CINCINNATI, OHIO — Of the more than 450 lots that crossed the block at Forsythes’ Auctions on January 2, an 1819 silk on linen sampler worked by Blanch Welch of Baltimore took top-lot honors. Consisting of a five-row verse over a landscape, accompanied by a flower basket and grapevine border, the piece had descended in Welch’s Baltimore family and related to another illustrated in volume II of Betty Ring’s Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850. An estimate of $2/4,000 inspired interest and it sold to an American buyer, bidding on the phone, for $5,310.

A more thorough discussion of the sale will appear in a future issue.