The Antique: This chart contains all sixteen pattern pages from a tiny paper pattern album passed out as a souvenir in 1851 at Prince Albert’s Crystal Palace Great Exhibition. They were mass produced inexpensively but are rarely found today due to the nature of the flimsy paper and the effects of time. Other similar pattern booklets were printed throughout Germany, France and England in the mid-nineteenth century. This one in particular became a source for many motifs, lettering and numbers that appear on Bristol Orphanage Samplers and other samplers produced during the era. See and compare for example: Cross Stitch Antiques’s Amelia Fox 1868, a Bristol Orphanage Sampler, and Annie Matilda Moss, 1872, England.

What a thrill to have at hand the source of the exquisite patterns that the young girls used over 175 years ago to design and create their now sought after samplers!

This tiny but exquisite pattern album measures 2 ¼ inches wide by 3 inches high and has paper rings to insert a pencil (long gone) attached to the front and back covers. It opens into accordion-like folded pages, sixteen in number, printed in red and green on graph paper. These pattern albums were given out freely to the ladies attending Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition as a souvenir and contained patterns, lettering, numbers and motifs for needlework.