To commemorate #AsianPacificAmericanHeritageMonth, the DAR Museum is featuring a newly acquired sampler made by a Hawaiian student at a missionary school in 1841.

 

The Museum writes,

"Maka stitched the Hawaiian alphabet (as transcribed by the Americans), her name, the date (April 1841), and an inscription in Hawaiian that translates roughly as praising her school, the Wailuku Female Seminary, as a "place of refuge."

Maka's sampler combines Hawaiian grown cotton spun and woven on site with the colored silks and designs of an American style sampler, a tradition not found in Hawaii before the arrival of missionary groups. As such, the sampler speaks to the meeting of the two cultures, Hawaiian Pacific Islander and the Americans who settled in Hawaii in the 1820s. You can view Maka's sampler in our upcoming exhibit, "Lately Arrived: Recent Additions to the Collection."