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Extraordinary Silk on Linen Needlepoint Sampler Sally Harrington, Massachusetts, 1808
US$7,000 - US$9,000
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Elizabeth Muir
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale
Amy Griffin
Cataloguer

Paul O'Hara
Sale Coordinator & Cataloguer
Extraordinary Silk on Linen Needlepoint Sampler
Large plain-woven linen panel worked in single, plied, and crinkled silk threads, composed with a wide flat-arched arcade border depicting fruit on two oscillating vines intersecting at crest, and an outlined wave-pattern band enclosing the vertical central reserve containing four registers, the top with three lines of alphabet and numbers, above a square framed section quoting Hymn 98 by English poet Isaac Watts (1674-1748):
"My heart how dreadful heard it is / How heavy here it lies / Heavy and cold within by breast / Just like a rock of ice / Sin like a raging tyrant sits / Upon this flinty throne / And evry grace lies bury'd deep / Beneath this heart of stone"
The bottom register inscribed "Sally Harrington's / Work 1808" in an oval bow-knot reserve symmetrically flanked by tall potted flowers towering above two girls standing on grass in colorful dresses, below a densely wrought landscape scene centering a front-gable clapboard house in three-quarter perspective, surrounded by ornamental trees and large birds, the hemmed edge finished with satin-stitched sawtooth border conforming with the arcade. Not examined outside of conservation-grade giltwood frame.sight 19 3/8 x 25 in.
framed 24 1/2 x 30 1/4 in.
Footnotes
Provenance
Property from a Mid-Atlantic Estate.
M. Finkel & Daughter, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Featured in Samplings VII (1995), cover and p. 1.
Literature
For discussion of Federal-era samplers in Massachusetts, see Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850, vol. 1 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 76-9, 100-43.



