Page 11 - Demo

Mary D. Welch, circa 1828, Portland, Maine The town of Portland, Maine, a thriving seaport in the early 19th century, was also the town that \largest and most important groups of Maine embroideries and striking samplers .... The samplers and needlework pictures of Portland are easily recognized, and both forms reflect the extraordinary interest in genealogies that endured in this region in the first forty years of the nineteenth century.\Volume I, page 249). We are very pleased to offer a rare and important example from this town, the Welch family genealogy. Mary D. Welch was born January 18, 1816 to James Welch and Mary Stanford, who had been married on February 18, 1814. The death of James Welch, recorded on this sampler was also reported in the Portland newspaper, the Eastern Argus, on November 13, 1816: James Welch died at the age of 25 on November 7 at Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Her parents had both died before her second birthday and this sampler most probably would have been worked when Mary was approximately twelve years old, in 1828, as a genealogical record. Her solidly worked townscape is quite similar to others from Portland and served as an opportunity to demonstrate various stitches. The leafy tree at the left, for example, was worked in the single buttonhole stitch. The sampler is unusual in that the fine and complicated queen stitch vine and rose borders were carried over from the 1803-1815 period of Portland genealogical sampler design. This particular border is very rarely found on samplers that were produced after about 1815. The sampler is in excellent condition, worked in silk on linen and has been conservation mounted into a lovely curly cherry frame with an ebonized beaded edge. &'\\ltary %u00ae.cMic'h born~-n:_&.~_s~--Sampler size: 17\Price: $8,500. M. Finkel & Daughter. DDDDDDDD ':Jaml.'s 14- ~~. dlfd e/Vor.r ~arriet C'}.. lfelef\\ IJted Oct 7 (Detail)