The History We Never Knew: Looking at our Past Through Schoolgirl Samplers

Name: The History We Never Knew: Looking at our Past Through Schoolgirl Samplers
Start: 2025-03-09T14:00:00-04:00
Location: Westport Museum for History & Culture

Schedule

Sun, 09 Mar, 2025 at 02:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Westport Museum for History & Culture | Westport, CT

Alexandra Lally Peters, Historian, Curator and Collector of Samplers, will talk about the history we were never taught, the story of the lives of girls and women, that needlework samplers offer us. Tens of thousands of these beautiful works still exist, marking and darning and pictorial samplers, as well stitched maps and memorials and family records, that open up a fascinating way of looking at our past.

Alexandra Lally Peters is a sampler collector and historian who first encountered a schoolgirl sampler that she could buy forty years ago and was so startled to be holding history in her hands that she hasn’t stopped buying them since. Alexandra researches every sampler she buys – sometimes, she will admit, a little obsessively. She loves turning up intriguing information about the lives of the real girls who sat down in school to pierce their linen and silks with needles, two to three hundred years ago. She lives in New York City and in Sharon, CT, with a lot of samplers that explain so much about the lives of women in the past.
alexandralallypeters.com
The Salisbury Association is hosting an exhibit of Alexandra's samplers at the Salisbury Association's Academy Building, 24 Main Street, Salisbury, CT, from February 15th to April 30th, 2025.
Tuesday through Friday, 1 - 1, and Saturday, 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM.