17th CENTURY
The English word 'sampler' derives from the Latin 'exemplum', or the old French term 'essamplaire', meaning 'an example'. Before the introduction of printed designs, embroiderers and lacemakers needed a way to record and reference different designs, stitches and effects. The answer was to create a sampler – a personal reference work featuring patterns and elements that the owner may have learned or copied from others, to recreate again in new pieces. Although references and printed patterns do exist from the 16th century few samplers are known, our story starts in the 17th century. Samplers form this period are traditionally of a long, format there length dependent on the width of the cloth used. Needlework skills were important for the future management of a girl's household, and the personal adornment of herself and her family. Alphabets allowed girls to practice the marking of linen (sheets, undergarments and other personal items were named so they came back to their right owners after wash day), while spot motifs and border patterns could be used to decorate both clothes and domestic furnishings. The earliest being "Spot" samplers numerous patterns and designs worked out on a practice piece of cloth before being worked on the final article By about 1630, a characteristic shape and size of band sampler was becoming recognisable, typically filled with rows of repeating patterns worked in coloured silks, sometimes interspersed with figures or floral motifs. The composition of band samplers, along with evidence of unpicking, and the variety of stitches used, indicates their increasing use as a teaching tool. A number have been grouped together suggesting a school and one group from Norfolk has been linked to a teacher Judith Hayle and her daughter Rebecca. Many samplers have a number of bands of white work, cut & drawn thread and lace, these are occasionally worked into a sampler on there own and are generally the final piece of needlework a girl would complete in her "education". It must be noted that samplers of this period unparticular were the property of the stitcher and were rolled up and used as a CV when required, and so were often not named or dated, some were worked over a number of years even into adulthood , and they knew they had worked it.