A tiny needlework gem, this was likely made by a family member, to document and celebrate the birth of Eliza Skitt. Eliza was born in Lambeth, south London, on December 29, 1832, to John and Anna Maria (Hooper) Skitt, who were married at St. George The Martyr Church in London in 1827. John was listed as a colorman in census records – an interesting occupation. Colormen worked with artists to supply the paints required – they began with raw materials and ground them into pigments, blending them into the oils and other media to form paint. Many colormen lived and worked in this area of London. 

The sampler is particularly well-composed, with the delicately worked text centered amidst many excellent and finely worked motifs. An educated guess as to the likely samplermaker would be Eliza’s aunt, John’s much younger sister, Sarah Skitt, who would have been 15 years old in 1832.

Eliza married George Thomas Richmond in 1855 and they remained in that area of London where they had seven children. She died in 1902. 

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a 19th century gold-leaf frame. We are showing it on a little easel and would be happy to include that with the purchase of the sampler. 

Sampler with little easel

This is a delightful sampler with an unusual, folky personality. The alphabets and prose are embellished by a wonderful assortment of motifs and unusual elements, unlike those seen on most samplers. 

The prose on the sampler, which makes liberal use of the early form of the letter “s”, offers much appeal as it reads, “No trees bear fruit in autumn unless they blossom in the spring to that end that our age may be profitable and laden with ripe fruit let us all endeavor that our youth may be studious and flowered with the blossoms of learning and observation.” It was published in The Art of Reading Containing a Number of Useful Rules, Exemplified by a Variety of Selected & Original Pieces, Narrative, Didactive, Argumentative, Poetical, Descriptive, Pathetic, Humourous, and Entertaining, Together with Dialogues, Speeches, Orations, Addresses, & Harangues: Calculated to Improve the Scholar in Reading and Speaking with Propriety and Elegance, and to Impress the Minds of Youth with Sentiments of Virtue and Religion : Designed for the Use of Schools and Families, by Daniel Staniford, (1814).

Born in 1811, Emily Sikes was the daughter of Daniel and Eunice (King) Sikes of Suffield, in Hartford County, Connecticut. The Sikes family in America began with Richard Sikes (1598-1676) about whom much is published in Richard Sikes and His Descendants, the First Seven Generations, compiled by Arthur M. Sikes, Jr. 

In 1857, Emily married, as his second wife, a farmer, Zachariah Dickinson (1795-1880), of Springfield, Massachusetts. They lived in Suffield and Emily died in 1877. 

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in very good condition, with two very small holes to the linen at the lower right corner. It has been conservation mounted and is in a molded mahogany frame. 

Featuring alphabets, little motifs and a pair of birds, this sampler is signed by Mary Rothwell, who also stitched her initials. This was likely Mary’s first sampler as most of the needlework is simple, however the row of queen's-stitches at the left side of the bottom edge is an indication that she was also taught a very sophisticated technique. 

The sampler is worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a burl frame. 

A very small and highly significant group of samplers was made in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania between 1833 and 1837. We are delighted to offer this splendid sampler by Catharine Ritter in 1833, a relatively new discovery and important addition to this outstanding group. The samplers are all quite large and the pictorial scenes are fully worked with excellent figures, many animals, large birds and trees, and, with the exception of one of the samplers, a depiction of the same fantastic building with greenhouses-like appendages on either side. We particularly like the lineup of five animals that Catharine stitched along the bottom, the dog and deer focused on the scene above. 

The Ritter sampler most closely resembles, in composition and overall character, another sampler from this group, made by Rebecca Van Reed Gresamer in 1835 and in the collection of the American Museum in Bath, England. Both the Ritter and Gresamer samplers include four lines of the hymn authored by John Needham and published in 1768 as Hymns Devotional and Moral: On Various Subjects Collected Chiefly from the Holy Scriptures. 

Catherine Ritter fortunately included the names of her parents as part of her inscription, as well as information about some of her siblings further below. She was born in 1823 to John and Catharine (Frailey) Ritter of Berks County. John Ritter served as a US congressman from 1843 to 1847 and then became the editor and publisher of an important German newspaper in Reading, Pennsylvania.

