The Mercer Museum is in Pennsylvania and it has a wonderful collection of textiles to explore. Here you can see just a few. You will recognise lovely items from Westtown - including a stitched globe - and mucy more.
The founding of the museum was down to historian and archaeologist Henry Mercer (1856-1930) who recognized the need to collect and preserve the outmoded material of daily life in America before it was swept away by the Industrial Revolution. Mercer gathered almost 30,000 items ranging from hand tools to horse-drawn vehicles and assembled this encyclopedic collection in a system of his own devising. To enhance the collection's educational value, and to share it with the public, Mercer decided to design and build a museum to display the artifacts.
Searching on line you will find not only samplers, but also quilts and pockets, so do experiment with the search criteria you enter - you will have many hours of enjoyment. Each piece has a descriptive record associated with it which gives you more details and historical background when it is available.
Below is a delightful sampler worked by Mary Katz and is dated 1799. it is probable that Mary was 17 when she worked this sampler as it seems to imply that she was born in January 1782.
And the museum have a chart for this sampler priced at $7.50. Just click here to request your copy. And click here to go to Mercer Museum' On Line Site.
A nice article. I just got Mary Katz in December and it is a great sampler. Ellen Chester also finished it and shows it on her blog.
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