Sampler

The bold but sophisticated design of Eliza Pitner’s sampler is characteristic of a group of Delaware samplers made between 1811 and 1835, which all contain a cohesive vocabulary of motifs. Eliza stitched one of the most fully developed of this group of floral and fruit samplers. It displays a wide elaborate naturalistic floral border that rises from a large blooming red rose. The center cartouche features two alphabets; a stanza from a hymn; the maker’s name and date; and a small landscape with a central tree flanked by a pair of butterflies and grazing sheep. A large pineapple tops the sampler.

The distinctive motif of many of the Delaware samplers is a single or pair of textured pineapples with a tuft of green leaves on the top and variegated leaves beneath. Pineapples were imported to America from South American and the Caribbean in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Because they often spoiled in transport, they were rare and costly, and America’s gentry displayed them as centerpieces on their dining tables at important dinners. It is recorded that George Washington often asked ship captains to bring him "a few Pine Apples" from the West Indies to his Mount Vernon home to enjoy and display when entertaining honored guests. The appeal of this exotic luxury resulted in pineapple representations appearing not only in samplers but on garden urns, coffee pots, fabrics, and furniture. Over time, the pineapple became a symbol of hospitality. Nurserymen, such as John Abercrombie developed hot-houses for growing pineapples in northern climates, and an illustration of a pineapple in his book, The Hot-House Gardener in General Culture of the Pine-Apple (London, 1789), may have served as the design source for this group of Delaware samplers.

Eliza Pitner was born in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, near the Delaware border. She was the youngest of seven children born to John Pitner (b. 1755) and Jemina Davis Pitner (b.1758) and grew up in the family’s stone farmhouse built in 1780 on Upper Silver Lake Road. No record of Eliza’s marriage or the birth of any children has been found, and the 1860 United States Census lists her as single resident in Wilmington, Delaware. While Eliza stitched a stanza from a hymn related to the immediacy of death in her sampler, she lived a long life and died on March 29, 1888 at age 85. She is interred at the Wilmington & Brandywine Cemetery.