These are photos of a few examples of the book 'Samplers' (V&A) By Donald King.
Samplers are old embroidery peices from the early 17th to the middle of the 19th century. They were usually produced by young school girls from ages as young as 5 up to around 15 years old. Although sometimes they were also made professionally for specific purposes. (cover)
The pieces I have selected are those I find the most applicable to my own work and hope to get a little bit of inspiration on layouts and themes. After a lot of reading it's really amazing to think about the work that has actually gone into them. They are all hand sewn which is the most impressive thing. Most of the book is very old fashioned craftwork but I really love the examples with animals involved, they remind me of ancient cave paintings or Egyptian hieroglyphics. I love the sense of storytelling in some of them, where some have a central focal point surrounded by pattern and others have horizontal left to right composition like a page of a book. It's a shame the whole book is in black and white, It would be nice to see some coloured samplers to see what was used at the time, although seeing as they're Victorian they'll have faded with time.
When I think about it, I'll have deffinately seen some samplers in real life at the V&A but obviously not payed a heck of a lot of attention. Next time i'll not be walking straight past!
Check out the intricate needlework! Those poor little fingers!
No comments:
Post a Comment