ChintzPanelQuilt: June 2018

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Bird's Nest: Panel #30:

Quilt by Elizabeth Norman of Lowick, Northumberland, England.

~~First quarter 19th century.~~
They date this now as 1820-1829, outer border perhaps added about 1850.

Collection of the Bowes Museum

http://bowes.adlibhosting.com/Details/collect/214

The panel at the center of this frame quilt is famous as the same one that the Austen family used for their quilt about the same time (#28), but this post is about the smaller panel, #30.

The oval panel features a nest in a fanciful rose tree. A colorful bird feeds a worm to nestlings, a scene framed with a ring of lozenge shapes and corner bouquets. The borders on the Bowes Museum quilt were probably cut from yardage showing how the panels were printed as repeat images with a small white space between each oval.

The Quilters' Guild of Britain has an uncut panel in the collection.

Maciver Percival published a panel in The Chintz Book in 1923 with the caption: "Rectangular Panel, Indian Colouring."

"Two most interesting panels of a kind which were very popular in the Sheraton period, being used for applying to plain material for bed furniture and for ornamenting chairs and other seats...The delightful rectangular panel is in the rich indigo and madder colours copied from Indian cottons..."

We see it as an oval panel. Percival dates it to about 1812 and we'd guess a little later. The Sheraton period, when furniture designed by Thomas Sheraton was fashionable, is loosely described as 1785-1820 or more narrowly 1790-1810.

The Sidmouth Quilt with the bird panel in the center.

Collection of the Quilters' Guild of Britain

http://www.quiltmuseum.org.uk/collections/heritage/sidmouth-quilt.html

Like the George III Jubilee panel Percival pairs with it, the Bird's Nest panel seems to have been used only by quiltmakers in the British Isles. We've yet to find a quilt we think was made in America.

The field of patchwork and frames surrounding the panel are

more typically seen in British panel quilts than in American.

Unknown source

Four of the smaller Panel #30 framing Panel #36 in a combination

strippy/frame quilt.

Again the field of patchwork (and particularly the Austen-like diamonds)

mark this quilt as British. The larger panel in the center is #36.

Mary Lloyd of Cardigan, Wales

Collection of the National Museum of Wales, about 1840

Mary Lloyd framed her center panel with cutout chintz

and a field of squares.

https://museum.wales/articles/2009-04-17/The-Quilt-Collection/

The quilt is stained in the center but the panel background

looks to have been white.

We saw this checkerboard medallion on eBay, and we are guessing it's British due to the style.

Notice the panel has a tan ground.

Decades ago the little quilt magazine Nimble Needle Treasures

published a photo of a tied comforter found in the Hollenberg Pony Express Station

in Marysville, Kansas. It certainly looks English

to us despite its home in an 1870s Kansas building.

Nancy Hornback sent Merikay photos.

Reporter Letha Rice recorded the story she heard. The quilt was donated by Letha's cousin Lydia Flin Warren of Home, Kansas (Marshall County--near Marysville) who inherited the quilt from their grandfather William Clark Huxtable, born in Devonshire, England. He decided to immigrate to Australia, so the family story goes, but after his ship was disabled he was rescued by a ship bound for America.

The quilt is quite colorful with several blue ground

and madder red chintzes.

The last pieced border is very English, chintz squares.

Years after he wound up in Kansas his sisters in England sent him this quilt top made by his mother.

William & wife are buried in Marshall County, Kansas.

A little detective work indicates he lived in Genessee, New York

where he married Maria. His mother who made the quilt may have been Elizabeth

Clark. No father is listed on his birth certificate.

Letha described the quilt top: "Made as many English pieced quilts were, with a center panel framed by pieced strips, row on row with more 'picture patterns' cut from the chintz and placed as corner blocks."

Those "picture patterns" look to be panels (Panel #37.)

What Can We Learn From Panel #30?

By looking at the quilts made from the panels we can speculate that the Bird's Nest panel was printed in England and not exported to the U.S. market. We have no date-inscribed examples but guess the quilts to date from the 1820s and '30s.

Americans have their chance to buy this panel today. The Quilters' Guild shop offers a more rounded version than the original.

https://www.quiltersguildshop.org.uk/products/vintage-chintz-fabric-panel

Susan Briscoe used their panel to create a reproduction of the Sidmouth Quilt in 2016.

Gothic Ruin: Panel #7

Panel repeated in a finished textile.

Collection of the Winterthur Museum #1979-0058-009

22-1/3" x 24-3/4"

Panel #7 Gothic Ruin in Floral Wreath

The cataloging record on this group of four panels stitched together

describes it as an English woodblock print 1790-1810.

Is that printing date too early?

Winterthur's repeat of four images, which they think might have been a pillow sham or handkerchief cover, is remarkably like the center of a quilt in the collection of the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles. Do note that the Winterthur example has less vegetation behind the architecture so it looks lighter in the center.

The British quilt is signed in red cross stitch in the center

"J.H. Thorne September 3rd 1824."