The Ritter family in Pennsylvania began with George Ritter (1685-1761) who emigrated from Heidelberg, Germany, and settled in Berks County. Much information about the family is published in Historical and Biographical Annals of Berks County Pennsylvania, by Morton N. L. Montgomery, (J. H. Beers and Co., 1909). To quote, John Ritter was “respected by all… his integrity was well known and the news he printed as absolutely unimpeachable.” Information about him is also available here.

Catharine died young, in 1837, and is buried at the Charles Evans Cemetery along with many family members.

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. Notably, the samplermakers used tiny beads to form the necklace on the young woman and the buttons of the waistcoat of the young man and the beads are still on Catharine’s sampler. It has been conservation mounted and is in a maple frame with mahogany corner-blocks and beads.

A small group of samplers made in Bethel, a town in Maine about 60 miles west of Augusta, share characteristics that indicate that they were made by girls attending the same school. One of the unusual elements is the delightful little geometric tri-part motif that appears on this sampler made by Abigail Plumer. She also included a wonderful tree with several birds on it flanked by baskets and evergreen trees and stitched her birthdate, another characteristic of some of the samplers made in Bethel.

Abigail was the daughter of Josiah and Sarah (Lovejoy) Plumer; she was the third of their nine children. She was born on November 22, 1804 and was 19 when she made this sampler. In 1826, she married a farmer, Caleb Rowe (1797-1877) whose family was also from Bethel, where his maternal great-grandfather was a pioneer settler. They had 11 children and Abigail died in 1891.

Published information about Abigail and her family came from History of Bethel, formerly Sudbury, Canada, Oxford County, Maine 1768-1890 with a Brief Sketch of Hanover and Family Statistics by William B. Latham (Augusta, ME, 1891), Biographical Review: This Volume Contains Biographical Sketches Of Leading Citizens Of Oxford And Franklin Counties, Maine (Boston, 1897) and other sources.

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a molded and black painted frame.

We are delighted to offer this excellent Mexican sampler with its centered image of a lamb with a basket of trailing flower vines in its mouth, on a beautiful, shaded lawn. The lamb is partially worked in the bullion stitch, creating a greatly appealing texture. Other images include a butterfly, scorpion, insects, exotic bird; a framework of many extraordinary bands of beautiful needlework patterns, some with their sources in early pattern books, complete this extraordinary sampler. A photo taken of the reverse of the sampler prior to mounting is highly instructive as to the technique and to aptitude of the samplermaker.

We turned to Mayela Flores Enríquez, PhD Candidate, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, a specialist in this area, and were rewarded with her informative response:

“This type of square Mexican sampler shows significant Spanish influence and was probably embroidered at a private school, not a convent school, by a wealthy girl from one of the main cities of Mexico's central region, probably Mexico City or Puebla. I consider it was created in an urban context.

Its repertoire is related to the Mexican Romanticism aesthetics developed during the 19th century, so all the images talk about an idealization and romanticization of life, women, and womanhood. The sampler shares characteristics with some in American museum collections which talk about Mexican sampler collectionism during the first half of the 20th Century.  The central image of the lamb is more related to a bucolic repertoire, also informed by foreign patterns and by Mexican Romanticism, than to a catholic tradition as it occurs with earlier examples." The stitches and techniques that were used are: Satin stitch, French knots, Bullion stitch, Drawn work, Cross stitch, Back stitch, Blanket stitch, Short and Long stitch. In Spanish some of the names for variations are filigrana, randas and calado. 

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted in a gold frame.  

photo of reverse

As stitched onto her excellent sampler, Hannah was born on November 13, 1827. She was the one of the six children of Lemuel and Sarah (Husted) Paulin, who married in 1819 and lived in Cohansey Township, Cumberland County, located in southern New Jersey, where Lemuel was a blacksmith. Hannah was living with her parents in 1850 and indicated that she was a “tailoress.” The Paulin family began with the arrival of Henry Pawlin (later Paulin) who settled just north of Philadelphia circa 1681. 

In 1853, Hannah married Harrison Perry, of Bridgeton, Cumberland County. They remained in the area and became the parents of nine children. Harrison was a successful farmer and both Harrison and Hannah were active members of their community. Information about the family was published in Biographical Review: Leading Citizens of Cumberland County New Jersey (1896).

