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Kezia Ridgway,
Salem County, New Jersey,
1800
Sampler size:
16¼" x 12"
Price: $14,000
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In 1800 Kezia Ridgway, likely of Salem County, New Jersey, worked this excellent sampler which has long been admired by collectors and researchers in this field. It was part of the important collection belonging to Joan Stephens and studied by scholar Betty Ring, dear friend and colleague of Joan Stephens. Kezia's sampler is one of six known that share strong specific characteristics and an unusual, highly stylized and elaborate device, which serves as the central focus of the sampler. The other samplers that form this group were made by three of the Groff sisters of Salem County, and were made between 1796 and 1807. Two of these are owned by Betty Ring and published in American Needlework Treasures: Samplers and Silk Embroideries from the Collection of Betty Ring, figures 60 and 61. Another, made in 1797, by Letisha Groff is in the collection of The Octagon House and the National Society of the Colonial Dames, California Society, and published in a 2007 exhibition catalogue, Stitched Together: Early American Samplers from the Collections of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America & Friends. Yet another of Letisha's samplers, made in 1798, is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The samplermakers each worked with a strong vocabulary of stitches including the long-armed cross stitch, tent stitch and queen's-stitch. The borders on the samplers are, in their own way, as unusual as their central motif. Carefully spaced individual flower blossoms or buds grow from straight-lined frameworks, barely resembling the leafy vines that surround the vast majority of samplers.
Kezia Ridgway's identity has been somewhat elusive but she is assumed by Betty Ring to have been the eldest child of Isaac and Kezia (Pedrick) Ridgway, who married in 1789 and were members of the Salem Monthly Meeting. The Groff sisters lived in nearby Woodstown, New Jersey. It is possible that all of these samplers were made when these young ladies were at a boarding school in Philadelphia, as the sophistication of both composition and technique implies.
Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in very good condition with very minor weakness. It has been conservation mounted and is in a period carved and painted frame.
Provenance: Joan Stephens Collection, Maryland
Erving and Joyce Wolf Collection, New York
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