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Issue 2
THOSE SAMPLERS WE LOVE
by Linn Skinner
We look at an embroidery and say "ah, a sampler". They
either appeal to us or leave us cold. If questioned closely however, most
of us will admit that there are some sorts of samplers that call to us seductively
and fill some aesthetic need in our needlecraft vocabulary.
Samplers are antique, they are modern,
they are designed with ridged soldiers of bands or wildly abandoned splashes of
color and stitches, but they all have a story to tell.
Books and articles about samplers abound, so I will only touch the surface with
our comments here. I like most samplers as they have a personal connection
with the stitcher in each case. They were never worked as goods for sale
in professional workshops and old or new, they make a statement about the stitcher/designer.
What constitutes an embroidered sampler? I am comfortable with the idea
that any embroidery which is created to document or demonstrate a collection of
fibers, stitches or motifs
is a sampler. This allows for a latitude in execution, in ground
"fabric", in style or technique. To me this is the wonder
of the subject of samplers - they are marvelously diverse and can evolve in all
sorts of directions.
I'm always interested in collections of samplers, family treasures or your personally
stitched sampler. I enjoy talking to stitchers about samplers and find sampler
guilds forming out of our needs to continue this tradition. Groups are increasingly
interested in hearing talks about the history and future of samplers and a large
number of commercially designed samplers as well as reproductions of past samplers
are sold each year.
We have been stitching samplers for hundreds of years now. It has been some
400 years since Jane Bostocke dated her sampler which to date remains the earliest
dated English sampler known to us. Some things have remained constant:
the need to express our lives and our stitching skills in a permanent way; the
habit of preserving samplers when other needlework may be discarded and yet some
things have changed radically. We now use a vast number of new and exciting
fibers. We are not constrained by past design parameters.
Larger numbers of stitchers are economically able to participate in the creation
of samplers and we have welcomed an increasing number of men to the practice of
stitching a sampler.
As we enter 1999, I encourage you to start a personal sampler this year.
Make it a record of your growth and experience in needlework. Make a memory
for yourself and those who follow.
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