Jane Alexander

This is a delightful little sampler with a bold personality featuring alphabets and an inscription worked within an unusual border. From our many years of reading and interpreting the lettering on samplers, it is our understanding that the inscription, complete with backwards letters, misspellings, and final letters set above a given word, should be read as: 

Jane Alexander was born on January 10, 1804 / This work and hand my friends may have when... and that the next words, had Jane completed the classic inscription, would have been: I am dead and in my grave. The inscriptions of some samplers aren’t as easily read as others!

The over-sized flower blossoms that form the border take on a life of their own, lending further to the unusual nature of this sampler.

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition, with some very minor wear to the linen. It has been conservation mounted and is in a molded and black painted frame.