Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries: Second Edition — John Shaqi
Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries: Second EditionHuish, Marcus B. (Marcus Bourne)
History
Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries: Second Edition
Huish, Marcus B. (Marcus Bourne)
Embroidery -- England; Samplers -- England; Tapestry -- England
"Favour is deceitful And beauty is vain But a woman that feareth the
Lord She shall be praised."--_Mary Gardner, aged 9_, 1740.
Another undated one of the period is:--
"Awake, arise behold thou Hast thy Life ALIFe ThY Breath ABLASt at
night LY Down Prepare to have thy Sleep thy Death thy Bed Thy Grave."
One with leisure might search out the authors of the doggerel religious
and moral verses which adorned samplers. The majority are probably due to
the advent of Methodism, for we only find them occurring in any numbers in
the years which followed that event. It may be noted that "Divine and
Moral Songs for Children," by Isaac Watts, was first published in 1720,
that Wesley's Hymns appeared in 1736, and Dr Doddridge's in 1738.
We may here draw attention to the eighteenth-century fashion of setting
out the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments (Fig. 9), and other
lengthy manuscripts from the Old Testament in tablets similar to those
painted and hung in the churches of the time. The tablets in the samplers
are flanked on either side by full length figures of Christ and Moses, or
supported by the chubby winged cherubs of the period which are the common
adornments of the Georgian gravestones. In the exhibition at The Fine Art
Society's were specimens dated 1715, 1735, 1740, 1757, and 1762, the
Belief taking, in three instances, the place of the Commandments. On
occasions the pupil showed her proficiency in modern languages as well as
with the needle, by setting out the Lord's Prayer in French, or even in
Hebrew.
Contemporaneously with such lengthy tasks in lettering as the Tables of
the Law, came other feats of compassing within the confines of a sampler
whole chapters of the Bible, such as the 37th Chapter of Ezekiel, worked
by Margaret Knowles in 1738; the 134th Psalm (a favourite one), by
Elizabeth Greensmith in 1737, and of later dates the three by members of
the Brontë family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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