Description:
Needlework sampler done in polychrome silk thread worked in cross, hem, and crosslet stitches on plain linen, which is signed "Molly Billings 1791." Molly Billings (1779-1857) was the daughter of Jerusha Williams Billings (1821) and William Billings (1744-1812), a 1765 Yale graduate who settled in Conway where he was a lawyer, Justice of the Peace, and held various civic offices. In 1798, Molly Billings married Jonathan Stoddard (1767-1853) of Northampton, also a 1787 Yale graduate, and they later lived in Albany, NY, and Cleveland, Ohio. The sampler has three rows of the alphabet and the numbers 1-10 over bands of hearts and decorative stitches; over pine and fruit trees, flowers, birds, a windmill, two black-outlined, white doves, and large basket of flowers. This 1791 sampler is the earliest known of a large group of needlework made in the Deerfield area from the 1790s to the 1830s, which are sometimes referred to as the white dove samplers of the Deerfield, Massachusetts, area. Characterized by stylized, black-outlined, paired white birds embroidered in cross stitch, fruit and flower baskets arranged in a pyramid, and three-sided border, these samplers appear to have been made at a series of schools in a widespread area of the Connecticut River Valley from Connecticut to Vermont and New Hampshire that passed on that design tradition. Many of these samplers were made by children of prominent families.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+97.3 |
