The Science of Samplers

June 20th, 2011 |

This week’s blog was guest written by Historic Bethlehem Partnership summer intern, Elena Ostock.

The Moravian Museum has a large collection of needlework samplers, primarily from the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies.  Samplers were a way to exhibit a girl’s skill in practical sewing because it was considered necessary to stitch an owner’s initials into clothing and linens.  Traditionally, these samplers featured the alphabet, numbers, and perhaps a Bible verse or some flowers, depending on skill level.

However, we recently rediscovered a sampler created by Maria Zahm, which is a bit of an anomaly.  She has the usual alphabets and numbers, but she has gone several steps further than most of the other girls.  She stitched two apparently biblical tablets, one which represents the Ten Commandments, while the other, which depicts nine different shapes, remains a mystery.  Maria also included the names of her family members.

The focal point of the piece is the most surprising though; an illustration of six planets orbiting around the sun.  Granted, her rendition is obviously flawed.  The sampler is dated 1833, which means that unless she was operating under the false assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe, she has left out a planet.  Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn had been known about for quite some time, and Uranus had been discovered as a planet fifty-two years earlier, in 1781.  The order in which she placed the planets is also incorrect, because the lone ringed planet, Saturn, is the second closest to the Sun.

Still, it is an impressive piece in its own right, because it illustrates that Maria Zahm had some knowledge of science, when so few women of the time period were educated in anything beyond the tasks necessary to be a useful housewife.

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