Conclusions 2: Style & Fabric

Attributed to Anna Legare O'Hear, Charleston, South Carolina

Winterthur Museum Collection

We're summarizing our blog posts, here discussing a few conclusions we've reached on style and fabric sources after expanding Merikay's original database of panel quilts. In this post we discuss our  observations about style and fabric sources.

Regional Style

Several historians looking at American panel quilts over the years have noted the abundance of Southern examples with distinct regional styles. These are not quilts one would typically see in Boston or Ohio.

Attributed to Ann Adeline Orr Parks, North Carolina

The largest group is found in museums and families in the Carolinas, with South Carolina having the most. Similar quilts are seen in Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi and Virginia.

Quilt made for Georgia Butt, dated 1834 

Museum of Mississippi History. Georgia was born in 1834 near 

Columbus, Georgia. The quilt is in their long term display.

The Southern quilts tend to follow a few structural formats, a pattern with variations. In one the central panel is on point; in the other on the square.

Panels are cut into parts with corners pulled out to enlarge the central area.

Center of a quilt in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,

thought to be Southern. The triangles in the corners

were cut from around the circular panel and moved out.

Smaller panels and other florals are appliqued in borders with chintz strip borders common. Pieced patchwork is not common.

Another large group of panel bedcovers was made in Baltimore, many of them attributed in the 1940s  by William Dunton to the workshop of Achsah Goodwin Wilkins. 

Again there is a standardized format to these appliqued quilts. 

Atlanta History Center

Philoclea Edgeworth Eve lived in Augusta, Georgia, quite

close to South Carolina. 

Other quilts are reliably attributed to cities and rural areas north and south and many are of unknown origins. 

Indianapolis Museum of Art. Nothing known about its origins.

While most Southern quilts tend to follow distinctive styles; some of those found north or west of Maryland look as if the seamstress was following her own muse. 

Seen in the Massachusetts project, dated 1830, attributed to Mary Green,

Vermont. British or New-England-style???

American Style Change

We have enough visual images to see a definite style change in American quilts about 1840.

As we've noted, date-inscribed British quilts range from 1810 to 1836 while

American quilts lag about 20 years behind, ranging from 1828 to 1855.

British frame quilt style, generally uncut panels framed by piecework, was fashionable for about 25 years. American style lasted about the same span but saw a style change that revitalized patchwork fashion. Of the ten American quilts dated before 1840 all are medallion format, based on a central focus. After 1840 only 1 of 7 is true medallion-format. The rest are block-style albums. Americans continued to cut up panels for patchwork but the images were secondary to the block-style look.

Eliza S. Howell's 1848-1849 quilt. 

Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Eliza inked a self-portrait in the center using trimmed pieces of the morning glory wreath (Panel #3). The central focus lingers but one wouldn't classify this as a medallion. 

These findings reinforce the view that American quilts underwent an important style change in 1840 as block format quilts became dominant, a change that helps us date unknown quilts using style.

Fabric Sources

Edgefield Advertiser

"Furniture Prints" advertised in 1853 in South Carolina

"Some Striped for bordering Quilts."

Information about how quiltmakers purchased panel fabric has been difficult to find. Searching for ads with the words panel, Sheraton or similar ideas, has been futile. Panels must have been sold in America's retail dry goods shops, described as furniture prints or furniture chintz, terms often seen in newspaper advertising such as the above. But patterns of use (why so much of the fruit basket panel in the U.S.?) make us wonder if  goods were typically wholesaled rather than retailed.

1842 "Cheap Store:" Direct from New York and Philadelphia:

"furniture, Chintz' [,] copperplate patterns"

A ship owner or wholesaler might buy a quantity in England and deliver to ports like Charleston and Baltimore where customers could negotiate for a lot, a quantity of chintz.

"Sheraton-style" chairs were  upholstered in these "Sheraton panels"

Upholsterers and seamstresses would be smart to buy in quantity, fabric they might use themselves or retail to customers, a system that would explain why a few of the English panels are seen so often in  bedcovers in one city like Baltimore.

The fruit basket panel has been found in 59 quilts,

more than any other.

We would hope to find some business or personal correspondence mentioning the panels, but until we do, we must base ideas on visual evidence and the meager published information.

Sets or Companion Prints

In the 1940s William Dunton noticed that some fruit basket panels

were bordered with "fruit borders," a separate but related stripe.

The color border above is from Merikay’s 1833 quilt with Panel 2 at the Center.

In her 2018 AQSG paper Ronda Harrell McAllen cited an 1819 ad offering "a few sets of very elegant printed moreens, chintz patterns, a new article...sold in sets to private families." As we have viewed more bedcovers we suspect more "sets" or "suites" were printed as companion fabrics and sold together. 

In the Winterthur Museum's latest catalog Printed Textiles Linda Eaton quotes furniture designer and taste maker Thomas Sheraton who showed this picture of a chair. "The covering of the seat is of printed chintz which may now be had on purpose for chair seats, together with borders to suit them." Sheraton, who published several books on furniture, died in 1806, before the panels in question seem to have been printed but his decorating ideas endured.

Smaller panels used in several quilts with larger panels similar in style may have been printed by the same English mill at the same time and perhaps sold together (marketed to upholsterers?) as part of a suite of prints.

From a South Carolina estate, Collection of Glorian Sipman

Large trimmed panel #2 in the center circled by smaller ovals

in similar style.

British quilt in the collection of the International Quilt Museum

with a cornucopia panel in the center and a cornucopia stripe as border--- a set?

Next Conclusions #3: The quiltmakers

See Ronda's paper on the Baltimore quilts here:
Uncoverings 2018, "The Chintz Gardens of Achsah Goodwin Wilkins, a Baltimore Quilter," Ronda Harrell McAllen