Wartime sampler : Keep your hearts proud...

A counted cross stitch sampler likely to date from World War II or soon after.  The quote is from an Empire Day speech by George VI, broadcast in May 1940.  In the speech he refers to "our fighting men and those who love them; mothers, wives and sweethearts at home".  It's interesting to see on this sampler that all the figures are women - caring for children, land girls, nurses, women in uniform - representing the many roles women played in wartime and for the war effort.

This is one of the few patriotic samplers to quote the monarch (use the tag quotes to find others I've done blog entries about). The quote says:

Keep you hearts proud
and your resolve unshaken,
and with God's helpWe shall not fail

I wonder if this was a published design, intended to raise morale, or the work of a single needlewoman?  Counted cross stitch is more unusual at this time than transfer designs, but with wartime shortages a printed chart in a magazine or newspaper would not require postage, transfers etc.

If you know any more about this design or its source, please do leave a comment.

George V & Mary : silver jubilee sampler, 1935

This silver jubilee sampler for George VI and Mary, from 1935, is similar to another silver jubilee sampler I blogged about here.  It borrows many elements, such as the coach and horses and wording layout and border, but perhaps this stitcher had a smaller piece of fabric or just wanted to make it her own version.  It measures 13 1/4 inches x 15 1/4 inches.

If you know any more about this design, please leave a comment.

Charles & Diana : wedding sampler with dragon

A cross stitch sampler  with lots of detail to celebrate the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981, measuring 11inches x 21inches.  It could have been a kit or a chart; I've seen another example on Sylvia's blog, Linens and Royals, and she's tracked it down as a Royal School of Needlework design.

If you know more about this design, such as designer, source and so forth, please leave a comment.

Elizabeth II : coronation : Commonwealth emblems

A coronation sampler featuring the animal emblems of the Commonwealth.  It measures 35cm x 45cm.  This, and the details below, are example 1.

I've seen a couple of other versions of this design, shown below, including one in landscape format, rather than portrait, and thus missing the Westminster Abbey/coach detail.  Note how embroidery lets the needlewoman ring changes - blue ER on the top example, yellow or yellow/red ER on the examples below, or differences in how the elephant is embroidered.

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4, landscape format. 

It could well be that the design was published in more than one format, or this could have been the work of a needlewoman choosing to make a smaller version.

If you know any more about the source/publisher etc of this design, please do leave a comment.



Elizabeth & Philip : wedding sampler

A 1947 embroidered sampler commemorating the wedding of Elizabeth and Philip.  It features a verse from Patience Strong (who also had verses on birth samplers for Anne and Charles) and various English countryside motifs in the border.  Measures approx 50cm x 33.5cm.  Likely to have been sold either as a transfer or as fabric with the design already printed on.

If you know any more about this design - eg. where it was published/offered for sale - please do leave a comment.

Dig for Victory wartime sampler

An embroidered sampler no doubt dating from some time during World War II as it features one of the best known slogans/catchphrases of the time, Dig For Victory.  The top lettering says "Save vital shipping space" - it's an intriguing mix of the positive, bucolic and ominous.  It measures 22cm x 37cm.  Sold for nearly GBP85.00

If you know any more about this design - who designed it, how it was sold, whatever - please leave a comment to share your knowledge.

Map sampler : Northumberland

A map sampler of Northumberland, measuring 12inches x 16inches.  Looking at the detail picture below, the lettering isn't the flowing script of the mid-twentieth century map samplers I've shown in earlier blog posts (you can use the tag 'map' to find them).  I'd guess it to be later twentieth century in date.

As ever, if you can add more information to this blog post, please do leave a comment.

Buildings : Hampton Court - Mary Cotton's sampler

A sweet mid-twentieth century sampler featuring Hampton Court.  Done by Mary Cotton in 1950, and measuring 38cm x 44cm.  It was sold unframed.  I wonder why she chose Hampton Court?  Perhaps this design was sold there?  It looks as though it was a printed design; it includes both cross stitch and embroidery, but the cross-stitch doesn't appear to be counted cross stitch.  And it's always so nice to have a maker's name on the work.

If you know any more about this design, please do leave a comment.

Elizabeth II : calendar sampler

This was listed with no indication of size, provenance or any other history.  I guess the ER to be Elizabeth rather than Edward.  From this only photograph, the design appears to be calendar style, an image for each month of the year.  It did not sell for its starting price of GBP35.00

If you know any more about this design, please leave a  comment to enlighten us all!

Post-war sampler, 1947 : Freedom, Justice, Peace

An embroidered postwar patriotic sampler, dated 1947, with guardsmen and symbols of Britain including cottage, castle and church and the Union Jack, celebrating the victories of 1945 and the war's end.

