On view through February 28, 2016 at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia, “Georgia’s Girlhood Embroidery: ‘Crowned with Glory and Immortality’” focuses on ornamental needlework created in Georgia and is the first comprehensive exhibition of Georgia samplers. Organized by curators Kathleen Staples, independent scholar, and Dale Couch, curator of decorative arts at the museum, the exhibition includes about two dozen samplers created in Georgia or by Georgians between the mid-18th century and about 1860.
Girls between the ages of 8 and 12 created embroidered samplers during the 18th and 19th centuries in Georgia as an exercise to gain skills in sewing, needlework and embroidery. Wealthier girls were expected to possess such skills as part of their participation in polite society. Girls from humbler backgrounds and free African Americans could use their skills to find paid employment. The samplers include rows of alphabets, quotations in prose and verse, images of architecture and embellished floral borders. Written documents from the period show that needlework took part in many different settings: public and private, elective and required, urban and rural.
On display is one example, worked by Martha “Patsey” Bonner McKenzie (1775–1851), was used as evidence by its maker to claim a Revolutionary War widow’s pension. Another, by Eliza S. Blunt, consisted of architectural embroideries, which were very uncommon in Georgia at the time. Blunt’s needlework probably shows the Eatonton Academy, built ca. 1807.
For more information, see: www.georgiamuseum.org or call 706.542.4662.