Description:
Framed needlework sampler done in silk embroidery on a plain linen ground, which is inscribed, "Harriett Ripley / Aged 9 Years . 1804." Harriett Ripley (1795-1876) was the daughter of the Greenfield merchant Jerome Ripley (1757-1838) and Sarah Franklin Ripley (c.1780-1839), both born in Hingham, Massachusetts, who married in 1784. In 1789, the Ripley family moved to Greenfield where Jerome became a successful and prominent member of the community. In 1817, Harriet Ripley married Sylvester Allen (1782-1848), who had moved to Greenfield from Rhode Island in 1812. Harriet's work may have been inspired by her older sister, Sarah, who attended Dorchester Academy in 1804. Their brother, Geroge Ripley (1802-1880) was associated with Transcendentalism, and was a founder of the short-lived Utopian community, Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. The sampler has seven rows of the alphabet; over a row of the numbers 1-15; over the verse, "To Happiness / O happiness celestial fair / Our earliest hope our latest care / Let me not sue in vain / O deign to hear my fond request / Come take Posession of my breast / And there forever reign" and "Greenfield 4th October 1804;" and a four-sided scrolling bud, leaf and vine border. Harriet copied this stanza of poetry from the play “The Search After Happiness: A Pastoral Drama for Young Ladies,” which English educator and author, Hannah More (1745-1833), first published in London in 1773. Numerous editions were sold in England and America through the early 19th century. In a later edition, Hannah More explained that the play offered a morally acceptable “substitute for the very improper custom...of allowing plays, and those not always of the purest kind, to be acted by young ladies in boarding schools.” HD also has a pole screen with an embroidered screen (HD 88.091) made by Harriet Ripley in 1810.
Subjects:
Textile fabrics; Linen; polychrome; Silk Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+75.001 |
