Sampler

Mary Waine may have drawn her own pattern on this imaginative and freely designed sampler. Using motifs common to Boston samplers she organized her decorative images in three panels or fields. Like Millsent Connor’s sampler (1974.42) likely made at the same school, the upper field includes a double line of stylized blue and white clouds. Below, two houses, one large and the other small and perhaps meant to be at a distance, stand on a lawn beneath trees. A buck and a doe are posed between the houses, and the air is filled with butterflies and a single bird plummeting downward headfirst, its wings spread wide. The middle panel depicts a field with a prancing horse, a grazing cow, and two sheep. In the lowest panel a courting couple accompanied by a spotted dog stand in a luxuriant garden, overseen by an enormous bird perched on the limb of a tree. Like other Boston samplers of the late eighteenth century, the central scene is surrounded by a wide border of meandering vines with large multi-petaled flowers.


A noteworthy detail is the woman in a white colonial dress who holds a trained bird perched on her right hand, tethered to a chain in her left. In the eighteenth-century goldfinches and canaries were often trained as pets, valued for their song and companionship. In courtship imagery a tethered bird could symbolize the woman’s capture of the man’s heart. Whether intentional or a design miscalculation, the gentleman’s stance suggests resistance, as he glances away from his companion.


The inscription at the bottom of the sampler extolls the importance of education for women: “When Friends is dead and money spent Learning is most Excellent.” The sentiment expressed in this motto illustrates the value placed on education and knowledge during this era. While friendships can be lost, and wealth depleted, the benefits of education are enduring.


Archival research suggests that Mary Waine was the daughter of Benjamin Waine (1744-1802), and Mary Scott Waine (1744-1820) of Boston. Her recorded birth date is January 2, 1780, and she was the youngest of six children, four boys and two girls. Her father is listed in the local City Directory of 1789 as a tailor on Ann Street (now North Street), located in Boston’s North End not far the house where Paul Revere lived from 1770-1800. The only record of Mary’s adult life that has been discovered is found in her mother’s Will dated January 26, 1814, where she is listed as the wife of Nathaniel Brown of Charlestown, Massachusetts.


Mary’s sampler came to the museum as part of a large bequest of decorative arts from Flora Ettlinger Whiting (1875-1971), a noted philanthropist and collector who was involved with the American Wing for many years. While in somewhat faded condition, lacking the vibrant colors seen in other of the American samplers of the same period, it remains a favorite due to the originality of its imagery.