Mary Bate joins my brood

I met someone online last night -- her name is Mary. Or rather, her name was Mary, and I now own her handwork! I apologize for the quality of the pictures -- I cleaned these up the best I could, but will have to wait to take better pictures when the sampler shows up in the mail. (As always, you should be able to click on the pictures to make them a little bigger.)

An antique coins dealer in Nottingham posted the sampler a few days ago as a "Buy It Now," and I stumbled across it last night. I called Pat at Lakeside Linens right away (she was still at the office dyeing linen). I often will call Pat when I see a sampler I like; she and I have similar taste in antique samplers. She agreed that Mary's sampler was well-worth the price (around $350), considering the date, condition, and quality of the sampler/design. Then she cursed me for having called her, because once I got her looking, I doomed her to spending the rest of her evening browsing through all of the pretty samplers online.

Here is the verse (and this was part of what I really liked about this one):

THE human soul without Education

is like marble in the quary which (shows?)

none of its inherent beauties until

the skill of the Polisher fethes (sic) out

the colours makes the surface shine

and discovers every ornamentel (?)

spot and vein that runs through the

body of it Education after the same

manner when it works upon the mind

draws out to view every latent virtue

and perfection which without such

helps are never able to make their

appearance (squiggly line)

Keep such Company as you may im

prove or that may improve you and

if you or your Companions cannot

make one anothor (sic) better rather leave

than grow worse by them

MARY BATE

Her Work In The Year Of

Our Lord 1796 B Oct 29 83 (Born October 29, 1783.)

Strait School

The sampler is about 12" by 15 3/4", which means the linen is probably very fine (judging by how much stitching is in the piece for something that size.) Pat and I estimate it's between a 40 and 50 count linen, but I'll know more when I receive the sampler. I'll share more of what I discover when the sampler arrives and take better pictures with my fancy new Nikon camera. I just thought I'd share a few (smudgy) pictures of my latest acquisition. What do you think of it?