Embroidered Samplers as charms

 Embroidered samplers:  I’m surprised to find that this article from the Victoria &Albert Museum does not mention the charms.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/embroidery-a-history-of-needlework-samplers

I found a Zalktis - the good snake in the samplers pictured in this article from the V&A.  There are many other symbols of fertility/abundance.  I should make a list of them.

The article discusses the boxer as a mysterious figure.  But it’s not so mysterious:  it looks like a figure of male fertility.  It matches all the other wild men in the book, Santa Claus: Last of the Wild Men by Phyllis Siefker, published in 1997 by McFarland ISBN 978-0786429585.

My guess is the boxer matches Punch (of Punch and Judy fame); he matches Harlequin with his elegant walking stick, and he matches the leader of Scottish bagpipe troupes with his great club.  There was also a pagan tradition of beating people with birch branches for good luck - that’s the boxer.  How about the tradition of representing the New Year as a little boy? -That, also.

Many old samplers were made by young girls.  I think their age made the sampler more powerful as a protective charm.  There was a belief that before they had children, all their fertility was held inside.  I think they had to complete the sampler before they became a bride.  All our extravagant weddings today are a remnant of the belief that the bride and groom are the embodiment of all that is fertile and abundant. And once they probably represented the gods: lord and lady of life.

...

Dear Piecework magazine, that’s an obergi/charm

 Dear Piecework,

That’s a lovely obergi on the cover of your latest issue.  It’s a magic charm.  Obergi is a Russian word for charm, amulet...

All the decorative art from Europe is loaded with charms.

You have been publishing charms for many years without identifying them.  I can’t find an art history teacher nor book that can identify the charms.  I know only 2 people in the world who see it my way and they probably think I’m crazy.  But their names are Patricia Robin Woodruff and Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

I’m saying that all handmade objects were once magical.  The amulets were woven in during the making.  But it seems that art history was written by people who could not discuss paganism.  Anyway, that sampler on your cover is a picture of the Mother of All.  She bring abundance to the person who has the sampler.  Most samplers have a charm -or layers of charms.  And any time you see a vase of flowers in European art, you should compare it to a Grain Goddess obergi - usually they match perfectly.  The vase symbolizes a full womb with goodness overflowing toward the person looking at it. And the plant or flower is the Berginia, a Russian word for Grain Goddess, Mother of All.

There was a book in the 1980’s that looked at Russian art this way. [ I can’t remember] the author, Mary B. Kelley, [ somebody,] very beloved, her out of print books are now very expensive.  I think the title of her first book was Goddess Embroideries of Russia.

Thanks for listening.  No, I don’t write much, and I’m nobody - just an amateur.

-Virginia Miller

172 Puckerbrush Road, Campton, NH, USA

guzel36@yahoo.com