Hewson Vase Panel # 18

Detail of a Hewson vase panel

A few years ago we visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art where curators were kind enough to show us panel quilts and fabric. We were intrigued by this uncut panel, commonly acknowledged to have been printed by John Hewson in Philadelphia...

because it included a floral vine border, not often seen in other versions of the panel.

Similar panel, different border

in a quilt from the Delaware Historical Society. 

See details of this chintz medallion here:

https://sites.udel.edu/mayhew-class/delaware-quilt-documentation-project-2/all-quilt-harvest-days/wl1-delaware-historic-society/#jp-carousel-3140

Center of a quilt in the Herr Collection at the 

Historical Society of York County, Pennsylvania

Metropolitan Museum of Art

27-5/8 x 29-1/2 inches

The Hewson Printworks used woodblocks to print the design so we see various compositions with the same birds and butterflies placed in different spots.

Well-worn quilt from the Winterthur Museum, acquired in the last decade

#2010.0018

A toile border frames the medallion...

Much like this one in a private collection.

John Hewson (1744-1821)

Inspired by our late friend Cuesta Benberry we have kept lists of quilts with Hewson Vase panels for quite a while. For this post we added a few more, bringing the list up to 18 bedcovers, indicating the Hewson panel's popularity in the U.S. We have never seen it in British or Commonwealth quilts.

Stuffed work medallion with Hewson panel, inscribed 1809,

St. Louis Art Museum

The earliest dated example in our files is inscribed 1809. The latest 1848. The 1809 quilt is indeed the earliest date-inscribed quilt with any panel in the U.S. dated the same year as the British George III commemorative panel (#24) discussed in this post:

https://chintzpanelquilt.blogspot.com/2018/05/george-iii-jubilee-panel-24.html

Quilt dated 1848, signed

Elizabeth Hart, Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Spencer Museum of Art

Quilt dated 1811 by Betsy Burton, Cincinnati Art Museum

Another early Hewson. What looks like a printed border around the vase is a pieced strip

of eccentric print.

Bird motifs were usually included in the Vase panel

Stuffed-work medallion with Hewson panel

in the Orlofsky collection, published in the 1974

book Quilts in America.

What can we learn from the Hewson panel quilts?

The vase panel must have been Hewson's bread and butter---textile industry jargon for a profitable classic printed over and over. We know very little about their other prints. Did the Hewson printworks produce other woodblock printed panels? Merikay has questioned the common assumption that all the panels found in the U.S. were imported. (See Spring, 2014 issue of Blanket Statements, AQSG's newsletter.) 

"Could any of the chintz panels have been designed and/or printed in the U.S? ... Without company records or advertising this question remains hypothetical."

We'll be discussing this hypothesis further.

Panel #19

We've both been struck by Panel #19, the Butterfly panel discussed in the last post. Hewson vase panels include at least three butterflies (or moths) with much in common such as outlines, antennae and areas of red, brown and blue. Could it be an American print?

https://chintzpanelquilt.blogspot.com/2018/05/butterfly-panel-19.html

Common Hewson moth,

reproduction and original prints above

Andover's repro insects are on a separate fabric

Kathy Hall at Andover did a fabric line based on Winterthur's Hewson collection.A web search for Hewson Andover indicates that online shops still have some "John Hewson" for sale.

Read more about Hewson's wife Zebiah Smallwood Hewson at this post:

http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.co.nz/2011/10/2-zebiah-smallwood-hewson-domestic.html

Bedcover by Zebiah Smallwood Hewson (1749-1815)

Philadelphia Museum of Art

See her quilt and the panel at the top of the page by going to the Philadelphia Museum of Art page and searching for Hewson:

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/search.html

The best online biography of John Hewson Senior is in the Winterthur catalog.

http://museumcollection.winterthur.org/single-record.php?resultsperpage=20&view=catalog&srchtype=advanced&hasImage=&ObjObjectName=&CreOrigin=&Earliest=&Latest=&CreCreatorLocal_tab=&materialsearch=&ObjObjectID=&ObjCategory=&DesMaterial_tab=&DesTechnique_tab=&AccCreditLineLocal=&CreMarkSignature=&recid=2010.0018&srchfld=&srchtxt=hewson&id=8465&rownum=1&version=100&src=results-imagelink-only#.WwLZce4vy70

Liz Wright has a Pinterest Page on Hewson quilts old and new:

https://www.pinterest.com/lizw142/john-hewson-quilts/?lp=true

Jan Wass still has Andover reproduction Hewson panels for sale:

http://www.janwass.com/?page_id=54

Someday we are going to get our repros finished.

Butterfly: Panel #19

Panel 19

Butterfly in a scalloped cartouche

Watercolor of a Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly by

Maria Martin Bachman 1796-1863.

Collection of the Charleston Museum

This unusual panel pictures a swallowtail butterfly or moth in a frame of florals and fine curved lines with smaller butterflies in the scallops.

Center of a quilt in the Spartanburg (S.C.) County Museum of History

Quilt from the Boatwright family, Ridge Springs, South Carolina.

Collection of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts

MESDA

She seems to have moved the secondary butterflies out a bit.

We got to see the Boatwright quilt at the recent MESDA conference where there was much discussion about just what this strange feathery plant is. No consensus except "Maybe some kind of water plant."

Merikay has four examples of quilts with the butterfly panel #19 in the database---all from the American South.

Jeffrey Evans & Associates, a Virginia auction place, sold this

unquilted spread in 2016.

