A SILK PICTORIAL SAMPLER ON LINEN

Displaying a number of characteristics common to samplers made in the Quaker schools of Burlington County, New Jersey, this example was wrought, as inscribed, in nearby Ellisburg by Elizabeth Cole. Within this large group, three variations have been identified: those inscribed ‘Evesham School’ and two others not linked to a named school. Most depict the famous Quaker Westtown School with willow trees on both sides and a lawn populated by animals, usually swans and sheep below a verse enclosed within a vine-and-leaf border. The building represented in the present lot does not appear to be the Westtown School, but, like examples from the Evesham School, it is enclosed beneath an arched sky. All have backgrounds with an abundance of Quaker motifs and are surrounded by a cross-stitched rose-vine border comprising a leaf tendril on one side and a rosebud stem on the other (for more on the Burlington County samplers, see Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework 1650-1850, vol. II (New York, 1993), pp. 476-485).