Jane Parish 1718

Description

This is a very curious sampler, belonging to a small group made in England during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, that use lettering to create form and design. This example is one of the most outstanding in that the letter forms are dispersed around a central mirror image geometrical double cartouche. Leigh Ashton has this to say about Jane Parish’s samplers in his 1926 book Samplers (The Medici Society, London and Boston): During the early part of the (eighteenth) century the interest in lettering was so great that samplers are met with in which the decoration consists entirely in verses and inscriptions embroidered with a view to displaying alphabetical elaboration. Two other examples of decorative lettered samplers, in the collection of  The Scarlet Letter, include a piece made by Jane Ogle in 1700, and another by Elizabeth Norris in 1730. The inscriptions on the Parish sampler, disjointed by the central cartouche, are as follows:

and

*EP is probably Jane’s mother, Elizabeth, as well as her needlework instructor.