Hannah’s fine sampler belongs to an outstanding group made from the end of the 18th century through the early 1840s in this area of Cohansey and Fairfield Townships of Cumberland County. Characteristics of this group include elaborately worked baskets of flowers, compartmentalized alphabets and inscriptions. The needlework itself on these samplers is defined by a strong vocabulary of stitches accomplished with great skill. For example, the flowers worked by Hannah are actually padded and worked dimensionally. 

Several samplers from this group are included in Hail Specimen of Female Art! New Jersey Schoolgirl Needlework, 1726-1860, from the Morven Museum & Garden.

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a beveled, figured maple frame with a cherry bead.

An endearing, little sampler, this is signed, “Polly Nichols Sampler Wrought in The Twelveth Year Of Her Age x99.” Along with various alphabets, Polly included a charming band of fat, pendulous strawberries. Polly was born in Cohasset, a coastal town southeast of Boston. Polly’s emigrant ancestor, Thomas Nichols (1614-1696), arrived in Massachusetts in 1637 and settled in Hingham. Much information about the family is published in History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts by George Lincoln.

Polly was born April 27, 1788, the daughter of Lot and Thankful (Tower) Nichols. She married Henry Doane (1789-1870), a farmer, and they remained in Cohasset where they had four children. She died in 1859. 

The sampler is worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a figured maple frame with a black bead.

Signed, “Amanda Mason wrought this needlework in September in Eighteen Hundred and Twenty in the ninth year of her age,” and we have to wonder if Amanda’s instructress wanted the year spelled out as such to add to her students’ needlework assignment; we see this so rarely. 

The sampler nicely features a fine house with deep blue window and door set between trees with a picket fence on a lawn of shaded blues. The verse is a classic sampler one which reads, “The loss of father is great, the loss of mother’s more, The loss of Christ is such a loss That no one can restore.” A charming little couple holding hands appears at the end of this. Alphabets fill the upper portion, with her name repeated in this area as well. 

Amanda was born December 22, 1811 to William and Lydia (Brown) Mason. Much has been published about the family, which began with Sampson Mason (1625-1676), a shoemaker, who was born in England and emigrated to Massachusetts, circa 1650. He married Mary Butterworth and they had 13 children.  Sampson became a prominent citizen and landowner in Swansea, where he is recognized as one of the founders of the town. Amanda was his fourth great-granddaughter. Photocopies from Genealogy of the Sampson Mason Family, compiled by Alverdo Hayward Mason (East Braintree, Massachusetts, 1902) are included in the extensive file that accompanies the sampler.  

In 1838, Amanda married Dr. Stephen Ball, a skilled surgeon and the third of three celebrated Dr. Stephen Balls of three generations, from Northboro, Massachusetts. They didn’t have children and Amanda died in 1888. 

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a molded and black painted frame.

Image of reverse

Samplers made in northern European countries, specifically Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, can include many highly appealing, wonderful pictorial motifs, arranged in excellent compositions. In our experience, far fewer samplers were made in Sweden than in Holland or Denmark, and we are delighted to offer this very fine and well documented Swedish sampler. It was made in 1828 by ten-year-old Errica Frederica Lunstrom. The maker signed and dated it, and stitched the name of her town, her initials, EFL, those of her mother, ALW, and the name, Maria Elisabet Sanstrom, likely that of her teacher. 

Remarkably, much is known about the samplermaker. A curator at the Ostergotlands Museum in Linkoping, and a research librarian at the same, have provided the following information. Errica was born January 18, 1818 in Linkoping, a town south of Stockholm by about 118 miles. Her mother, Anna Lisa Westergren, was unmarried. When baptized, Errica seems to have been given the surname of her father. For some time until about 1830, Errica lived as a foster child with a shoemaker’s widow who must have sent her to the school where she worked this sampler. From 1832 on Errica was living again with her mother and they lived and worked in various towns, including Stockholm. 

Errica’s sampler shares characteristics with another Swedish sampler, made by Johanna Aberg in 1829, in the collection of the Nordiska Museet, Sweden’s largest cultural history museum. Both “marduks” (the Swedish word for sampler) include the Spies of Canaan, large crown, fully worked Irish stitch rectangle, family initials in smaller rectangles, and the identical border. While Errica’s  sampler offers overall greater appeal with its house, recumbent deer, sailing ship, little church and pair of angles, the two girls very likely attended school together. 

The sampler was worked in silk on wool and is in excellent condition, with some very small holes to the wool, now stabilized. It has been conservation mounted and is in a new figured burl frame.