From the description:

"69" x 90" without fringe. Two pieces total. Together with one cotton bolster cover with similar appliqued chintz. Applique first quarter 19th century, foundation first quarter 20th century."

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/46476246_american-chintz-appliqued-summer-spread#&gid=1&pid=2

Detail of the bolster cover

The butterfly or moth panel (#19) is one of the rarer examples of chintz panels found in quilts. 

Attributed to a member of the Alexander family of Charlotte, North Carolina,

Collection of the Hezekiah Alexander House,  #78.107

We like to have a picture of the uncut fabric to see how the panel was repeated but this is the most information we have about #19.

Ms. Alexander framed the center with octagonal panel #35.

Pieced quilt with Panel #19 in the center. 

Collection of the Spartanburg County Museum of History.

What Can We Learn From This Panel?

Panel #3

The Boatwright quilt at MESDA also includes one of the most common of panels, the Trophy of Arms (#3), which Merikay has recorded only in American quilts. It would seem that the Butterfly panel is also found only in American quilts. Does this mean the panels were printed in America?

Highly unlikely---American printers did not produce prints of this quality in the first decades of the 19th century. Englishwoman Margaret Hunter Hall was disappointed in the American prints she saw in 1827 in Lowell, Massachusetts. 

"As yet they have neither skill nor capital to attempt anything fine or expensive, and the finest cottons they make at Lowell (printed ones I mean) are not beyond the value of fifteen pence a yard."

What is more likely is that the butterfly panel featuring an exotic insect was printed in England "for the Brazilian market," British textile jargon for the Western Hemisphere. Many of these export designs were never sold in Britain, which is why no English or Irish quiltmakers had access to them. A small shipment of the yardage may have arrived in Charleston, Savannah, Wilmington, North Carolina or some other port. Did most of it wind up in South America or the Caribbean islands?

See more about the Brazilian and the Portuguese market at this post.

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/10/chintzes-for-portuguese-3.html

George III Jubilee: Panel 24

"G*50*R"

Panel 24, Celebrating King George III's 50th Anniversary in 1809-1810.

Golden Jubilee. 

A Jubilee is a 50th anniversary.

Merikay has tried to find a photo of an uncut design for each of the panels.

This one belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Jubilee

G [eorge] R[ex]

[King George]

This quilted patchwork bedcover featuring an oval panel was on the dustcover of Averil Colby's 1958 book Patchwork. The photo focused on the patchwork center which is framed by a large piece of  print. Below the overall view:

Quilted patchwork bed cover of printed cottons, English, 

After 1810. 84" x 99". T.25-1961.

Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum. 

Gift of Elisabeth Clarke of Woodbridge, Suffolk in 1961.

Cataloging information describes the panel's florals symbolizing the United Kingdom : 

"A ready-printed basket of flowers including lilies, carnations and daffodil buds. The basket is flanked by the rose and thistle, and a cluster of shamrocks appears beneath."

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O165077/bed-cover-unknown/

The Jubilee panel, printed by woodblock, is believed to be the earliest "datable commemorative panel." We assume it was printed for the 1809-1810 event.

Jubilee medal from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum

"Completed 50th Year of His Reign

Oct 25, 1810"

A black and white photo from Percival MacIver's 1923

The Chintz Book, Page 150.

He describes it:

"printed in vivid colouring with a preponderance of bright canary yellow, then a new and most fashionable shade. There was a great liking for small panels of printed cotton and silk which were intended to be applied to different articles of plain material and surrounded often with embroidery."

He also dates it as 1812 which is not the date of the Jubilee. The celebration lasted through 1809 and 1810 so the panel could be from either year.
Read a digital copy of MacIver's book here: https://archive.org/details/chintzbook00perc

Shamrocks for Ireland above the inscription

This second patchwork piece in our files is one of those orphan internet photos. It shows the panel with a leafy background, which differs from the V & A's quilt with a spotted figure. The colorway is also different with more blue and less color variety. Or perhaps the color photo is faded.

102" x 102"

Dorothy Osler in Traditional British Quilts (1987) showed a third bedcover from a private collection. In this quilted piece from the North Country the uncut panel is placed on the diagonal and has florals appliqued in its corners on the plain white ground.

T181-1941, Victoria & Albert Museum

91" x 100"

The V&A has another bedcover pictured in Colleen R. Callahan's "A Quilt and Its Pieces" in the Metropolitan Museum Journal in 1984.

Again the background is plain white with appliqued pieces.

All four of the quilts in the database are in England. Jubilee panels featuring the vilified King would not have been popular with recently independent Americans and the fabric was unlikely to have been exported to Boston or Charleston.

Were all the panels originally framed in white? Did the quiltmakers neatly applique the ovals onto different fabrics? Or are we looking at at least three printings?

Measuring the V&A's 84" wide quilt by proportion

we come up with a size of about 23" wide by 21" tall.

Merikay was surprised at the panel's actual size. The quilts are rather large but after having seen them only in photos "In my mind I thought they were much smaller quilts."

UPDATE: A late addition to the database. Panel 24 in a quilt pictured in Architectural Digest in 1986. From the inventory of the Antique Textile Company in England.

104" long by 90" wide.

What Can We Learn From This Panel?
Commemorative dating of this early multi-colored chintz panel indicates that panels were printed no earlier than the early 19th century. We haven't yet seen one that we can reliably date to the 18th century.

See more about the V&A's quilt and what x-radiography revealed about construction.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/journals/research-journal/issue-03/x-radiography-as-a-tool-to-examine-the-making-and-remaking-of-historic-quilts/