souvenirs

http://www.samplings.com/resources/buswk.html

"Samplers are hot now with Americana collectors because they're bright, colorful, and beguilingly childlike," says Nancy Druckman, director Of Sotheby's Folk Art department. 'They represent a simpler time in America when things were centered on the home." Finkel's Philadelphia gallery (215 627-7797) will host a six-day exhibit and sale of 85 samplers on April 11. Prices range from $800 to $45,000.

"At Sotheby's in New York recently, 135 samplers brought in $1.8 million, twice the presale estimate. An exquisite 1826 sampler by 14-year-old Anna Braddock of Burlington County, N.J., displaying a schoolhouse, children, and a barnyard, brought the top price of $145,500, three times the presale estimate"

http://www.inaminuteago.com/articles/samplerhist.html

http://www.antiquesamplers.com/samplers/index.html

http://www.mainememory.net/bin/Features?t=fp&feat=16

"There is no accomplishment of any kind more desirable for a woman than neatness and skill in the use of a needle,”" advises L. Maria Child in A Girl’'s Own Book, first published in 1834.

By 1850, samplers ceased to be a rite of passage into womanhood.

http://madelena.com/samplersAllFrameSet.html

http://www.eastanglianlife.org.uk/samplers.html

"Each sampler tells its own personal story in the form of a miniature work of art."

“Samplers are the voices of women of the past,” and that they indeed, served as a way for a girl or woman to express her thoughts. http://www.quiltersmuse.com/Samplers.htm

http://www.caron-net.com/featurefiles/featfeb.html

http://www.movingupcountry.com//index.php?ption=com_conte...

http://www.theessamplaire.com/index.php

http://www.witneyantiques.com/flat.items/samplers3.htm

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=...

http://www.witneyantiques.com/flat.items/samplers3.htm

http://www.thesamplerguild.co.uk/TSGLinkspage.htm

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/stories/sampler...

http://www.emlis.com/samp4sale.htm

http://www.needleworkantiques.com/sampler_gallery.html

http://www.exemplum.co.uk/faqs.html#q4

http://www.pem.org/embroidery_arts/overview.html

http://www.antiquetextile.info/index.htm

http://www.quiltersmuse.com/Samplers.htm

http://www.anniecicatelli.com/abecedaire.htm

http://info4antiques.org/ARTICLEpgs/RUGS/ARTICLES/Antique-Samplers.htm

Who would have believed that little girls, often working in dim light and cramped quarters, perhaps under the merciless eye of a schoolmistress, using only thread and needle and their own imaginations, could create designs to delight a generation that dresses in synthetics and does everything by machine?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampler_%28needlework%29

http://www.greencastlemuseum.org/Special_Exhibits/sampler...

http://gottsegnet.blogspot.com/2006/11/american-history-a...

http://www.shakespearespeddler.com/antique.html

Sampler art is like any other -- an art. Every art has its appreciators. Not everyone admires Miro, Chagall, Degas, Van Gogh, .... People are drawn to what speaks to them. As a woman, I feel these samplers are a big piece of where we came from. While men's histories were often recorded in detail, sometimes all we have left of a great woman is what she left in stitches on fabric. Sad, but noble. Don't you think?