Embroidered and stitched decoration on fabric
is one of the oldest art forms in the world, vying with ceramics for that honor. Davis Art Images recently acquired digital
images of works of art from The Library Company
of Philadelphia, a museum started by Benjamin Franklin! One of the works
that charmed me the most was this beautiful
sampler executed by a school girl in 1820s Philadelphia. I’ve always found samplers fascinating as documents of particular
periods in history. I bet there’s a lot most people don’t know about the genre,
especially its long history in art.
Since ancient times, artists have decorated textiles with embroidery, cross-stitch, and various other kinds of stitches. The word “sample”
comes from the French éxamplair,
meaning a model pattern to copy or imitate. This evolved by the 16th
century to saumpler, exemplar, or sampler.
Early samplers were often thin bands meant to be decorative borders on various
household textiles. The art form was practiced not only in Western Europe, but
also in Asia and the Middle East. Patterns from the Middle East
influenced European samplers. Before the 15th century, most patterns
were passed down from person to person. With the rise of the middle class in
the 16th century in Europe, there evolved the demand for pattern
books, the first of which was published in 1523 in Augsburg, Germany.
Early sampler artists were both men and women. Indeed, the
art of embroidering fabric was such as prized art that guilds formed. The
embroidery of material was also an art form that could be practiced at home
more easily than painting or sculpture, and so became a popular expression for
women artists. Samplers were often listed in royal inventories as items of
greatly appreciated value. The earliest known American sampler was produced in
the Plymouth colony in 1645 by a woman named Loara Standish.
During the 19th century, the genre of the sampler
was largely redefined in America as the province of women, an “appropriate” way
for young women to learn important sewing skills for household needs. Already
in the 17th century samplers had become small, embroidered pictures,
commemorating family events, combinations of intricate decorative motifs,
religious subjects, or repetition of numbers and letters as writing practice. Embroidery
was often referred to as “handwork” or simply “work,” indicating that it was a
way of keeping young women busy in a useful project. Such samplers were often
proudly displayed in frames as signs of accomplishment and status.
Margaret Stevenson’s sample is a combination of the
embroidered picture type, and the decorative border that characterized the
earliest sampler work. Both the building (indicating the influence of
Neoclassicism, such a popular style in the early American republic) and floral
border are executed in the cross-stitch technique, which was almost universally
used in American samplers.
Activity: Plan a border design for an embroidered art
work. Make a printing stamp from clay. Create a small block of clay, and carve
a design into one side. On a pad
containing ink or paint, press the stamp into the ink and then press it on a
sheet of paper, imitating an embroidered border from early samplers, or such as
the floral border in the sampler discussed above. Be sure to carefully plan how
the pattern should appear on the paper. Try using two or three different colors
with the same stamp.
Correlations to Davis
programs: Explorations in Art Grade 3: 6.32, Explorations in Art Grade 4:
5.27-28 studio, Exploring Visual Design: 6
Nice blog,will come back soon !
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome!
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