Thanks, all. It still kind of blows my mind that this was a children’s activity! Since where I grew up there wasn’t ever much of the European and Euro-American traditions like samplers, I knew very little about who did them or why.
I found some fantastic sources to browse of and about historic samplers, if you’re interested:
- The catalogs at Samplings.com, which are international in coverage
- The Sampler Archive, a project of the University of Delaware and the University of Oregon, on samplers of American origin (Euro-American samplers were heavily influenced by the designs of their respective European cultures of origin, and then at some point the influences started crossing the Atlantic in both directions)
- A research guide to Early American samplers, discussing the Sampler Archive and other resources.
- This obituary for the foremost author and scholar on Mid-Atlantic girls’ needlework, Gloria Seaman Allen, includes descriptions and links to her works on the topic.