In Memory 1854

On special occasions in life, a piece of fabric has been embroidered up to this day: on the occasion of the birth of a child, a marriage, building a house. Or one kept the data of the family in the family tree.

The nine-year-old MTR from England worked a so-called remembrance sampler in 1854, with thick woolen thread on coarse linen, an opulent weeping willow, a gravestone and a flowery landscape. She used a very rare motif from the huge range of fine, hand-coloured needlework patterns. How important this man must have been to her!

Embroidered memorabilia were very popular in England and America from the end of the 18th to the middle of the 19th century – often in fine satin stitch. The framed pictures hung in the living-room.

In Germany, hair pictures or so-called box images were forming the corresponding memory culture during the same period.

• Hair play an immensely important role in many religions and thus also in popular belief. They are the home of life and power.
• The weeping willow is a symbol of the life flow between birth and death, but also the tree of vitality, the flexible.

Crosses: 172 x 170
Size: 24,5 x 24 cm
Stitches: Cross stitch, satin stitch