Needlework Sampler (Dechado)

Needlework Sampler (Dechado)

1800s
Artist
unknown maker
Anita
Country
Mexico
Object
sampler
Medium
Silk embroidery on linen foundation
Accession Number
1965.408
Credit Line
Neusteter Textile Collection: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond L. Grimes for the Julia Wolf Glasser Collection
unknown maker, Anita. Needlework Sampler (Dechado). 1800s. Silk embroidery on linen foundation. Neusteter Textile Collection: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond L. Grimes for the Julia Wolf Glasser Collection. 1965.408.
Dimensions
height: 27.5 in, 69.8500 cm; width: 10 in, 25.4000 cm
Inscription
Within circle at left: “De La / de / Mano. / Anita”
Department
Avenir Institute of Textile Arts and Fashion
Collection
Textile Arts and Fashion-Ancient and Latin American Art

Instruction in sewing, embroidery, and other needlework was considered an essential element of a young woman’s education in Spain and the Spanish Americas during the early modern period until at least the late 1800s. Over the course of her education, especially when undertaken in a school outside the home, a girl would typically produce at least one advanced needlework exercise called a sampler (dechado in Spanish), a panel of embroidered cloth made to show off the student’s training and skill. Like the more well-known works from Great Britain and the United States, samplers made by schoolgirls across the Spanish-speaking world often include a wide variety of stitches and other needlework techniques, alphabets, numbers, verses, as well as religious and decorative motifs sometimes drawn from printed pattern books. Girls frequently signed and dated their samplers, and occasionally included the name of the school or instructor who supervised the project.

Although proficiency in needlework was considered a practical skill, it also came to be equated with female virtue and popular conduct manuals such as Juan Luis Vives’ Education of a Christian Woman (first published in Latin in 1523) and other moralizing texts promoted textile work as a particularly appropriate type of feminine labor. In addition, the stitching of a sampler demonstrated more than needlework skills as the embroidered text and imagery often drew upon multiple aspects of a young woman’s education, including reading and writing, math, drawing and composition, religion, politics, and geography. The display and preservation of samplers by families further points to their role as a symbol of a young woman’s accomplishment, virtue, and social status. A sampler is oftentimes the only surviving record of a woman’s life. As objects of artistic and material culture, samplers not only chart the history of needlework, but give evidence of the limitations and opportunities in female education and literacy, and help to illuminate the lives of individual women, their families, and the specific cultural, religious, and political contexts in which they lived. 

Likely made in Mexico in the 1800s, this sampler is an example of “white work,” a term that refers to any needlework technique in which the stitching is the same color as the foundation fabric, in this case, white or undyed silk worked upon white linen. Several inscriptions are stitched in red thread. A poem is written at right, while the inscription in the circular ornament at left may refer to the embroiderer’s name.

--Sabena Kull, 2017-18 Mayer Fellow for Spanish Colonial Art
 

Known Provenance
Provenance research is on-going at the Denver Art Museum. Please e-mail provenance@denverartmuseum.org, if you have questions, or if you have additional information to share with us.