Registration Now Open
Speakers and Sessions
12:30 – With Their Busy Needles: Celebrating Samplers in Litchfield
Alexandra Peters, Collector & Guest Curator
Alex Dubois, Curator, Litchfield Historical Society
1:00 – Friends Across the Atlantic: Quaker Needlework in 17th-Century London and 18th-Century Philadelphia
Isabella Rosner, PhD
Curator, Royal School of Needlework
It is a well-established fact in the field of colonial American needlework that mother-daughter duo Elizabeth and Ann Marsh, Quaker needlework teaches in eighteenth-century Philadelphia, established an important embroidery aesthetic that was practiced throughout the Delaware Valley for nearly a century. What has only recently come to light is the many connections between the Marsh needlework aesthetic and Quaker stitching in London and England more generally. This talk examines the link between Quaker needlework in seventeenth-century England and eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, an affiliation established by Elizabeth Marsh’s emigration from Worcestershire to the Quaker colony.
2:15 – The Many Threads of Sampler Scholarship: Past, Present, and Future
Lynne Anderson, PhD
Director, Sampler Archive Project
In this presentation Dr. Lynne Anderson will provide an overview of some of the many ways in which schoolgirl samplers and related girlhood embroideries have been interpreted, studied, and discussed. From the 19th-century to the present, the needlework products of girls and young women have invited scrutiny, analysis, appreciation, criticism, discussion, devotion, collection, conservation, exhibition, publication, and reproduction. In short, girlhood embroideries have been the subject of numerous types and approaches to scholarship, both informed and misinformed. This presentation will provide a foundation for understanding the diversity of past sampler scholarship and a springboard for planning future research initiatives.