The Alexander Girard Collection of European Samplers in the New Mexico Museum of International Folk Art consists of about 250 samplers culled mainly from 18th-and 19th-century Germany, Italy, England, and the Netherlands. The archives of the museum also contain records and black-and-white photographs of the original collection of 1,300 samplers. The history of these samplers is described for each country. For example, in England, the dominant motif evolved from the alphabet and numbers to moral verse and pictures.