Sampler

Description

This pictorial sampler was worked in 1795 by Mary Hemphill of Wilmington, Delaware. The sampler was worked with silk threads and glass beads on a natural-colored silk satin weave ground using satin, cross, long, short, feather, outline, buttonhold, fern, and French knot stitches. The sampler retains its original linen borders used to stretch the silk over an embroidery frame, and is currently set inside a modern black frame. The dog and two sheep depicted along the bottom edge of the sampler have glass beads for eyes, and the hills along this bottom edge of the were worked using crinkled silk thread. A silk ribbon with rosettes at each corner frames the picture and covers the linen edges. The ribbon and rosettes may have been pink at one time. Mary Hempill may have gone to Philadelphia for school as her father, William, had once lived there and cocntinued to maintain his Philadelphia business connecctions in the China trade. There are several other objects in Winterthur's collection associated with the Hemphill family: an embroidered white silk shawl with a paper shawl needlework pattern in their original lacquer cases (1964.83 A-D), a Chinese export porcelain cup and saucer (1976.0008 A, B) owned by Mary Hemphill before her marriage to Morgan Jones in 1808, and two handkerchiefs (1964.0161 and 1964.0162) owned by Mary Hemphill after her marriage with "MHJ" initials embroidered.