Description:
Needlework sampler of Adam and Eve with tree and snake in center surrounded with animals and flowers in the original sand-decorated frame, which descended in the Bradford (or Bradstreet) and Morris families of Massachusetts and Vermont. The sampler, which was done in a variety of stitches including tent, Romanian, stem, and cross stitch, has the inscription, "Adam and Eve whislst Innocent / In Paradise were plac'e / But soon the Serpent by his Wiles / The Happy Pair disgraced" over "Sarah Bradstreet April yea 1754." Sarah Bradstreet (b.1741) was the daughter of Samuel Bradstreet (1711-1755) and Sarah Foster (1718-1802) of Charlestown, Massachusetts, who married in 1738; and the great granddaughter of Simon Bradstreet (1603-1697), the first Governor of the Colony in 1679, appointed by Charles II. A related embroidery survives in the Old South Meeting House in Boston, stitched by Dorothy Lynde in 1757. Samplers depicting the Biblical story of Adam and Eve samplers are some of the earliest identifiable genres to emerge from colonial America. As early as 1724, Boston emerged as a leading center of this motif, which was influenced by earlier, 17th-century English examples. Bradstreet's example is a later example of the style, which was primarily executed during the 1720s through the 1740s. As with this example, the Adam and Eve motif typically features the figure of Eve on (a clean-shaven) Adam's left.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+61.172 |
