Description:
Needlework Adam and Eve Sampler, Lancaster, Virginia, early 19th century, worked in silk threads on a linen ground with four rows of alphabets over "The Ten Commandments in Verse," over another verse entitled "The Desire" above a depiction of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and encircling serpent, flanked by trees, baskets of fruit, and birds, enclosed on three sides by a fruiting vine, (toning, fading, color bleeding),24 x 21 3/4 in., in a black painted wooden frame.
Note: Oral history relates that the sampler was given to William MacPherson Bigelow Jr. by Frances Harman Lewis. The sampler was done by a member of her family and is buried on the family estate, Towles Point, Lancaster, Virginia.
Estimate $1,500-2,500
lower portion of picture has some color bleeding from the border and the tree at center, toning, fading.