Sampler

Maker Lydia Ann Durell

Period1840

MediumPlied silk thread on linen

DimensionsSight: 16.13 × 23.5 in. (41 × 59.7 cm)

SignedThe sampler is signed "Lydia Ann Durell's / Work Done in the / 13th year of her age."

ClassificationsNeedlework

Credit LineBequest of Catherine T. Naylor, 1961

Object number1975.545

DescriptionLydia Ann Durell's sampler is worked on especially open weave, almost gauzy unbleached linen. Plied silk threads include shades of dark, medium, and light blue, medium and pale green, pearly white, golden brown and dark brown, brick red, and salmon red. The rectangular sampler has "BORDENTOWN SCHOOL" worked in Algerian eyelet stitch across the top. Beneath is the verse "Teach me to sooth the helpless orphan's grief / with timely aid the widow's woes assuage / To misery's moving cries to yield relief / And be the sure resource of drooping age." The verse lines are flanked on the left by a floral basket and on the right by a pair of red-breasted birds. In the center of the sampler is worked a small rectangular strawberry vine border within which, in dark brown silk, is worked the inscription "Lydia Ann Durell's / Work Done in the / 13th year of her age." On the lower third of the sampler is worked a pictorial scene featuring a brick and clapboard building with central steps below the front door. On either side of the building, green hills rise, topped by pine trees and small floral elements as well as a lamb, what may be a goat or horned cow, and four tiny birds. Below the hills is a band of grass, worked in two rows of vertical long stitch in untwisted silk thread. In the space to the left and right of the central inscription and above the pictorial scene are worked a variety of floral elements and floral sprays. The entire sampler is enclosed by a tightly worked strawberry vine border.
Curatorial RemarksSampler maker Lydia Ann Durell chose as her verse a portion of the poem "Elegy to Pity," an anonymous work which appeared in print as early as 1805 and was included in a number of anthologies for several decades. Lydia Ann's unknown instructress may have happened upon the poem in Lyman Cobb's "Sequel To The Juvenile Readers; Comprising a Selection of Lessons in Prose and Poetry...," advertised as being "Designed for the use of higher classes in schools and academies," published in New York in 1834. Both Lydia Ann and her younger sister Caroline attended the Bordentown School in Burlington County. Although virtually nothing is known about this school, it is clear that the institution's needlework classes were offered for a number of years and that its instructresses were well aware of current embroidery fashions. Lydia Ann's sampler, with its softly colored silk embroidery threads, combined with lettering, verse, inscription, and pictorial scene reflects the typical framework of early 19th century sampler design. Her sister Caroline's sampler, however, reflects the changes seen in embroideryby mid-century, in part influenced by the introduction of bright chemically-dyed wool threads, greatly appealing to early Victorian sensibilities.NotesLydia Ann Durell, born in 1827, was thirteen years old at the time she completed her silk and linen sampler at the Bordentown School. Lydia Ann was the oldest of the three children of Jonathan Durell (1803 - 1859) and Ann N. Sager (d. 1875). The family lived in Bordentown, Burlington County, New Jersey. Both Lydia Ann and her younger sister Caroline Tiel Durell attended the Bordentown School. Lydia Ann relied on her needlework skills to earn a living; in the 1860 federal census, she was listed as a "tailoress" resident in Bordentown with her widowed mother, sister Caroline and brother John. The sisters never married and lived together in Bordentown until 1911, when they died the same year, Lydia Ann at the age of eighty-four and Caroline at the age of seventy-seven. The Association also owns Caroline Tiel Durell's sampler. For more biographical information on the Durell sisters and on Caroline's own sampler, please see accession number 1975.544.

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