The Thorne quilt panel is described as "wreath of flowers surrounding a pictoral design of Gothic ruins and trees." Merikay has looked at the Thorne quilt closely and noted the four panels are one piece of fabric.

Four of the Gothic Ruin panel in the corners framing the Fruit panel (#5).

From Jane Lury's collection.

Jane showed hers in Nantes, France last year.

The small panel's center looks tan so it may be the same busier variation as in the

Thorne quilt. The quilt looks more like a British frame quilt than an American piece.

The wreath and ruin panel is probably an English fabric exported to the United States, where it was popular. The Charleston Museum has at least three chintz quilts using a trimmed wreath in a secondary border pattern.

Charleston Museum #HT 586

Detail of HT 586.

The ruin is easy to spot even in a small photo

because a road runs through the structures

dividing the image into two parts.

Charleston Museum #HT 740

Two basket quilts framed by floral wreaths.

The quilt above has the same fabric in the inner border seen in the whiter quilt above. Panel 7 is in the corners

Charleston Museum #HT 742

This quilt has an outer border stripe of the same fabric found in the inner

border in the quilt below.

Charleston as one of the largest seaports in North America is also home to a distinctive airy chintz applique style that thrived between 1820 and 1850. Fabrics were imported but the applique style seems American.

Two quilts from nearby Columbia, South Carolina also include the panel as a secondary design in north/south positions in the border.

Quilt now in the Poos Collection, attributed to Lavinia Eason

Both these quilts offered by Charlton Hall Auction were from the estate of Jennie Clarkson Dreher Hazlehurst (1916-2006) of Columbia. Jennie was descended from two old Columbia families, the Tabers and the Clarksons. She may have inherited the quilts.

UPDATE: Below a quilt with a dozen of Panel #7 around Panel #2

Attributed to Catherine May Crist,

Collection Atlanta History Center

. Brought from Timberland in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to Montgomery,

Alabama by a great-grandson.

The North Carolina Quilts book showed two chintz appliques by

Sarah Alexander Harris Gilmer (1806-1832) of Cabarrus County.

Her panel quilt uses 4 wreaths to frame the fruit panel (#5)

often seen in American quilts.

One of two quilts by Margaret Salena Perkins Laxton (1808-1883)

of Burke County, North Carolina

in the MESDA collection

All the Carolina quilts use the wreath as an oval with the corner florals trimmed off.

Online auction

Carolinians were not the only American seamstresses with access to the fabric.

This Baltimore bedcover was pictured in William Rush Dunton's

1946 book Old Quilts.

The four panels are on their sides around the central Fruit Panel.

Collection: Pink Palace Museum, Memphis

57" x 53"

This is a small quilt

The quilt was attributed to Grandmother Tickle, Shelby County, Tennessee by donor Estelle Robertson in 1956. The design seems to owe something to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia in its use of a field of triangle patchwork around a square on point.

The Minnesota project recorded a tattered quilt with a panel in each of the top border corners, attributed by the family to Joanna Murphy Johnson of Maine.

Attributed to England, 108" square

Sold at Skinner's Auctions a few years ago.

This quilt includes several panels of various sizes.

Two of panel #7, one in the top border, one in the bottom.

https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2640B/lots/495

From the Quilt Index and the Kentucky project, made in Georgia

From eBay a few years ago.

A real beauty.

Panel 7 in the corners, Panel 2 in the center (about which more later.)

Similar construction in one dated 1833 with the initials E.H.R.

from Merikay Waldvogel's collection

Quilt dated March 12, 1839, attributed to Harriet Elizabeth Black.

Collection of the Museum at Texas Tech University.

She used two small panels and the larger fruit panel.

Album quilt for Eleanor Joseph Solomons,

South Carolina, 1851-1854

Collection of Judith Shanks

Someone who contributed a block used the rose wreath with

the central ruin cut out. See top row center. This is the latest dated example so far.

UPDATE: Kay reminded us:

Mellichamp Quilt, Kansas Museum of History

Again, just the frame in a Charleston album with a Civil War story:

https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/civil-war-quilt/15368

And we are getting so good at spotting parts Merikay noticed

this in the appliqued border of a top in South Carolina's Historic Columbia,

although we don't have a good all over shot.

What Can We Learn from Panel #7?

(1) The figures of the architectural ruin and the wreath seem the same in all the panels, but the prints found in U.S. quilts have less vegetation with a lighter appearance. Does this indicate that the busier version was printed for the English market and the emptier just for export? Questions: Different mills? Different time periods? Different tastes?

(2) We have four date-inscribed quilts with this panel, an 1824 quilt from England and three American pieces dated 1833, 1839 and in the 1850s. We have many theories about sources and dates for the panels. One of Barbara's is that they were printed in the teens, available and used immediately in England, but not available and used in the U.S. until the 1820s. Is a data set of four quilts enough to base a theory on?

(3) The panels were probably printed after 1810 when the panel fashion began. 1790-1810 is too early. The more we study these multicolor panels the more we think "Printed after 1810."