It is undeniable that at the moment there is a renewed interest in embroidery with contemporary artists rediscovering techniques such as needlework and employing them to create new works tackling modern themes and issues.
But to take a technique into the future you must know its past and embroidery fans can get to learn more about this art via an exhibition currently on at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
"Embroidered Stories: Scottish Samplers" (until 21st April 2019) features 70 pieces on loan from American collector Leslie B. Durst, made by girls (and occasionally by boys) who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Leslie B. Durst sampler collection is one of the largest and most comprehensive private collections in the world, and includes pieces from Europe (over 500 of them are Scottish) and North America.
In the 17th century a sampler allowed to learn different sewing stitches and patterns and soon it turned into a way to summarize the education and achievements of the person who sewed it.
The language of the samplers was international as they featured basic elements, including letters, numbers and symbols that may have referred to a hometown or school (teachers from different schools had special symbols and points that they would teach).
The samplers featured in the Edinburgh exhibition come from all over Scotland, including the Western Highlands and the Orkney Islands.
They are small pieces of needlework but they incorporate a great deal of information (quite often in tiny details) about a person’s education, family, religion and interests. One of the samplers for example is attributed to a Scottish girl who emigrated to America with her family: Catharine McPherson's piece looks like a Scottish sampler until you realize that the embroidered ship in the lower right corner has a small American flag.
Children recorded on the samplers the things most dear to them, but also notes on morality, education and the industrialisation of Scottish society. There are alphabet samplers and pieces incorporating multiplications, details of places and events, biblical scenes and religious verses, but also fun scenes with cute animals such as cats and a zebra as well.
Margaret Alexander's sampler, made during the Napoleonic Wars, includes portraits of three British army regiments; Maern Kedglie, from Inveresk, represented the neighbouring town of Musselburgh in her sampler, using the town's coat of arms of three anchors and three mussels.
Anne Raffan's sampler is a precise account that could have been stored in a registrar's office: the girl recorded with coloured thread her siblings' baptism dates and then she added the date of her own marriage; a sampler begun by Jane Hannah of Garlieston was finished instead by another girl, her friend Jane Murray, who recorded on it her friend's death with the words "the above lies sleeping in her grave" and the moniker "Time Flies; Death Reigns".
Techniques also vary: one sampler is stitched on paper and made with coloured beads rather than conventional embroidery thread. Each piece could be analysed from the point of view of the technique employed to make it, but it could also be interpreted as an archaeological relic revealing something about social history.
Durst, a collector, philanthropist and passionate fan of Scotland, managed to identify the makers of the samplers by reading the initials of extended family members and details of the place where the person lived often included in the samplers.
Genealogical research through church and census records helped her revealing personal histories and provided insight into women's history.
The girls who made the samplers came indeed from different backgrounds and they offer their own views of Scottish history and life employing simple threads.
The father of one of the embroiderers, Mary Hay, was an Edinburgh flesher (butcher) as the girl included in her piece the arms of the Flesher's company; by spotting the now-ruined Dalquharran Castle in South Ayrshire in a sampler by Margaret Eiston, Durst found out that the embroiderer's father was a mason in Ayr and may have worked for the castle’s designer, Robert Adam. Another girl, Jane Milton, made her sampler while growing up in Edinburgh's Orphan Hospital (orphanages encouraged sewing as it was seen as a skill that may have helped a girl earning a living).
It is easy to dismiss the samplers are relics from another time and era, especially when compared to our digital age. But, if you consider the fact that their visual language and code are universal, you realise that they are early examples of modern infographics or Instagram pictures that contain the girls' DNA in their threads and stitches, so this exhibition is definitely not just about needlework.
If you're interested in embroidery works with hidden meanings and symbolisms and want to discover how you can make this technique more contemporary, check out the work of Heather Marie Scholl.
The American artist, activist and embroiderer has just launched her "Do Your Whitework" embroidery and racial justice workshop, that will take place on 11th November at Classeteria in Brooklyn, New York.
The course teaches two basic embroidery stitches, the back stitch and the satin fill stitch, while guiding participants through a discussion on white supremacy and white people’s complicity in racist institutions and systems. Through stitching, participants will commit to eradicate white supremacy, learn how to respond to the racist system we exist in today and stitch anti-racist slogans on the "Do Your Whitework" toolkit that comes with the course (as a T-shirt or a totebag). Looks like embroidery has never been just about sewing.
Image credits for this post
Images 1 to 12 Scottish samplers from the Leslie B. Durst Collection. © Leslie B. Durst Collection
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