Lot Essay
This sampler belongs to an interesting group of seventeenth century samples, the earliest which bears the date 1627. These samples are all very similar in design, worked in the same brightly colored silks and sharing many of the same decorative bands. They are almost certainly based on popular pattern books of the time, such as Schorleyker's A Schole-house for the Needle (London, 1624) or Boler's The Needle's Excellency (1631), and reflect a tradition that must have emanated from a particular school and remained popular through the seventeenth century. Other examples from this group are illustrated in C.Humphrey, Samplers, Fitzwilliam Museum Handbook, Cambridge, 1997, nos.3,4,6 and 9. Another from this group from the collection of Irwin Untermyer and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York is illustrated in Y.Hackenbroch, English and Other Needlework, Tapestries and Textiles in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, 1960, pl.63, fig.96.