The frame measures 10 1/2inches by 12 1/2inches, so this image gives you a sense of the design size.  I would guess this design to be based on a transfer.

If you know any more about this design, please do leave a comment.

Elizabeth II : coronation : 40th anniversary sampler

I haven't seen many sampler designs celebrating the 40th anniversary of Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953.  This was worked in 1993 and is, unusually, embroidery rather than cross-stitch.  The vast majority of later twentieth century examples of patriotic samplers are cross-stitch.  The majority of the ones that are embroidery originated with the Royal School of Needlework, but I have no information to make this connection beyond guesswork.

This one is 15inches x 13inches, worked on Irish linen.

The quote says:

There is no magic formula that will transform sorrow into happiness, intolerance into compassion or war into peace, but inspiration can change human behaviour.

Queen Elizabeth II

The other sampler I've seen featuring her words is this one using part of her first Christmas message as Queen.  I have seen a couple of George VI samplers quoting him.  It was, after all, radio and television that made monarchs' voices heard.

As ever, if you know more than I do, which is very likely, it would be great if you'd leave a comment to add to this entry.

George VI : coronation : Vera Hooper's sampler

It's more unusual to find a coronation sampler that comes with a maker's name.  The description given with this example:

Sampler made at school to celebrate the coronation of George V1 the father of our present Queen who unexpectedly succeeded to the throne on the abdication of Edward V111. The emblems embroidered represented the British Empire at that time.

Size 15x10 ins

I wonder where the school/teacher found the design, and how many pupils completed it.  The blue background is less common than a pale one.  The lettering could have been altered from ER to GR, Edward to George, as was done with other designs.  There are other designs for both George VI and Elizabeth II that feature the animals representing Empire/Commonwealth nations.

If you know any more about this design, please do leave a comment.

George VI : coronation: sampler with roses, coat of arms & buildings

A delicately stitched embroidery/cross stitch celebrating the coronation of George VI. 

Unlike some of the 1937 samplers, where Edward became George, I've not seen any Edward examples of this one; perhaps it was designed after the abdication.  My guess would be that it was based on a transfer.  It's a delicate-looking design, in every example I've seen: mostly embroidery with a little cross-stitch (but it looks embroidered, not counted thread work - eg. the red crown in the coat of arms).  The framed size of this example is 13inches x 15.5inches: it sold for just over GBP42.

Design-wise, it has interesting connections to two other types of designs shown in other blog posts here.  The buildings are reminiscent of the impressionistic sketch buildings embroideries such as the Windsor Castle one in the previous blog (use the tag buildings to find more).  The lettering of the bordered inscription is like that used in the map samplers (such as the county map samplers) in other blog entries here (use the tag maps to find more).

If you know any more about this design, please do leave a comment.

Elizabeth II : golden jubilee : little card samplers (RSN/DMC)

Two little card / small sampler designs from the Royal School of Needlework and DMC, made to celebrate the golden jubilee in 2002.  On the one hand, small designs like these are quick to stitch and might entice a needlewoman to make them as a simple commemorative piece; on the other hand, their small size would make them less likely to be framed and put on a wall, and therefore maybe less likely to survive.

Elizabeth II : golden jubilee : Mary Hickmott sampler (larger)

From Mary Hickmott, a golden jubilee cross stitch sampler chart featuring a detailed Buckingham Palace along with other symbols of royalty.  This is more classic than the magazine chart shown last week, in its treatment of the images and its choice of font.  Unlike some, it could be adapted to being a diamond jubilee sampler with only a small amount of tweaking.

Elizabeth: golden jubilee: row sampler chart

A bit on the cutesy side is this magazine chart for a golden jubilee sampler.  With various royal symbols in rows in a generally symmetrical organisation, it's a little toytown in style.  Making liberal use of royal purple and (inevitably) gold, including metallic threads, it's an attempt to be 'modern'.  As seems to be generally true, it's cross-stitch rather than embroidery.  Cross-stitch is easy to print and incude in documents; the coronation samplers of the twentieth century were from an age of transfers sent through the post (whether embroidery transfers or cross-stitch done with transfers).

If you know more about this, or have a worked example photo which could be added here, please let me know via the comments.

Elizabeth II : golden jubilee : Anchor flag kit

This kit turns up fairly regularly on eBay, and it's from a mainstream commercial kit company, so no doubt there were a lot of these about in 2002 for the golden jubilee.  It combines symbols of royalty with Buckingham Palace and a Union Jack.  In style, it has worked backgrounds as well as these symbols, with reasonably detailed shading; the font is a tad clunky for me.  Below is a worked example.

George VI : coronation : flags and shamrocks

A small sampler, a satin-stitch embroidered confection of Union Jacks and red, white and blue shamrocks, not all quite stitched so you can see it was a transfer.  I find these sorts of waving-in-the-wind crossed flags rather jolly.

