The Evolution of Needlework Samplers

There is a sizeable back-log of things I had been wanting to write about during my last few months at University, so much so that it is hard to know where to start. Whilst there are probably more exciting things to the general population, I wouldn’t be staying true to myself if I didn’t go for something shamelessly geeky to start with… sorry! Bear with me… After researching them endlessly for my undergraduate dissertation, I have become a total nerd on the subject of embroidered samplers and have a number of posts in mind concerning them. First off, however, I will attempt to give a short history of samplers, as a backdrop to future posts.

For me, and I think most people, the word sampler was associated only with a traditional, harmless past-time, the cross-stitched alphabet, numbers and motifs seen framed on the walls of many a grandparent’s house…  In fact, the form has a long and changing history spanning about 500 years, from which some significant conclusions can be drawn about the role of needlework in constructing societal and gender norms.

The earliest surviving samplers held by the Victoria and Albert museum date back to the 14^th-15^th centuries (click images to enlarge):

The term ‘sampler’ itself derives from the Old French word ‘essamplaire’, meaning something to be copied or imitated: an example. The earliest samplers reflect this meaning closely: before the invention of the printing press and proliferation of printed pattern books, they served as personal references and reminders of patterns for skilled embroiderers. This function was purely utilitarian, a fabric dictionary to enable the production of other embroidered pieces.

Through much of the 16th century the sampler retained its functional role as a necessary record of stitches and patterns. Towards the 17^th century, however, the sampler was beginning to change in its purpose. With printed paper patterns now much more readily available, the sampler instead acted as a visible record of achievement and increasing needlework skills in trying out copied patterns and effects: a space for younger needleworkers to learn and practise upon, rather than a personal reference-book for already accomplished embroiderers. Samplers from this era are largely divided into two groups: spot samplers, where motifs and patterns are randomly practised over a large area of fabric…

… and band samplers, where row upon row of patterns fill a very long and narrow piece of fabric that can be rolled up, put away and brought out again when needed for future reference:

A beginning trend for young girls to initial, and eventually sign and date samplers from this period onwards, and striking similarity between many different samplers, suggest the sampler’s increasing role in education, taught and learned from widely disseminated pattern books and signed as a record of achievement in needlework education.

The late 17^th through to the 18^th century saw the introduction of moral and religious verses into samplers. In the eighteenth century, the sampler’s shape and purpose evolved much further, into a square piece to be displayed rather than a source of personal practise and reference. Rather than the random styles of spot and band samplers, 18^th century samplers contained more unified designs, framed by borders and producing larger scale pictures often accompanied by moral text. With this change in design focus, however, came a dramatic diminishing in the number of stitches used in the overall sampler. Whilst early samplers employed an endless variety of different stitches, by the eighteenth century this was generally much reduced:

The notion of sampler as ‘example’ therefore seems to have evolved not to concern the skills, stitches and patterns for personal use that the sampler began as, but instead, in standing as framed display pieces containing moral text, aesthetically-conscious pictorial design, and the name and age of their maker, to stand as an ‘example’ and symbol of the young embroiderer herself.

Finally, the role of the sampler takes a dramatic turn in the 19^th century. Through its aforementioned evolution to become an outward display of its young female maker’s education in stitchery and apparent morality, during the 19^th century needlework sampler-making became inextricable from and highly symbolic of the Victorian feminine ideal, that praised silence, obedience and piety. The physical act of embroidery itself, sitting in silent concentration with downcast eyes and lowered head, was designed to instil these feminine virtues. The centrality of needlework in all female education across this period further highlights its role in instilling normative feminine virtues. 

Whilst for the first time girls of all social classes were taught reading, writing and basic numeric skills, all of this learning was done through the traditionally ‘feminine’ form of needlework sampler making. This form of schooling was not designed to engender independent thought and creation. Instead, and in keeping with passive, silent and obedient feminine virtue, it taught girls only to read, memorize and recite the ideas of others, mediated through the sampler form designed to enforce feminine physical behaviour and qualities in its practice. The synthesis between female education, embroidery and indoctrination in traditional femininity is brilliantly exemplified by an 1827 sampler in which the alphabet, multiplication table and a poem on virtue all appear stitched alongside one another: 

The sampler form then, and the sense of ‘essamplaire’, evolves from the notion of a personal reference and example for stitched design, to eventually become an example of idealised Victorian feminine behaviour, and a framed outward ‘example’ and representation of a young girl’s feminine education, skills and moral values. By the early twentieth-century, sampler-making was mostly eradicated from girl’s education, leaving it to become the freer past-time it is considered today. Knowledge of the changing role of the sampler however highlights the ways in which material practices are both shaped by, and in turn shape, changes in the technology, moral and social ideals of society.