I am delighted to welcome back JoAnn Spears to On the Tudor Trail. To celebrate the release of her new book, Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel, which is a sequel to Six of One: A Tudor Riff, Joann has written a fascinating three-part blog series on needlework and the Tudors.
Over to you JoAnn!
Stitches in Tudor Time: A three-part series
Part One
Elizabeth of York kicks things off
There’s no getting away from the Tudors
I embroider reproductions of historic samplers as a hobby. Samplers are pieces of needlework familiar to all, featuring alphabets and decorative borders as a rule. Depictions of houses, animals, flowers and various heraldic motifs are also often included, along with a religious verse.
Being a history buff, I researched the origins of samplers early on in my days of stitching these works. Imagine my delight when I found that my interest in samplers and my lifelong interest in Tudor history actually meshed.
Paid to one Thomas Fisshe, July, 1502
‘For an elne of lynnyn (linen) cloth for a sampler for the Quene viij d…’
This entry in The Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York is the first mention in history of the embroidered sampler.
Spot on!
In Elizabeth’s day, samplers, or examplars, were not the juvenile exercises or decorative efforts we think of today. Rather, they were the Renaissance equivalent of a Pinterest Board. Many of us have such boards, nowadays, to help us collect cute, crafty ideas that we come across here and there. We’d never be able to keep track of them, or to share them with others, without some kind of memory aid and organizing mechanism. The Pinterest Board serves that purpose for modern women admirably.
In Elizabeth’s day there was obviously no Pinterest. In an era when female literacy was limited, a woman may not have had pen (or quill) and scrap paper readily available for jotting down craft ideas or doodling out a design. Scraps of linen and thread, however, were always at hand for women who spent much of their time sewing decorative and utilitarian items. Hence the spot sampler was born.
The well-to-do Renaissance woman spent considerable time embroidering embellishments to garments, accessories such as purses, and household linens and furnishings. These items might be for her own use, for the use of her family members, or to give as gifts. She’d want them to be beautiful and unique. She’d also want them to mean something, literally; Tudor-era folk were all about symbolism in their day-to-day lives.
Perhaps one of these women saw, on a friend’s garment, a border pattern for a sleeve that she wanted to practice stitching so that she could reproduce it on a garment of her own. Maybe she had her own idea for an interesting or meaningful emblem to stitch into her household textiles, and needed to ‘jot it down’ with needle and thread lest she forget it. If she had learned of a new and different kind of stitch to embroider, she’d have needed to get it down on some linen once for reference, and then to practice it a bit before she applied it to a garment she would stitch for her husband. When she saw a design in an illuminated prayer book that caught her fancy, she’d need a place to stitch out a textile version of the design so that she could share it with a friend over the embroidery frame or hoop, maybe even on a jointly-worked project. The spot sampler, a collection of random motifs stitched with oddments of thread onto a spare piece of linen, served all of these purposes, and was an invaluable needlework resource. It was portable, it could be personalized, and as long as space permitted, it could be updated over and over.
By the book
We all know that the printing press had a remarkable impact on the politics, religion, and communications of the Renaissance era. It also affected day-to-day life, including stitchery habits.
In 1523, the first book of embroidery patterns was published in Germany, by Johann Schonsperger. Like Fifty Shades of Grey centuries later, it turned out to be a phenomenon, albeit of a more wholesome sort. Pattern books were immensely popular, with over 150 separate titles published between1523 and 1700.
One of the most popular of these works was The Needle’s Excellency, by John Taylor. Few examples of these pattern books survive intact. This is due to the way some of the illustrations were used to transfer patterns. The needlewoman would prick holes in a given illustration with a pin. She would secure the pricked paper over her linen, and dust it with ash. When the paper was removed, the design would be marked on the linen in ash, for her to follow with her needle. Obviously, pages used in this way would not readily last the ages. Those of feminist bent might think this a good thing, considering the sentiment Mr. Taylor expressed at the beginning of his work.
And for my Countries quiet, I should like,
That Women-kinde should use no other Pike [i.e., needle].
It will increase their peace, enlarge their store,
To use their tongues lesse, and their Needles more.
The Needles sharpenesse, profit yields, and pleasure,
But sharpnesse of the tongue, bites out of measure.
Telling tales in and out of school
Samplers did not go away when pattern books appeared. Rather, they morphed, as the 17th century unfolded, into a way to teach little girls the basics of needlework and in some cases, the rudiments of the alphabet. These early samplers were typically long and narrow, due to the way linen was woven at the time. Since they were teaching exercises, these samplers were more orderly and organized than the earlier spot samplers. It is remarkable to consider that these pieces, worked with complex stitches and patterns, were completed by children by sunlight and candlelight.
The eighteenth century saw the sampler change with the times. As samplers were now the exclusive domain of children and young people, fanciful juvenile touches abounded. Depictions of pets, farm animals, significant buildings and familiar wildflowers were all well represented in samplers of the day. Female literacy was increasingly accepted, and alphabets featured more prominently in samplers.
In keeping with the religious tenor of the times, biblical images were popular additions to samplers. Pious verses were also common, combining alphabet practice with moral teaching. Being of a solemn nature, these verses make a touching juxtaposition to the childish elements of the samplers.
When I am dead and in my grave
And all my bones are rotten.
When this you see remember me
Lest I should be forgotten.
Having a child stitch a verse like this into a sampler today might draw you to the attention of child protective services. But in an era of 30% or greater childhood mortality and more earthy ways than we know now, such verses were common. 
Sampler-making for young girls persisted into the 19th century. Samplers became square in shape. Stitches tended to be less complex as time wore on, with the humble cross stitch taking precedence. Samplers were at times used as family registers, or mourning or memorial samplers for someone who had gone before. As girls started going to school, needlework became part of their school curricula. Well-known and more sophisticated schools for girls often adapted a signature style of needlework, and samplers of this nature are today highly desirable collectibles. Regional trends in sampler stitching also emerged, with the above example being typical of those stitched in Newport, Rhode Island USA.
Sadly, not all little girls worked fanciful or decorative samplers. Some girls, resident at charity schools such as the Bristol Orphanages or from a humble background, would use the needle not to embellish their own homes, but to make a living embellishing those of others. Their samplers were humbler affairs, typically featuring monochrome alphabets that would help them learn how to monogram linens for the wealthy. Darning samplers, which taught girls how to repair damaged clothing, were also prevalent.
As the 19th century wore on and times continued to change, samplers became much simpler productions than they were in their heyday a hundred years earlier. The samplers of the famous Bronte sisters reflect this change.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, samplers were of course no longer needed as a means to train or teach children. The sampler tradition is kept alive today by adult hobbyists and by companies such as The Scarlet Letter and The Essamplaire, which sell graphs and kits that enable modern-day stitchers to reproduce the works of children from years gone by. My own latest effort, pictured with ribbons won in the Appalachian Fair in 2014, is one such work. It is a reproduction of a sampler from the Ackworth School in England, a school that produced very distinctive samplers.
Coming Soon: Part Two
The Tudors do hoops
We don’t have any extant samplers from the legendary Tudors, but we do have some examples of their needlework available to us. We’ll talk about them next.
Great information here. How sad is that little child verse on the sampler, though?!
Agree about the children’s verse. There are many standard verses that were stitched onto samplers, and a lot of them really show how much social mores have changed over the centuries. I stitched one sampler with a verse that talks about girls yielding the use of the pen to men, because the stitchery needle is more appropriate for girls. As an author, I am sure glad that that sentiment has changed!