Historical Context
The practice of making an embroidered piece of cloth called a sampler can be traced back to Tudor era England. The Privy Purse Account Books of Queen Elizabeth of York from 1502 record Thomas Fisshe placing an order for “an elne of lynnyn cloth for a sampler for the Quene”. (Bolton and Coe, 10) In 1530, John Palsgrave’s Lesclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse, included “Example for a woman to worke by” as the definition for the French word “exemple” (Lexicons of Early Modern English). As this definition suggests, samplers in this time period were tools created by experienced needleworkers for others to copy and learn from.
By the middle of the 1500s text started to become frequently incorporated into sampler design and increasingly, samplers were used as a place to practice and record stitches rather than an example of expert stitchers. (Goggin 317-18) Jane Bostocke’s sampler from 1598 was a place for her to practice embroidering shapes from her family crest and is the oldest known sampler to record the maker’s name and date. (Victoria and Albert Museum Collection, “Sampler”)
European colonizers in North America brought the practice of sampler-making with them, gradually morphing it into a unique American tradition that crystalized in the middle of the 18th century as stylistically distinct. Sampler making became a keystone in female education and “evolved away from its original function as a collection of embroidery stitches and patterns [for other projects] into a school girl craft” (Parmal 24). Daughters of landowners would study privately under school mistresses learning both the techniques needed to complete a sampler and the religious/moralist ideas behind the phrases they would embroider (Edmonds 10-12). American samplers are aesthetically distinct from English samplers in that they tend to be more square in shape (as opposed to rectangular), feature a stitched border around the perimeter and include many repeated visual and linguistic motifs.