BEFORE the age of machine-made things, and of attire much more conventional than in many of the earlier periods, there was, of course, great need of skilled needlewomen, not only professionally but at home as well, for it was in the home that most of the “finery” of our forefathers originated. Stubbes’s “Anatomy of Abuses,” which appeared in 1583, tells of the raiment of the men of the author’s time who were “decked out in the fineries even to their shirts, which are wrought with needlework of silks,” etc. The good Stubbes also complains that it was difficult to tell who were gentlefolk, because all men of that time affected silks, velvets, “taffeties,” and the like, regardless of station. Thus we may see how important it was that the little misses of the days of long ago should be taught stitchery at the early age of nine or ten years.

Samplers are among the most intimate of collectable old things.

How patiently the little fingers toiled over these records of their wonderful (even if enforced) application! Truly, samplers are the needle-craft primers of yesterday. We have only to recall an old English play, “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” probably the very first of the earlier English folk comedies, to understand the great importance attached to the needle. This play, written about 1560 (and attributed to John Still, Bishop of Wells, and formerly Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, where it was first produced) shows how, during the period of its conception, a steel needle was treasured as few family treasures of to-day, and so when Gammer Gurton lost hers—the only one she possessed—the misfortune took on the importance of genuine calamity. As collectors of samplers and writers on the subject of samplers have been baffled in trying to discover why no samplers dated or positively known to have been worked before the middle of the eighteenth century are extant, this clue to the probable reason which we find in “Gammer Gurton’s Needle” is of interest; the fact is that as needles were so uncommon and such treasured possessions they were not to be entrusted to tiny fingers. Later, when invention turned its attention to needle-making, needles became common enough. I imagine many a little girl of the eighteenth century wished that needles had never been “born”!

Very fine samplers containing both names and dates prior to 1800 are not to be found at every turn. Notwithstanding this, the sampler-collector need anticipate no discouraging difficulty in getting together examples for a fairly representative collection. It is only in comparatively recent years that we have discovered the value of old samplers as excellent decorative accessories on the walls of a room in which old pieces of furniture are placed. Samplers may be mounted and framed for hanging on a wall as a picture might be, and I know of few objects in the line of antiques that seem so appropriate for use in this manner for adorning the walls of a bedchamber.

While it is not always an easy matter to assign undated samplers to their exact periods, approximate dates may without great trouble be determined. Naturally, the earliest examples were more utilitarian than ornamental in conception, more like a mere example of stitchery of various sorts—a leaf from the scrap-book of needlework, as it were. Later, pattern and design and pictorial composition were evolved. Likewise, the earlier samplers seem to have been longer and narrower in proportion than later ones. Threads of gold and silver are to be found in needle-work of the Elizabethan and the Jacobean period, where we should not look for them in the Georgian. Again, there are characteristics of pattern that clearly denote the embroiderer’s time. The design of the letters of the alphabet embroidered on a sampler also forms a clue, inasmuch as it shares in common with contemporary dated, printed, and engraved lettering the more distinctive period characteristics of the latter. The earliest date of an alphabet sampler is, I believe, 1643; of a sampler with a motto, 1651; of a sampler having a border, 1726; of a representation of a house, 1763; of numerals, 1655; of a verse, 1696; 1728 has been suggested as the approximate date of the introduction of mustard-colored canvases on which the samplers were worked.

“Sad sewers made bad samplers,” said Lord de Tabley in “The Soldier of Fortune,” but the wonder is that the little fingers of yesterday should have acquired skill not only in one sort of embroidery but in the varied stitches often seen in a single sampler remarkable for its perfect and exquisite handiwork. One is almost aghast, for instance, at the task suggested by John Taylor’s “The Needles Excellency,” where one reads:

With the infinitude of stitches it is not necessary here to be concerned, although the enthusiast in sampler-collecting will find the study of stitches helpful just as the expert will find it highly necessary. As there is much confusion in the nomenclature, there will be many stumbling-blocks, but the pursuit will be worth while. The earliest seventeenth-century samplers of lace-like appearance were worked in cut-and-drawn embroidery, with various additional lace stitches. Then there was the eyelet-stitch, damask-stitch, the backstitch (these three were used for alphabets), darning-stitches, tent-stitches, and tapestry-stitch (unusual) and so on.

The foundation of early samplers was the hand-woven linen, either unbleached or bleached. Sometimes this was almost as coarse as canvas and again of closely woven texture. Linen thread or silk (somewhat loosely twisted) was employed for the stitchery. The harsh yellow linen of early eighteenth-century samplers came into vogue toward the end of the first quarter of the century, but was soon discarded. Unfortunately, tannery cloth was much in vogue at the end of the eighteenth century. This unattractive material seemed especially devised to satiate the appetites of moths! Most of the tannery-cloth samplers are worked in silk. The muslin-like tiffany cloth was occasionally used before 1800 for small and fine samplers. Later the coarse linens came into fashion. The crudely dyed threads marked the decline of the sampler from about 1800. Then cotton canvas and Berlin wool completed the fall of this one of the gentlest arts.

The early American samplers had, of course, their ancestry and inspiration in English samplers, with which I think they vie in interest and attractiveness. Surely there could be no more delightful wall decoration for a colonial house than one of the early American samplers! These are less commonly found than English samplers and American collectors naturally give them preference.

That the little misses of olden times managed at so tender an age to produce such handiwork seems almost amazing. Little girls of five and six years achieved marvels in sampler stitchery as extant examples abundantly proves.

Poetry and samplers seem to have been good friends. In the second scene of the third act of “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and in the fourth scene of the second act of “Titus Andronicus,” Shakspere alludes to samplers. So does Milton in “Comus,” and Sir Philip Sidney in “Arcadia.” If those blest bards could but scan the verse of some of the sampler-makers! Here is one which, in its way, is a gem typical of task and talent:

There is rhyming for you! And may we not imagine that beneath those sentiments lurked a fine humor?