Sampler

Colorfully embroidered samples made by girls between the ages of eight and eighteen were typically the result of a creative partnership between a gifted teacher and a remarkably diligent student. These compositions were based on designs sketched or blocked in by the teacher and subsequently stitched by her pupil. As proudly stated in big, bold letters, this sampler was "worked by Eunice Hooper in the ninth year of her age." Typical of needlework produced in Marblehead, Massachusetts, in the early 1790s, it combines a remarkable level of naturalistic detail with neoclassical elements such as a fantastical representation of a horse-drawn chariot.