Embroidered Sampler

Mary Waine

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The sentiment expressed in the motto on this freely designed sampler illustrates the attitude, pervasive in the eighteenth century, that female education was necessary only to provide something for a woman to fall back on in the unlikely event that all other options for support failed. Most of the middle- and upper-class girls who made samplers would never have to work outside the home to support themselves, so the poor (by today's standards) academic training they received seemed perfectly adequate for their expected futures as wives, mothers, and homemakers.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art