Charlotte’s elegant sampler is available as a PDf download and as a printed booklet. Click HERE for the printed booklet.
Coco Chanel described simplicity as the key to elegance, and the sampler that Charlotte worked as a child is quite simply elegant. Charlotte’s exquisitely laid stitches, worked in black silk, demonstrate that the seven-year-old child was skilled in marking stitch.
Charlotte Mash was born on March 29 in the year 1823 to William Mash and his wife Ann. The family resided at 29 Tottenham Road in London. Her father was a potato merchant which gave us a chuckle. The surname Mash is a somewhat rare but well‐established name, with its roots in the Old English word mersc, meaning “marsh.” Over centuries, through regional pronunciation and spelling variations, Marsh sometimes became Mash.
The family were prosperous and we believe that Charlotte attended a fee-paying school. A wide spectrum of day schools existed across London – from genteel academies that charged significant fees to small neighbourhood schools which taught the basics (reading, writing, arithmetic, needlework) and were affordable for lower-middle-class tradesmen’s children. The existence of many small proprietary schools meant a slightly broader swathe of the urban middle class could access literacy and numeracy, but the depth and prestige of instruction remained stratified by cost. Girls’ curricula reinforced contemporary gender roles: the aim was to render them marriageable and genteel rather than to prepare them for independent professional life.
Charlotte married Thomas Scammell, on January 4, 1846 and together they had one son named after his father. Charlotte died in 1915.
As a surviving textile, Charlotte’s sampler is a witness to the past. Unlike written documents authored by men, samplers were made by girls, many of whom left no diaries, letters, or published work. The stitches themselves carry evidence of the girl’s hand: her spacing, her choices of motif, and her perseverance through error. In this way, the sampler is not a generic artefact but an individual trace of a lived experience. What was once a pedagogical exercise has become a textile voice that speaks across generations.
Remembering Charlotte through her sampler is not only an act of historical discovery but also an ethical gesture recognising the humanity of those whose stories were seldom told. A sampler, once routine, becomes extraordinary because it allows one life, otherwise silent in the archives, to be glimpsed, acknowledged, and honoured.
Charlotte’s monochrome sampler has been reproduced using Soie 100.3 overdyed by Painter’s Threads to the shade Waterhouse. We are delighted with the results. Although hard to capture through the lens of a camera, Waterhouse gives depth and movement to the sampler.
An alternative solid silk would be Soie 100.3 #774 for a slightly mellowed black. You might prefer to stitch with a solid black for a bolder look.
There are 2 versions of the PDF download. A nine-page colour chart version and a one-page colour chart version (intended to be viewed/used on your tablet, phone, laptop, or computer).
