This sampler was worked by Mary Fitz (1807–1849) in 1819 at the Catherine Welshans Buchanan’s school in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. The central scene depicts two fashionably dressed women in a grape arbor, one standing and the other seated on a bench. The border is made up of compartmentalized motifs including a heart, baskets of grapes and...

Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do at Cooper-Hewitt? I manage the exhibition design process for all our exhibitions, including the designers who design our exhibitions, graphics, and lighting, and plan the schedules and budgets for how the exhibitions are built. What was your background before coming to Cooper-Hewitt?...

This family register sampler, with its melancholy verse about the fleeting nature of life, was stitched in 1833 by Abigail Barnard. Although such samplers were typically part of the needlework education of schoolgirls, Abigail created this example at the age of twenty-seven to document the birth, marriage, and death dates of her parents and siblings....