Nottingham

Last week I finished my essay and assignment on the history of English embroidery and started the next assignment looking at Samplers. I happened to notice that there was an exhibition called Sampling on at Nottingham Castle. So... on a bit of a whim Stewart and I drove up to Nottingham on Saturday to visit the castle...


or more specifically, the castle museum. It is a fabulous museum, housing some wonderful treasures so Stewart went off to explore while I did some in depth study of the Samplers on display.

The exhibition was quite small but had some exquisite examples of Samplers from the Embroiderers'Guild collection, together with new work from artist Heather Belcher. Although the new work was interesting, it was the old stuff I'd come to see.

Some wonderful 17th century Spot Samplers stitched in coloured silks and silver gilt on linen cloth. The stitching is unbelievably tiny and so neat!

There were also Band Samplers from the same period.

The 18th century was represented by work largely made by children in the schoolroom, like this Scottish Sampler with a house motif

And this fabulous Verse Sampler stitched in 1788. These were made by children to encourage such qualities as virtue and obedience! (That is obviously where I went wrong!)

Later in the 18th century samplers were made to show practical skills such as darning. This Darning Sampler is a particularly beautiful example.

I was also delighted to see some work from the 1930s by Rebecca Crompton as she was one of the embroiderers I studied for my Diploma in Machine Embroidery. The machine stitching is perfect... I've a long was to go before my free machining is that neat!

While I was in Nottingham I had hoped I might bump into the sherriff....

Instead I had my own lovely Friar Tuck (which explains the mystery of the cake) to drive me home!