Red Stag among Roses

This sampler from 1862 is a bit of a mystery – I’m not even certain about the initials of the stitcher (is it HW or HVV?). Judging by the style of this sampler I would say it’s from the east of the Netherlands – most likely from the province of Gelderland. Although most samplers were worked by (young) girls, I have seen examples of samplers worked by adult women. On the sampler we see at the centre a beautiful large red stag. Variations of this pattern have been around since the 1500s and can be found in old pattern books and many samplers stitched ever since. Stags were believed to trample upon snakes (evil) and that way destroying them. Because of this believe they were seen as a symbol of Christ. The stitcher of this sampler worked many bouquets of flowers – there’s tulips and carnations, but there’s lots of roses as well. The large rose below the stag is especially quite spectacular. On the right we see two men carrying a bunch of grapes – a beloved motif on Dutch samplers. They represent the two Canaanite spies, Joshua and Caleb, who in the old testament traveled into the promised land and brought back an enormous bunch of grapes, symbolising prosperity. The inclusion of the boy and the girl on the left of the sampler is curious: these two characters are dressed in red and black uniforms, typical of those worn in several orphanages in the Netherlands. Might the maker have a link to an orphanage perhaps? Or was she herself at an orphanage when she stitched her sampler? Us knowning so little about this sampler doesn’t take away from the fact that the maker worked a really charming sampler! She worked with wool threads on stramin (close to a modern 14-count stramin or aida) and worked her sampler full cover. All of the pattern details are stitched with full crosses, the background was worked with half crosses. You could fill the sampler up by stitching all of the unstitched areas with DMC 739. This however would be a devilish amount of work as there are 66600 crosses to work in total. If you want to stitch on linen or aida, Zweigart colour code 770 (Platinum) comes very close to the original full cover background.