Nathanial Lloyd Samplers from Great Dixter

It is a little sad that the only record of Nathanial Lloyd's collection of samplers is to be found in these old black and white photographs at English Heritage.

There are some very interesting continental European samplers recorded which you can see here, as well as English examples.

This long sampler has a very interesting interior depicted on its base - amongst all the other fabulous images!

These pattern darning samplers are very typical of the Netherlands - as well as Quaker schools in the UK.

The designs on this sampler were in pattern books some 125 years prior to the stitching of this sampler, showing their persistance and continued popularity. Such motifs can only give you a not-before date for dating samplers as opposed to a not-after date.

Nathaniel Lloyd (1867-1933) founded a firm of lithographic printers. In his middle age he studied architecture under Sir Edwin Lutyens, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1931. And it is at this point I became very interested in him since I am a great lover of vernacular English architecture and he wrote some delightful books. A History of the English House (1931), and A History of English Brickwork (1934) are my favourites. He is perhaps better known for the house he bought at Great Dixter, in East Sussex, a large timber framed manor house of circa 1460, which passed to his son Christopher who was a famous and adventurous gardener. You can vist Great Dixter and I do recommend it to you, it is the epitome of Englishness. To see all the sampler images, click here.