House & Garden 
140 
SHRINE of home-keeping hearts, 
hall of hospitality, the Living-Room 
merits unusual consideration in the 
treatment of its walls and ceiling. 
The Wall Paper must be pleasing to 
you who live with it. And it must 
meet the critical gaze of your guests. 
Your Wall Paper Guildsman will 
show you many designs that are both 
pleasing and correct. Not only in the 
living-room, but all over the house, 
Wall Paper works its magic. And 
the cost is so negligible that rooms 
can be done over and over—when¬ 
ever you wish for a change. 
Wall Paper is of limitless kind, color and 
pattern. Daily, its scope is being widened. 
And more than ever, brains are being mixed 
with pencil and pigment in the designing- 
rooms of the Wall Paper manufacturers. 
Wall Paper is beautiful. It is adaptable- 
unrestricted. It is inexpensive, in spite of 
its other many merits. In all truth, Wall 
Paper “adds so much and costs so little.” 
The Sign of Service, shown at the base of 
the illustration above, identifies a Wall 
Paper Guildsman. 
Published for 
WALL PAPER MANUFACTURERS’ ASSOCIATION 
of the United States 
Headquarters :—Suite 1819, 461 F.'ghth Avenue, New York 
19 T H CENTURY SAMPLERS 
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Whereas the average age of the sampler 
worker in the 18th Century was thirteen 
years, in the 19th Century it was eleven 
T HE last quarter of the 16th Cen¬ 
tury found needlework sovereign 
of domestic occupations. A quaint 
old invective by Philip Stubbs, “The 
Anatomie of Abuses”, published in 1583, 
remarks that the men of this time were 
decked out in fineries even to their 
shirts “which are wrought throughout 
with needlework of silke, curiously 
stitched with open seams and many 
other knacks besides”. Master Stubbs 
also found it difficult to determine from 
the costume whether or not one was a 
gentleman “because all persons ’, said 
he, “dress indiscriminately in silks, vel¬ 
vets, satins, damasks, taffeties, and 
such like”. 
Little wonder, then, that in those 
days which had no household journals 
with printed hints for needleworkers, 
even though there were one or two' ex¬ 
pensive pattern books published, it was 
necessary for every housewife to have 
at hand a collection of samples of 
needlework stitches to serve as instruc¬ 
tion primers. 
Thus the embroidered sampler came 
into being. We are apt, when think¬ 
ing of these exhibitions of feminine in¬ 
genuity, to connect samplers with 
thoughts of Colonial days, for the very 
term seems in keeping with things of 
that period. As a matter of fact the 
19th Century was rich in samplers and 
American samplers of this period at¬ 
tained a supreme position. The sampler 
in America during the earlier years of 
the 19th Century was, on the whole, su¬ 
perior to the contemporary European 
samplers, although in the matter of 
mere technique not always so remark¬ 
able, perhaps as those of certain Con¬ 
tinental sampler-workers. It is interest¬ 
ing to discover why this is so. 
In Pilgrim Hall at Plymouth, Massa¬ 
chusetts, is preserved the sampler of 
Miles Standish’s daughter Loara, a 
long narrow panel embroidered with 
five figures, a fierce lion, trees, flowers, 
a lamb, various intricate patterns and 
this information in verse: 
“Loara Standish is My Name 
Lord Guide My Heart that I may 
do Thy Will 
And fill my hands with such con¬ 
venient Skill 
As will conduce to Virtue void of 
Shame 
And I will give the Glory to Thy 
Name”. 
This was probably embroidered about 
the year 1640 when Loara was seven¬ 
teen. After the 17th Century it has 
been deduced from samplers bearing 
age records that the average age of the 
sampler-worker was 13. 
Naturally throughout the whole Co¬ 
lonial American period the sampler fash¬ 
ions of the New World followed those 
of the Mother Country, although with 
the advent of the 18th Century Amen- 
(Continued on page 142) 
A decided sense of architec¬ 
ture appeared in the samplers 
of the 19th Century 
This sampler, made as late 
as 1850, shows the more 
finished design of later work 
