Amy Cann – 1831 by Hands Across The Sea Samplers

Description

Amy’s delightful sampler depicts a wonderfully imaginative landscaped park with a velvet lawn, specimen fruit trees and shrubs together with a pinery flanking the terraces as they rise up to a classical temple. This young sampler maker has used her needle to create an ornamental pleasure ground so typical of the Georgian period. Wealthy landowners enclosed vast tracts of land to create huge landscaped parks, and those parks acted as a setting for grand houses. These country house estates were dotted with allegorical architectural elements such as grottoes, bridges, and follies. A folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration. 18th and 19th century English gardens often featured mock Roman temples, symbolising classical virtues, Chinese temples, Egyptian pyramids, ruined abbeys, or Tatar tents, to represent different continents or historical eras.

Amy filled her sampler with giraffes, deer, squirrels, dogs, hares and an aviary of birds including owls, parrots, doves and partridges in pear trees. Butterflies, moths and bees can be found no doubt attracted to Amy’s garden by the lilies, tulips and roses that bloom profusely. This charming, idyllic scene is contained within a stylised carnation border. In the Georgian era objects of fascination and wonder were brought back from the far flung corners of the growing British Empire. Aristocrats created their own private menageries with which to entertain their guests, and menageries could be found in the parklands of the great houses such as Goodwood, Stowe and Woburn.

The sampler is stitched in cross stitch over 1 and 2 threads, satin stitch, four sided stitch, double running stitch and Algerian eyelets. Amy’s sampler has been rated as suitable for all levels. Within Amy’s booklet is a comprehensive stitching guide which includes stitch diagrams.