Museums and a Haslemere Museum Update

It is not an easy time for museums in the present climate, many do not have sufficient volunteers to help and money is always a problem. If you have a local museum, do find out, if you are able, what help you can give them. I know that owing to staffing shortages and the change of volunteers that work with any museum is sometimes a very slow process - so I do appreciate your patience for our Museum projects which cannot be effected as fast as our own internal projects. Nevetheless, we are committed to working with and helping museums wherever we can. I know that Haslemere Educational Museum ran out of stock quickly of their wonderful James Wilson's sampler, but I am told that it is now back in stock and they hopefully now have a working PayPal link. Just click here to send your request for a copy.

Samplers - The Long and the Short of Them

I have been examining early samplers in close-up detail, together with early illustrations of stitchers, for quite a while now, and the evidence is now building for the stitching of samplers not from the top, not from the bottom, but from the side. And that would mean that when stitching a band the stitcher would not be working across the band from left to right (or right to left), but rather would be working up the band, away from her body. The illustration here from Rosina Furst's pattern book, though not of a sampler stitcher, will give you some idea of how the stitcher was oriented with respect to her work. This could explain why some samplers appear to be worked both from the top and bottom, having bands, particularly alphabets and signatures, oriented in opposing directions. It could also explain the reversals of Ns and Ss on some samplers since the direction of working the letter would be rotated through 90 degrees to the normal reading and writing angle. (Though confusion in the orientation of these letters is also found in carving.) There are also samplers with some interesting and 90 degree rotated infills at the edges of bands. Viewing work at this strange (to us) 90 degree rotation would not have been all that strange to a stitcher in the 17th century, since the subjects of tapestries were woven at a 90 degree rotation to the weaver. This is not to say that some samplers may have been stitched in hand or attached to cushion in the way we have previously envisioned, but it is far more probable that the work was set up in a frame and worked in the way shown in this illustration

Fabulous DMC Workshop * Mulhouse * 26 - 28 November * No better place for a spot of Christmas Shopping *NOW FULL UP* NEW WORSHOP BEING PLANNED*

I remember some magical Christmas Shopping in the medieval Rheinish towns of Mulhouse, Strasbourg, Colmar - Le Petit Chose in the avenue d'Altkirk, Brunstatt is a place where sitchers believe they have found true heaven. And now you can combine all that with a fabulous stitching workshop given at the DMC Print Museum in Mulhouse by none other than Ollivier Henry, the beauty of whose marvellous reconstructed court costumes brought me to my knees at one Aiguilles en Fete. Go, go, GO! If you register before 15th October the prices is just 550 euros instead of 750 euros. (Oh what you could do with those 200 euros in Le Petit Chose or the DMC Museum shop!)

OK. Take a breath. The theme of the workshops is 18th century gardens and Ollivier will take you through all the stitches you need. You will get to visit the museum and archives not usually open to the public. Residence is in local 3 star hotels. Two nights' accommodation and all meals are included, with pick up from the railway station in Mulhouse. Payment is via Banker's Cheque or draft and you can download a registration form by clicking here. If you are not a French reader, don't worry - we'll set up a French co-ordination service for you if you need it.

Souvenir de Ma Jeunesse

These long albums of schoolgirl stitching exercises called rather romantically Souvenir de Ma Jeunesse in French, or more practically Pronkerolle in Dutch are something of a rarity in the the UK, where these exercises would have been fixed into something more book-like resembling a school book or album. The one we see here, however, does not have the neat coherence of some of the Souvenirs de Ma Jeunesse and is a more haphazard display. Nonetheless, visible are darning exercises, patching, knitting and a colourful sampler. Bonhams, Oxford where this item is to be auctioned tomorrow (Lot 374 Estimate £100-£120) does not mention a country of origin.

The following pair of samplers for auction at Bonhams, Bury St Edmunds on 28 October (Lot 614 Estimate £300-£500) stitched by Freeman girls some 43 years apart suggests the earlier sampler was passed down through two generations of the female line - from great aunt to great niece. It is also a nice early record of a pre-board female school in Haverhill, Suffolk, teaching free form stitching rather like the Norwich schools. Mary was born about 1765 and would have been around 19 when she stitched this sampler, the later age being in line with some of the older students of Judith Hayle.

Sophia Freeman, though she stitches some pretty free rosebuds, has produced a much simpler sampler. Sophia was born about 3 miles away from Haverhill in Shudy Camps on 23 Feb 1817 to Henry Freeman and his wife Charlotte.