
DATE: Monday, November 10, 1997             TAG: 9711080041

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  149 lines

A SAMPLE OF HISTORY TWO EXHIBITS SHOW THE NEEDLEWORK OF COLONIAL WOMEN IN AN ARTISTIC LIGHT

WHEN Ann Pasteur Maupin was 10, she sat in a classroom in Williamsburg embroidering her alphabet. She patiently worked the colorful silk threads into a fine piece of linen, making rows of A-B-C's and then a pictorial of Adam and Eve by the Tree of Knowledge.

It was the fall of 1791, a time when all young women were taught to stitch, either to make them marriageable or serviceable to fine families.

Stitching was challenging but also calming to the soul. And the slow and steady process of working the cloth may have helped Ann learn the alphabet, mathematics and even the religious and moral sayings prevalent on such samplers.

Though she may have admired her own work, Ann could never have imagined that, two centuries later, her lesson on linen would be showcased in a fine art museum in her hometown.

Ann's sampler is includ ed in ``Virginia Samplers: Young Ladies and Their Needle Wisdom,'' which recently opened at the DeWitt Wallace Gallery in Colonial Williamsburg. It features more than 70 never-shown samplers and related embroideries created by Virginia girls from 1650 to 1850.

Also on display on the northern Peninsula is a second show dealing in domestic arts. ``Threads of History: Commemorative Needlework in America,'' at Yorktown Victory Center, focuses on patriotic sentiments expressed in 35 18th century and 19th century needlework.

Scholars have been paying long-overdue attention to the artistic results of schoolgirls' and women's household labors.

``Virginia and Southern arts in general have not been studied'' very extensively, said Kimberly Smith Ivey, associate curator of textiles at DeWitt Wallace Gallery and organizer of the ``Virginia Samplers'' show.

Colonial Williamsburg purchased its first sampler in 1930, a circa 1800 British piece. The first Virginia sampler was acquired in 1978, an event that kick-started a major search for more.

As Ivey took over the project, she learned that ``so many of them were misidentified as early English or Scottish work because of the motifs and the names.''

Virginia samplers suffered from the Revolutionary and Civil wars, she said, and many were taken as battle booty. Others deteriorated from the state's hot, humid atmosphere or were left behind as homes were necessarily abandoned.

The show's title refers to an anecdote from the diary of a young Philadelphia woman, Sally Wister, after being visited in 1778 by a Revolutionary War officer. He had seen her sampler hanging in the parlor.

She wrote: ``Observed my sampler which was in full view. Wished I would teach the Virginians some of my needle wisdom. They were the laziest girls in the world.''

However, Ivey said: ``They were not the laziest girls in the world. Indeed, their work was exceptional. The stitches were so beautifully worked.''

The Williamsburg show includes five Norfolk samplers, two from Isle of Wight and several more from the Suffolk area.

``Now that we're publishing the information, showing people what they look like, people are going back and looking through their attics. In the last 10 days, we've had three Virginia samplers brought to our attention,'' including one from Norfolk, Ivey said.

Followers of contemporary art might trace this sea change in attitude toward ladies' needlework to a quarter century ago, when mixed media artist Miriam Schapiro and artist Judy Chicago started the feminist art movement.

The two artists began spreading their message - that the tradition of women's functional, decorative artwork should be studied and built on - in 1971 while they taught an art course for women at the California Institute of the Arts.

Schapiro, whose work has incorporated fabric, presented a workshop and lecture at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg in September.

She wrote: ``Now that we women are beginning to document our culture, redressing our trivialization and adding our information to the recorded male facts and insights, it is necessary to point out the extraordinary works of art by women which despite their beauty are seen as leftovers of history.

``Aesthetic and technical contributions have simply been overlooked.''

As an example, she pointed to ``the authenticity and energy in needlework.''

With prodding by Schapiro and others, the art world has opened its doors wider to women and other under-appreciated art makers, both contemporary and historic.

The story of women's home-based art is being more widely disseminated. Take, for example, the sampler.

The word itself is derived from examplair, French for a model or pattern to work by, copy or imitate, wrote Sarah Don in her book ``Traditional Samplers.''

Most people today visualize a sampler and begin to salivate for chocolate; the embroidered image on the Whitman's Sampler candy box is our most prevalent reminder.

Those who own samplers passed down intact through the family are fortunate, because such fragile textiles, if not properly conserved, swiftly deteriorate.

In most of the textiles on display in the two exhibits, the once-bright color of the threads has faded, and the fabrics have darkened to varying degrees of brown.

The earliest surviving samplers were recovered from Egyptian burial grounds, Don reported. In the late 15th and early 16th century in Europe, a revival of interest in all sorts of decoration led women to take up needlework.

Because few published patterns existed, women taught stitches and designs to one another. Not trusting their memories, they recorded this new information on long and narrow patches of fabric, usually unbleached linen. These practice swatches came to be called samplers.

The earliest dated sampler was made in 1598 by Jane Bostocke of England, celebrating the birth of her daughter Alice. Typical of its time, the sampler has no coherent design. There are rows of embroidered letters, sections of patterning, and a top part with random stitched images of a playful dog, resting doe and foliage.

As trade flourished during Elizabeth I's reign in England (1558-1603), an influx of new materials and ideas set the stage for the golden age of the sampler in the 17th century.

Pattern books became available during Charles I's reign in England (1625-49), when samplers were still the province of grown women. Needlework became increasingly sophisticated, with an ever-expanding vocabulary of stitches, including cross, tent, running and Algerian eye.

By the mid-17th century, alphabets began to appear in samplers, as an academic exercise for children. Also at this time, short inscriptions of a religious, moral or pious nature began to appear.

Schools took over the sampler. In Samuel Johnson's 18th century dictionary, a sampler is defined as ``a piece worked by young girls for improvement.''

Now, instead of setting aside a sampler as a mere guide, completed samplers were considered finished artwork. In the 18th century, they were framed and displayed as evidence of a girl's needlework abilities, deemed crucial to making her a suitable wife.

In 1828, the first embroidery machine was invented. Soon after, girls' schools became more academic, with less emphasis on the domestic arts.

The sampler went into hiding, in drawers and old trunks, only now to be retrieved for museum display.

And big and little women - for fun, not necessity - can purchase an Ann Pasteur Maupin sampler kit in a museum shop. They can stitch Adam and Eve, too, and ponder Ann's lost world. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

This sampler, on display in Colonial Williamsburg...

[Side Bar]

"Virginia Samplers"

Color photo Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

A geography book that belonged...

"Threads of History"

Color photo Jamestown Yorktown Foundation

A portrait of an 18th century English woman sewing...

Photo

COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG

A sampler made in Williamsburg in 1791 by 10-year-old Ann Pasteur

Maupin is on exhibit at the DeWitt Wallace Gallery in Colonial