Moda Museum Antwerp - Sampler Collection On-Line

Best known for its fabulous costume collection (more about this tomorrow), the Moda Museum in Antwerp also has a sampler collection of around 650 examples - 285 of which you can see pictured on-line. There are many charming red examples like the one above.

Pattern-darned samplers are also strongly represented and the one above is one of my favourites with its many damascene type darns worked in cotton.

This white and redwork sampler presenting a whole repertoire of needlework skills is absolutely stunning in its design and execution.

There are also pictoral samplers and some very early examples like the one below from the 17th century and very much like the ones found in English collections, though the styles of the last two alphabets are very distinct from anything on UK samplers of this period.

To see for yourself, just click on the this link. Then type Merklap in the search box and tick the final little box on the left which will filter out just those samplers that have an associated image.