth in that country, regardless of climatic stress, must have trained their girls in the cult of sampler-making, and the same schooling went on in the seminaries at Calcutta and elsewhere, as we have seen in the specimen illustrated in [Fig. 2]. I am able to give another illustration ([Fig. 52]), which is not otherwise remarkable except for the fact that it was worked by a child at Kirkee, and shows how insensibly the European ornament becomes orientalised as it passes under Eastern influence. It is the only sampler in which there is any use made of plain spaces, and even here it is probably only accidental.