Well-known needlework specialist Amy Finkel, of the website samplings.com and the antiques shop M. Finkel & Daughter, emphasizes the importance of Chester County's contribution to the world of antique samplers. "The samplers made in Chester County in the late 18th and early 19th centuries are highly regarded because the teachers there took the art of sampler-making to new levels," she says. "Large, bold pictorial samplers with outstanding house and garden scenes animated with people and animals routinely appear on these samplers.
"It may be that competition for students led instructresses to develop more and more interesting compositions that would be taught to their students. And the vocabulary of stitches and techniques that they taught are of equally high quality."
Curator Ellen Endslow of the Chester County Historical Society worked in concert with Mary Brooks of the Westtown School to assemble the exhibition of 150 outstanding examples made between 1760 and 1840.
Endslow says, "Putting examples from the two collections together really adds something, because you do get to see how the Westtown samplers influenced sampler making elsewhere in the county."
Endslow is particularly fond of the highly decorative, pictorial needlework on display. One of the most colorful is a composition of two birds in a tree, stitched and hand-painted by Martha Vastine of Coatesville when she was about 11 years old.
As part of the goal of the exhibition, the maker's family history is well-documented. She was the daughter of Benjamin Vastine, who operated a store and tavern at "the Sign of the Golden Eagle" on Lancaster Pike.
