Fine Needlework Family Record sampler, Attributed to Jane Hanson (1810-1886), Portland, Maine, Circa 1827

Worked in silk thread, silk floss, and chenille threads with pencil, ink and paint on silk and linen in straight, four-sided, eyelet, diagonal, open chain, couching and cross-stitches with French knots. Inscribed: GENEALOGY/Timothy Hanson born Augst 2nd 1776/Rebecca Hawkes born Nov 2nd 1775/Married May 1st 1800/PROGENY/Hannah Hanson born Oct 14th 1800/Jonathan Hanson born May 4th 1802/Fanny Hanson born April 27th 1804/Amos Hanson born July 7th 1806/Jane Hanson born May 5th 1810/Emily Hanson born Sept 15th 1814/Mary Hanson born Augst 19th 1819 Schoolmistress: Mary Rea. 26 by 22 inches. (28 threads to the inch).

Blanche Moss, Los Angeles, California, December, 1986

Colors are vivid in lower half. Some minor fading elsewhere.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Exhibited and Literature: LACMA, pp. 85-87, fig 35

During the first years of the nineteenth century, large family record samplers became increasingly popular in local schools for girls. In Portland, Maine, the style of this embroidered art grew from comparative simplicity to striking elegance, remaining a fashionable needle art from 1803 to the middle of the 1840s.² Around 1819 the characteristic rose-vine border, which earlier in the century had been worked in time-consuming queen stitches, came to be executed in closely worked satin stitches, resulting in large, naturalistic, two-colored blossoms. Several buildings in deep perspective were added to the landscape, and frequently a monument was inserted for recording deaths in the family. The word "Genealogy" began to replace the traditional alphabets and verses, and a long list of family members with their dates of birth appeared. Often, as in this sampler, vacant space on the linen was available for including additional names.³ These changes brought about a great transition in the established format, introducing a style of elegance virtually unknown in sampler embroidery of the period. The cross-stitched landscapes were transformed into elaborate works of textile art, highly decorative, richly painted, and, where the needle was applied, thickly embroidered. Recognized as one of the most spectacular of the surviving Portland samplers, the Hanson/Hawkes genealogy is composed of linen (backed with a sheet of muslin) and silk in an uncommon form of sampler embroidery. A silk panel, extravagantly painted and drawn upon, was appliqued to the linen ground. The heavily embroidered silk was outlined with black satin stitches when applied. The flower-strewn border of the Hanson sampler is embellished with vines of darkly colored green silk thread, arranged in such a dramatic fashion that the stems twine themselves toward the center rectangle, forming another border of recurring arcs. These stunning Portland samplers, mourning pieces, and silk embroideries appear to fall into two closely related groups. The first, worked during the 1820s, may have been stitched at the school kept by Martha Merchant Mayo (c.1756-1831), who is recorded as having great "skill in exquisite needle-work."⁴ Frequently worked on a silk grounding and painted in garish colors, these embroideries may be identified by the presence of a winged cherub often placed near their towering monuments. The second group of these elaborately needleworked pieces from the coastal city may be recognized by their splendidly painted waterways and carefully drawn public buildings placed along the edge of the shore.⁵ It is to this group that the Hanson genealogy belongs. The watery estuary featured here is lined with trees of varying shades of green; the fields are depicted in French knots and satin stitches, with thick, velvety chenille threads used to work the trunks of the trees. These imaginative stitchery techniques, varied sewing threads, and intermixed stitches lend depth and perspective to an otherwise one-dimensional landscape. It is increasingly clear that during this period the emphasis on watercolor and other forms of paint embellishment took precedence over the ornamental embroidery of the past. Typical of related samplers, two unidentified white buildings have been drawn in pencil and black ink directly on the silk of this sampler, one a castle with a crenelated tower, the other a meeting house or church.⁶ Recent research by Betty Ring has uncovered the most promising candidate for the long sought-after schoolmistress of at least one of the two groups of silk embroideries-Mary Rea. The designer of the most elaborate family records and memorials executed in Portland, Mary Rea, the daughter of Dr. Caleb Rea, Jr., and Sarah White, kept a school for girls in Portland between 1823 and 1846. Advertising the opening of her school on March 18, 1823, in the Eastern Argus, she offered instruction in plain and ornamental needlework, the embroidering of genealogies, oil painting, and embroidering on satin, along with numerous academic classes.⁷ It is possible that Mary Rea drew and painted the ornate landscapes that distinguish her samplers from all others. However, the similarity of the rich pigmentation in both groups of Portland embroideries suggests that the same hand-perhaps that of a professional artist-painted both groups of samplers. A local painter may have been responsible for the wealth of painted scenes on fabric in the Portland area, for in general, artists are recognized by their use of color, as well as their painting technique. This sampler was probably worked by Jane Hanson, who would have been seventeen in 1827, the approximate date of the embroidery. Most of the Portland schoolgirl embroiderers were in their teens. One of seven children, Jane was the daughter of Timothy and Rebecca Hanson of Little Falls, Cumberland County, Maine. She married Isaac Woodford of Westbrook in 1831. They were the parents of one son, Henry. She was later married to C. Wesley Harding of Gorham. Jane Hanson Woodford Harding died October 25, 1886, aged seventy-six years.⁸ 

 

1. Betty Ring, "Samplers and Silk Embroideries of Portland, Maine," Antiques (September 1988): 520. 

2. Ibid., frontispiece, opp. 493, 513. See also Krueger, New England Samplers, fig. 74.

3. Brant and Cullman, Small Folk, 56, 57. See also Krueger, Gallery of American Samplers, 58, 59, and Ring, "Samplers and Silk Embroideries," 512. 

4. Ring, "Samplers and Silk Embroideries," 516. 

5. Ibid., 523. Ring identifies the church buildings on these samplers as representing St. John's Episcopal Church in Providence, Rhode Island. 

6. Ring, American Needlework Treasures, 17. The sampler attributed to Hannah Harding Smith, c. 1826 (collection, Betty Ring), also displays a painted and lavishly embroidered silk panel appliqued to a linen ground, in the same manner as that worked by Jane Hanson. 

7. Ring, "Samplers and Silk Embroideries," 519, 520. 

8. Samuel Thomas Dole, Windham in the Past, (Auburn, ME, 1916),417,418. When, as in this instance, dates printed in historical and genealogical books do not agree with those inscribed on a sampler, the dates on the sampler are thought by those knowledgeable in the field to be the more accurate.