Samplers On-Line from the Historic Museum of Rotterdam

I am particularly fond of samplers from Zeeland with their large decorative, gabled houses sitting fair and square centrally or centred on the lower edge. These lovely samplers are from a collection of over 40 that you can admire on line courtesy of the Museum of Rotterdam. This first sampler dated 1784 has quite a modest house but is surrounded by a wealth of symbolic motifs including top right the Maid of Freedom in her garden and lower left the paired rabbits in the blissful domesticity of their connubial hutch. And I am sure you will have already spotted the obliging whale disgorging Jonah in the lower right.

Now this is more what we call a Zeeland house! What I find interesting in this unfinished sampler is the way the addional motifs are being built up symmetrically, although the potted shrubs beneath the rather large birds are not identical.

And here is just a lovely pattern-darned sampler from 1802 displaying a number of twilled and damask weaves framing a central mini-sampler. You will be able to see the pattern-darning closer up when you visit the Museum collection on-line. Just click here and enter Merklap as the search term.