Memorial to Metcalf and Samuel Bowler

This mourning picture is characteristic of the refined work produced at Mary Balch’s School in Providence, Rhode Island. The Balch School curriculum included teaching many varieties of fancy needlework. It is particularly elegant in the simplicity of the image of double urns on an inscribed plinth under a graceful weeping willow. Subtle gradations of green silk thread evoke the shimmering effect of sunlight filtering through the willow leaves, while soft pile chenille embroidery stitches render the landscape with texture and depth. Characteristic of the Balch school, the central monument has an inscription that is stitched with precision using fine black silk embroidery thread, rather than drawn in black ink.

Amy Harris Bowler is thought to have made this embroidery in memory of her grandfather, Metcalf Bowler (1726-1789), a Newport merchant and chief justice; and her father, Samuel Bowler (1764-1790), a mariner who died in the West Indies shortly after her birth. Having known neither man, Amy still created a fashionable tribute them, one that reveals her quality as a dutiful young lady. Born in Providence, in 1810, when she was twenty-one years old, Amy married Henry A. Hoppin (1789-1835) who eventually ran a successful company that dyed and processed cotton cloth. They had ten children, all of whom survived to adulthood. Amy died in Brooklyn, New York on December 24, 1870, at the age of eighty-one, and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.