Sampler

Object name

Sampler

Maker

Winifred Grace Mitchell
Royal School of Art Needlework

Date made

Circa 1910

Place made

London

Description

Circa 1910 whitework sampler worked by Winifred Grace Mitchell while a student at the Royal School of Art Needlework.

Content description

Circa 1910 whitework sampler with cotton threads on a cotton ground, worked by Winifred Grace Mitchell while a student at the Royal School of Art Needlework. This square sampler, which uses a variety of whitework techniques, includes a pastoral scene in the centre with hills, a church, and a bridge in the background and oversized butterfly and tree towards the foreground. In the top left corner is an array of holly leaves, small flowers, and eyelets. In the top right corner is a grape vine with ears of wheat.

The scene at the bottom of the sampler with a church, hills, bridge, and oversized tree includes long and short, satin, seeding, brick, stem, French knots, and brick shading stitches. Shapes are outlined in trailing. The large butterfly flying above the scene includes trailing, back, satin, large eyelet, and single faggot stitches. The holly leaf tableau includes satin, large eyelet, and back alongside a variety of drawn and pulled thread work techniques. The grape tableau has many of the same stitches, but excluding the drawn and pulled thread work and including seeding stitch.

Winifred Grace Mitchell was born in Camberwell, London in 1892, the daughter of commercial clerk Arthur Mitchell and his wife Susannah. In the 1911 census 19-year-old Winifred was listed as an art needlework student, indicating that she was a student at the Royal School of Art Needlework at this time. She never married and died in New Cross on 5 March 1939 at 47 years old.