The Potter Sampler from Breconshire

A splendid family sampler of large scale, worked in brightly coloured wools, recording the Potter family of Glantwyney in the upper Swansea valley.

David Potter came to Breconshire to work as a warrener for an East Anglian company. The unsuccessful venture sought to farm rabbits commercially for their meat and fur in the upper Cray Valley but had ceased by the mid 1850`s.

Clearly David decided to stay and marry a local girl and they and their offspring are immortalised in this unusual sampler.

*Harriet, the youngest child, once worked at the local Craigynos Castle for the reknowned opera singer Dame Adelina Patti and recalled in later life that her father and his fellow warreners “bred black rabbits for Londoners”

*Taken from “Crai, Atgofion Mebyd, Memories of Youth” by Glyn Powell and Stephen Roderick, published in 2019.

Breconshire circa 1880.

Dimensions:

116cms wide x 76cms high