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Sampler

1817
Embroidered by Agnes Muir (Scottish, born 1802)
The embroidery tells us that “Agnes Muir sewed this sampler at Kirkintilloch,” a town on the Forth and Clyde Canal. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Kirkintilloch emerged as a center for linen and cotton production, coal mining, and shipbuilding for canal and ocean sailing. Agnes was the oldest child of Charles Muir and Elizabeth Calder, whose names appear on the textile’s left side along with the names of five of their seven children. The use of meandering thistles, native to Scotland, in the border is typical of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish samplers. The Bible quotation at the bottom is Proverbs 31:30.

Object Details

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