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Folwell School, \of Fame\In Girlhood Embroidery (vol II, page 378), Betty Ring writes the following about the Folwell School, a Philadelphia institution run by Ann Elizabeth Folwell with the help of her talented husband, the painter Samuel Folwell. Pictorial embroidery on silk was popular in Philadelphia from the 1730s until the post-Revolutionary period, so it is not surprising that there was an early transition from the rococo style to neo-classicism in this largest of American cities with its keen interest in fashions from abroad. Yet it was not the newly arrived French or English drawing masters or embroiderers who initiated the style for lustrous urns and temples. Instead it was a native-born craftsman who managed to fan the flames of fashion and promote his patterns and his wife's embroidery school until their output became the largest body of neoclassical silk embroidery to survive from Federal America. Students who attended the Folwell school typically worked large embroidered pictures: memorials, allegorical subjects, biblical stories, popular illustrations and family portraits. A very few classical subjects are known to have been worked at the school as well, such as this outstanding and very handsome embroidery entitled, \related silk embroideries has been documented, one which is in the collection of the Abby Aldridge Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg. The variations are interesting and all feature the personification of Virtue, Wisdom or Experience, and a younger Innocence or Neophyte heading towards the Temple of Virtue, Fame or Happiness. The compositions are all quite similar to one another as well. The original eglomise painted glass indicates the maker to be A. Sheridan. The embroidery retains its fine original frame as well and is in excellent condition. Size of the embroidery: 17\Framed size: 25W' x 27\Price: $18,000. M IERICA's LEADING sAJ\\IPLER AND NEEDLEwoRK DEALER M.Finkel e=s Daughter. 27