Sally Hunt 1795

Description

A Warren, Rhode Island sampler from the collection of The Scarlet Letter
Most people associate the main samplermaking centers of Rhode Island with Newport, Providence, and Bristol, but a lesser known offshoot of those schools coexisted in Warren. Warren samplers, while usually not as elaborate as the Balch School works, are nonetheless very similar, and much more rare. The same elegant house on a stepped hill with a widow’s walk and flanked by fences, the same symmetry, similar inscriptions (particularly “Let virtue be a guide to thee”), solidly filled-in background areas, are characteristics shared by the Warren School with its more famous cousins. Genealogical research has led us to discover the birth of Sally Hunt in 1782, in Little Compton, RI, very close to Warren. The sampler is worked in cross, tent, stem and counted satin stitches. The hand-dyed linen has been matched to the original ground, and the reproduction is within a half inch of the same size of the original sampler.