Mary Louisa McCully's sampler
date: label: date made
content: 1840
name: label: maker
content: McCully, Mary Louisa
notes: label: Description
content: This sampler features a picture of two children, a dog, a parrot, and a butterfly in a garden with a floral border. A dog symbolizes fidelity and watchfulness, a parrot suggests talkativeness, and a butterfly symbolizes immortality. These are appropriate motifs to go with young children. Mary worked her sampler in Patterson, New Jersey. Patterson was home to many textiles mills in 1840 and that may have been the reason her family came to live there. Her pattern was probably a Berlin wool work pattern. In 1820 with the introduction of Berlin wools comes the name Berlin wool work patterns. These patterns were hand painted on graph paper. The sampler is stitched with wool and silk embroidery thread on a cotton canvas ground with a thread count of warp 24, weft 24/in. The stitches used are cross, crosslet.
label: Description
content: Mary Louisa McCully was a cousin of Frank H. McCully, in whose memory the sampler was donated to the Smithsonian.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New Jersey, Paterson
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Textiles
label: See more items in
content: Samplers
label: See more items in
content: Textiles
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Mrs. Laura J. Wasser, in memory of Frank H. McCully
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: TE.T08229
label: catalog number
content: T8229
label: accession number
content: 147229
objectType: label: Object Name
content: embroidery, Berlin woolwork
label: Object Name
content: sampler
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: cotton (canvas ground material)
label: Physical Description
content: wool (thread material)
label: Physical Description
content: silk (thread material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 15 1/4 in x 19 1/2 in; 38.735 cm x 49.53 cm