As with all George VI coronation embroideries, the question arises of Edward VIII.  My best guess would be that this design postdates the abdication.  Some of the coronation designs lent themselves to an easy substitution of George for Edward, but others, like this, don't lend themselves so well.  Thus I think it was designed after the abdication, as the design fits the wording of the king and queen's names so precisely.

I know nothing more about this piece - source or designer or anything else, so if you do know more, please leave a comment and share your wisdom and/or links.

Map sampler: Festival of Britain 1951 (I)

In 1951, the Festival of Britain was staged.  To quote Wikipedia: " The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition in Britain in the summer of 1951. It was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote the British contribution to science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts." (source, also for the progam below).

And if you look at all the prewar patriotic embroideries, it's hardly suprising that there was an embroider sampler design relating to the Festival of Britain.  The first three pictures here show one example.  The colours are I think a trifle faded, perhaps through exposure to light.

Below are pictures of a second example.  Much brighter colours.  As the festival celebrated aspects of British life and culture, so do the images on the sampler.  From the top down: a deer/stag, and a bagpipe-playing Scotsman; a lute or harp; coming in from Ireland, an aeroplane; a ?dancer on a stage, and what looks like a circus tent; a Welsh lady playing a harp, the bust of William Shakespeare, a Beefeater and kettle drums with a music book; a roundabout/merry-go-round; a ?Cornishman with ?a squeezebox/small accordion; a sailor on a boat or barge; and a mermaid (or else a topless lady drowning and waving her knickers in the air to get the sailor's attention, which seems both unlikely and indecorous).  Also, of course, flags and around the Festival of Britain logo on the top right, the floral emblems of the British Isles; and bunting, echoing the design on the program pictured below.

And, you will notice, colour and lots of it.  More and more I think the Kent and Leicester county map samplers are likely pre-war.

This one seems very likely to have been a transfer design too.  How things have changed - few designs from the first fifty years were counted cross stitch, most were embroidery and based on samplers.  Most British patriotic designs now are counted work based on charts, whether cross stitch or tapestry/needlepoint.  Are we somehow more afraid of embroidery (the early designs didn't boast many complex stitches)? Were transfers, cheap to post, the easy way to transport designs then, while now counted charts can be downloaded from the internet or printed in magazines with no need to fiddle with stamps and envelopes?  Is there a preference now, for the exactitude of counted work, and perhaps a flavour of 'getting it right' or 'making exactly the same thing, because I like that sample' ?  I wonder.  I don't know.

A few more images of the second example:

Here is an image of a Festival program, to show you that stylised Britannia-head logo:

I wonder too about the form of this sampler being a map.  It's not just about showing the country, but also I think showing the country which resisted and prevailed in the very recent war, the country that was not invaded, close though they might have come.  Maps, after all, are essential to war and a matter for secrecy during war.  I've tagged this blog entry with wartime even though it's six years after, as the shadow of World War II is undoubtedly present in the reason for the Festival.  Rationing, for example, did not finally end until 1954.

I've seen several other versions of this design, so it must have been quite popular.  Which argues that it must have been in a wide-circulation newspaper or magazine, seen by many, chosen by a number of embroiderers to make in celebration.  It could have been a transfer, but a couple of examples I've been able to look at more closely seem to be on remarkably similar fine evenweave fabric, so I'm more likely to believe it was sold as a transfer already ironed onto fabric.

But I don't know.  If you do, please leave a comment with any useful information or links.

In light of the many coronation embroidery designs from 1937, and the many more coronation designs from 1953, only two years after the Festival of Britain, I find it interesting that at the moment, this is the only Festival of Britain design I've come across.  Was it a category-killer, catching the imagination? Were there few or no competitor designs?

Whatever the story (I wish I knew more), this is a particularly delightful British patriotic sampler, in my opinion.

Map sampler: Kent

As with last week's Leicester and Rutland map sampler, this one uses for the map mainly a sepia range of thread colours, with brighter notes in the compass and the county coat of arms.   This adds weight to my suspicion that this was a transfer design, with the embroiderer making their own choice of threads - probably with a colour version to inspire them, but not a kit to direct their choices exactly.

By this time, with this being the third map sampler I've shown you, you'll have noted the similarity in the font chosen for surrounding counties and the Straits of Dover.  I wonder if someone, or some shop or publication or other source, designed one of these for each of the counties of England? It hardly seems likely that they would have just Leicester/Rutland and Kent in the range.  You'd have a more than fair chance of finding customers in any county interested in stitching a piece representing their home and area.

As ever, if you know more about this design or any of the other samplers and embroideries here, please leave a comment with any useful links and information you can provide, to make this blog as effective and informative a source as possible.