Very Fine and Rare Silk Embroidered Sampler, Wrought by Abigail Prince, Newburyport, Massachusetts, Dated 1801

Auction Closed

January 23, 04:26 PM GMT

Estimate

60,000 - 80,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Very Fine and Rare Silk Embroidered Sampler

Wrought by Abigail Prince

Newburyport, Massachusetts

Dated 1801

Worked in dark blue, teal, cream, and yellow silk threads on a linen ground with sampler, poem and signature above a playful garden courting scene in the lower register. Inscribed and signed at center:

Here in this green and shady bower

Delicious fruits and fragrant flowers

Virtue shall dwell within this seat

Virtue alone can make it sweet

Abigail Prince A.E. 1801.

Height 15 1/4 in. by Width 21 3/4 in.

Garth's Auctions, Delaware, Ohio, April 5, 1983;

Stephen Score, Boston, Massachusetts;

Sotheby's, New York, Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring, January 22, 2012, sale 8832, lot 516.

American Needlework Treasures: Samplers and Silk Embroideries from the Collection of Betty Ring, (New York: E.P. Dutton in association with the Museum of American Folk Art, 1987), pp. 12-3, figs. 18 and 18a.

This sampler was wrought by Abigail Poor Prince (1788- before 1819) when she was only 13-years-old and survives as part of an important group that worked in Newburyport from 1799 to 1806 (see Magazine Antiques (September 1978) 545). The daughter of Ezekial Prince and Abigail Dresser of Newburyport, Abigail married Benjamin Bucknam (b . 1781) of Falmouth on March 5,1810, and their third child was born in Eastport, Maine, in 1816. After Abigail's death in 1818, he married her sister Elizabeth (1800-1876) on December 19, 1819, and they had four children. (Additional information provided by Carol and Stephen Huber).