legends · 4 min read ·
Sampler
A sampler's cataloguer photographs a stitched house that grows by a stitch a day, and a figure that moves.
**Hartley & Dane — Textiles & Samplers Sale, Lot 311**
**An unusual silk-on-linen sampler, English, dated 1842.** Worked in coloured silks in cross stitch, satin stitch and eyelet, with an alphabet, a verse, a house with a tree and a path, and a border of strawberries. Signed *Ann Pryce, aged 19.* Framed. 38 × 31 cm.
*Estimate: £300–500.*
**Condition report.** Linen slightly discoloured. Silks well preserved. A few moth holes lower left. Glass replaced. Verse reads: *When this you see remember me / And bear me in your mind / Let all the world say what they will / Speak of me as you find.*
· · ·
**Cataloguer's notes (T. Voss, 4 October)**
I took the sampler out of its frame this afternoon for the photographer. The linen is sound. I counted the threads. The house has a door with a brass knocker, drawn in a single golden stitch. It has three windows on the upper floor, and a chimney, and a woman at the middle window, in a blue dress, no larger than a grain of rice.
I think the work is genuine. The silks are period. The stitch is the right stitch. The colour is a bit brighter than I expected, in the strawberries.
· · ·
**Cataloguer's notes (6 October)**
I looked again. The sampler is different. The woman at the window is bigger. I measured her: 3 mm. On the 4th she was 2 mm. The chimney, too, is longer, as if the house has grown. I thought: I must have misjudged.
I set up a camera on a tripod and took a photograph every hour, from the same distance, for twenty-four hours. In the sequence, the woman moves. Only a little, between hours. A stitch at a time. She turns from the window. She goes down. In the morning shot, the door of the house is open. The path is empty. The knocker is on the ground.
· · ·
**Cataloguer's notes (9 October)**
Today there were two figures on the path. The second was a man in a brown coat, walking up to the door. I can see his hat. I can see the knocker in his hand.
I rang the vendor. She is a Mrs. Alder, of Dunmere, who inherited it from an aunt. She asked how the sampler was. I said it was changing. She was quiet for a time. Then she said: "It's always been changing. We just didn't look."
She asked whether I'd read the back. I said I had not. She said: "There's a note."
· · ·
**Cataloguer's notes (10 October)**
I opened the backing paper with a scalpel. Between the linen and the board there was a folded slip, in brown ink, a spidery hand. It was written by a woman, I think, in later life. She dated it 1889.
*I worked this sampler at nineteen years old, under the eye of my mistress, who told me that a woman who sews her house will always find her way home. I sewed it with care. I sewed my mother at the window, as I last saw her. I sewed the door, with its knocker, and the path.*
*I have since found that the house goes on. It does not stop where I stopped. Every year there is more. The window gets wider. The garden gets longer. There are people on the path whom I did not put there, and they are all going in.*
*I do not know who is stitching them.*
· · ·
**Cataloguer's notes (13 October)**
I took the sampler off the shelf this morning and put it on my desk. In the night it has grown. The house now has a second wing, and a third window. A small figure stands at each. The path is full of people in fine coats, walking in single file, up to the door, which is open. The tree has turned. The strawberries along the border are no longer strawberries. They are tiny faces, red and round, with mouths.
There is a new stitch along the lower edge, in a pale thread. It is a line of text I had not seen. It reads: *Ann Pryce, aged 19, and everyone who came to see.*
· · ·
**Lot 311 — withdrawn from sale (Hartley & Dane, 14 October)**
*Withdrawn by the vendor. The sampler has been returned to Mrs. Alder, who asked that it be hung in her hall, and that a chair be placed beneath it, for visitors.*
*Cataloguer's note: when the sampler was delivered, Mrs. Alder met the van at the door. She took the frame in both hands and held it up to the light. There was a long pause. Then she said, quite calmly: "Oh, there's room for me."*
*I have put in a note for the file. The sampler was valued at £300–500. I would now say it was priceless. There is, in the centre of the path, a new figure in a blue dress, with her hand raised to the knocker. She has been worked in a single strand. She is very small. She has not yet gone in.*