Hannah Westcombe's 1783 Sampler - Free Jigsaw Download

It was a thrill to gift Hannah Westcombe's sampler to Ackworth School in time for Ackworth 2010. It is one of the earliest text samplers. These samplers were not exercises in writing, since the girls' writing classes were based upon models either of, or very similar to, those by George Bickham. Nor were they exercises in marking. The evidence of the ligatures or joined letters which you can see above Hannah's name have much more to do with reading the printed page. Perhaps due to the shortage of books which was noted in letters of the time, these text samplers were instigated to create tools for literacy. The quotation at the bottom is from Plato - though in his version it terminates "when thou art a man" - showing that care has been taken to make this quotation relevant to its future readers.
I thought you might like to try this sampler as a jigsaw - it is not too difficult. However, sadly, this is not going to work for Mac users. Instructions: Click here next Click Open, then click the .EXE file name and click Run, when you see the jigsaw puzzle, click Play
Too many pieces? Try clicking on Trays on the top tool bar to create any number of resizeable trays to sort your pieces ........ you can also click the Cheat button and watch the puzzle solve itself! The software is by David Gray designer of Jigsaws Galore - the powerful jigsaw player and creator for Windows.