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Evelina S. Gilman, Canterbury school, New Hampshire, circa 1825
Amongst the most highly regarded American samplers are the "Bird and Basket Samplers" made in southern New Hampshire towns including Canterbury, Boscawen and Sanbornton. A large number of excellent samplers made over many decades form a group that shares many specific regional characteristics. A groundbreaking exhibition, "Lessons Stitched in Silk: Samplers From the Canterbury Region of New Hampshire," held at the Hood Museum of Dartmouth College in 1990 showed 33 of these samplers and defined this group and its salient features. That scholarship remains most important, and the catalogue of the same name commands great respect in the field. Samplers from the Canterbury group are very skillfully executed and there are many distinctive aspects of the compositions and technique of theses samplers. Many of the elements are outlined in black, and virtually all of the samplermakers worked the bottom of their samplers with a distinctive hilly lawn with white tops to the little hillocks and black-outlined flowers strewn across the grass. Evelina S. Gilman's splendid sampler presents these classic Canterbury characteristics and was executed with great skill. Her large birds perch whimsically upon stylized trees flanking an excellent basket of large white-blossomed flowers. This folky and free-form rendition of the Canterbury composition is unusually appealing. Evelina S. Gilman was most likely the daughter of Joseph Warren Gilman and his wife Rosanna Titus Gilman who raised their family in nearby Orange County, Vermont. She was born in 1811 and married Dr. Plimmon Bennett; they removed to Ohio and had six children. Evelina is buried in Portage County, Ohio. The sampler is worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted into a 19th century gold leaf frame. |
