Wonderfully Colorful and Varied C. 1900 Dutch Darning Sampler traditional Swedish craft and a little staining here

and a little staining here and there on inside (white wool) pages

and then the nearly identical white letters against black on the flip side

Cylindrical boxes such as this

which comes off looking a bit rougher and more rustic than it really is

visualizing a whole collection arranged across a few shelves

Wonderfully Colorful and Varied C. 1900 Dutch Darning Sampler traditional Swedish craft and a little staining hereIf you are reading this, you probably strongly identify with certain objects, especially ones with history, as I do. For me, an antique darning sampler, as much as most any other sort of thing, feels like life itself: torn over and over in order to be carefully, beautifully mended, with the mends together creating a portrait of all sorts of different solutions to the problem of the tear. And then age and stains and marks of being folded and put away