Verhildersum Estate

Online Exhibition cross stitch samplers

View here the online exposition 'Voortborduren' with 75 special samplers from the collection Verhildersum.

Click on the photo for START of the exhibition. Next step: choose your language at the upper side left.

Exhibition | Embroidery, from sampler to stretcher

Nowadays embroidery is often a leisure activity and sometimes art. In the past, it was necessary for women to learn to embroider. After all, laundry had to be clearly recognisable on the joint. To learn these skills, young girls embroidered samplers. Embroidery as a hobby was only reserved for women from wealthy families.

In 2021 Museum Landgoed Verhildersum showed samplers and applied embroidery from its own collection. Jan Pieter de Groot used genealogical research to find out who the makers of more than 70 samplers were. The embroidered motifs often tell us something about the maker's background. Which family did she come from? Where did she live? That gives a nice insight into history.
The work of the past is linked to the modern embroidery of Tjitske Dijkstra.
She collects second-hand embroidery paintings and gives them a new lease of life. She uses them to upholster couches and make jackets, dresses and bags, among other things. The exhibition closes on 1 November 2021 but remains open online. This way the samplers from the Verhildersum collection can also be seen, although they are now safely back in the archive.

Book | samplers and their makers

Would you like to know all the ins and outs? Then buy the book in which more than seventy samplers and their makers have been extensively illustrated.
From the end of March, the book will be available at the museum shop for € 19.50 [excluding shipping costs of € 5 within the Netherlands]. Click here to order the book by e-mail. [info@verhildersum.nl]
Don't forget to mention your address. You will receive an invoice. Please note that we ship the books once a week, usually on Tuesdays. There is a lot of interest so we have organised help.
You can already take a look at the book here.

Maaike Koornstra, specialist and enthusiast in samplers, heartily recommends the book. She says:

"The book Merklappen en hun maaksters is a relief for sampler lovers after years without publications in this field. In this bound edition, samplers are interwoven with their makers and origin, and for the first time in a sampler book, the farms where the makers grew up are also depicted. Thus a piece of Groningen's past has been charted and recorded as cultural preservation for both genealogically interested and sampler enthusiasts...".

The publication of the book was made possible by: Foundation for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage in Northwest Groningen, Rabo Club Support, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Fonds Evert Potjer.
view book 

At the images

Below you will find a very small selection of the works and creators that can be seen in the exhibition Voortborduren. The first picture is the sampler of Eelkjen Willems. She made it in 1733. It is the oldest sampler in the Verhildersum collection, the maker of which became known through genealogical research by Jan Pieter de Groot. Here you can see where the makers lived.

Black samplers are sometimes said to be mourning cloths, but in this case the exuberant flowers do not fit. Black embroidery thread was expensive material.

The symmetrical sampler with the parrots was made in 1863 by the thirteen-year-old Lupke Tonnis Doornbos.

Possibly Wilhelmina Jans Bakker received the material for the sampler she made in 1867 from her uncle Auke Jans Zielstra 1820-1902 who was a weaver in Groningen.

The multicoloured sampler was embroidered in 1870 by Cornelia Bolhuis, who can be seen in the photo next to it. Cornelia was one of the thirty-seven investors who founded the NV Tramweg-Maatschappij Zuidlaren-Groningen on 30 December 1891.

The red school sampler was made in 1904 by thirteen-year-old Willemina Driesman from Zuidwending. You can see her on the last photo.

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Verhildersum Estate receives remarkable collection cross stitch samplers
Verhildersum Estate recently acquired a remarkable cross stitch sampler collection formerly owned by Mrs. Felicia van Deth. A number of these samplers were exhibited at Verhildersum in 2012 during the exhibition ‘Homespun Family treasures.’ At the time, Mrs. Van Deth was very taken with Verhildersum and its special textile collection, and she thought her collection would find a good home there once she’d passed away. She died in 2015, the collection came to Verhildersum and we are immensely grateful for her donation.

The origin of Mrs. Van Deth’s sampler collection is noteworthy. As a little 8 year-old girl her grandmother showed her a sampler she had made herself as a small child. Felicia was deeply impressed and together they studied the many tiny motifs. On her tenth birthday, Felicia received this sampler from her grandmother as a gift. Felicia got married in the fifties and found out her husband also had a ‘granny sampler.’ Later on friends gave her two other old family samplers dating from the first half of the 19th century. And that’s how it started. Little by little she got more and more samplers. Once she bought a box with samplers at auction from the legacy of Lizzy Ansingh, one of the ‘Amsterdam Joffers,’ a group of women artists. The oldest sampler from this box dates back to the 18th century.

Cross stitch samplers were originally a means for young girls to practice marking and numbering linen and clothing. Without numbers, letters, initials and patterns it was impossible to tell apart the laundry drying at the common bleaching greens, so it had a clear function. Only the daughters of wealthy families could indulge in embroidery as a hobby. Verhildersum Estate is very happy with this addition to its textile collection.