Catharine Spangler 1779

Description

This is an American sampler displaying all of those features that make our indigenous samplers so appealing: a naive freshness, an unschooled layout, subtle color palette, and an exuberant and disproportionate pictorial scene with people as large as houses. Formerly in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the sampler was de-accessioned and, via The Scarlet Letter, is now in a private collection. It was made in Philadelphia and is related to Fig. 391 in Betty Ring’s Girlhood Embroidery.