Embroidered Sampler

Rebekah White

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The pastoral courting scene embroidered beneath the lettering on this sampler relates to the more formal tent-stitch needlework pictures created by Boston girls during this decade. Salem samplers are characterized by long filling stitches made from untwisted silk floss. This early sampler is one of a small group made in the school of an unknown teacher who may have introduced this technique, which remained popular in Salem into the nineteenth century.

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