Embroidered sampler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sampler features both colored silk embroidery and white cutwork, in addition to a bobbin lace edging (probably a later addition). Unfinished acorn and oak leaf, flower pot, and geometric motifs are stitched in a light brown thread on the top half of the sampler, while cutwork and drawnwork geometric patterns are present on the work’s bottom half and top left corner. Cutwork, from which needle lace developed, is a technique in which portions of the ground fabric are cut away and reinforced with embroidery stitches and filled in with needle lace. While many surviving English samplers include lace, cutwork, and drawnwork, very few examples of seventeenth-century lace have been attributed to English manufacture.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art