A Chinese Garden: Panel #35

Panel #35 is one of two in our database with Asian figures on a theme of Chinoiserie, the French name for the decorating craze interpreting Asian arts for the European market. The fashion for Chinese imagery in furniture like Chinese Chippendale coincides with the fashion for panels in the early 19th century and it's likely the panel above was printed in England in the teens or early 1820s, as were most of the panels we've studied.

Panel #29 also features a garden with a pair in Chinese robes.

#35 is more formal with a dark octagonal border

pinned with oval lozenges.

We have five American quilts with this panel and one  two English.

Quilt of many pieces from Patricia Smith's collection

The family story handed down with this quilt is that Captain William H. Torrey from Foxborough, Massachusetts of the 55th Massachusetts Colored Army carried this confiscated quilt north during the Civil War. See a post on the quilt here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/08/stolen-quilts-south-carolina-to.html

A trimmed version of the garden scene is framed by dogtooth triangles

and then border after border of squares.

Attributed to a member of the Alexander family of
Charlotte, North Carolina, Collection of the Hezekiah Alexander House, #78.107

Here it plays a supporting role to the larger butterfly panel #19. See a post on that panel here:

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

International Quilt Study Center & Museum #2007.040.001

Little is known about this piece but we can make some guesses.

Southern, 1830-1850.

https://www.quiltstudy.org/quilt/20070400001

Again, the panel frames a larger piece (#2) used as yardage for a border

combined with yardage of Panel # 32.

One gets the feeling that Chinese Chippendale furniture and imagery was rather passe by the time quiltmakers here were using this fabric. It seems to be filler rather than focus.

Crib size top. Collection of Polly Mello.

The maker cut three panels in half to make borders.

The fifth quilt is English from Rosemary Blackett-Ord's

Helbeck Collection.

Although our snapshot is indistinct we can see it as a basic construction alternating strips of Panel 35 with strips of Panel 32 framed by chintz florals. The panels seem to be of the same size and same repeat proportion. 

Number 32 is unusual in that it has butterflies in the corners (more about #32 later). We see the same butterfly in the block below.

Broderie Perse block signed

 Ann Helen(a?) Bender? Clarke, B Island

1849

The sixth quilt is an unfinished album, a collection of 25 blocks at Colonial Williamsburg, donated  in 2002 by the family who believe it to have been intended for Mary B. Clarke of Beech Island, South Carolina before her wedding to David H. Porter in 1855. The blocks are dated 1848, 1849 & 1850.

This seamstress trimmed the frame from Panel #35 and added more flowers and the buttefly over the seam lines. This is the only colorway we have seen of the fabric.

Colonial Williamsburg's catalog describes the "flower garden scene. A Chinese man with a pole is harvesting a pod from a branch. A female figure is seated nearby; there is a basket at her feet. In the center is an urn and perched on top is a parrot that appears to be tethered by the female. Fluttering overhead is a butterfly. The flowers are roses, lotus blossoms and leaves. The colors are reds, greens, blues, whites and browns."

Ann Helena Bender Clarke who signed the block was Mary Clarke Porter's mother, married to Samuel Clarke of Beech Island, which is in Aiken County on the Savannah River near Georgia. Ann died in 1850 at the age of 50, according to her tombstone. Reason enough to leave an album unfinished?

See her grave site:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33286264/ann-helena-clarke

And her block:

http://emuseum.history.org/view/objects/asitem/search@/14/title-asc?t:state:flow=29c72e9f-9980-4bd5-ba27-4a564669266e

UPDATE: Christopher Wilson Tate showed an English frame quilt at the 2018 Houston Quilt Market.

Teri & Kara at the Through the Needle's Eye blog took a good photo.

That makes two British examples.

Reproduction Fabrics did a copy of panel #35 a few years ago

but it's out of print now.

https://www.reproductionfabrics.com/lines.php?subcat=1020

What Can We Learn From Panel #35?

I've outlined the structure of the large quilt at IQSCM.

International Quilt Study Center & Museum #2007.040.001

111" x 107"

The design is nicely proportioned and rather simple: making a good quilt to copy. You'd start with an appliqued center square (Broderie Perse style) composed of a large a central panel, four palm trees, four small birds and two butterflies. How long could that take?

The photo at IQSCM is so good I can see the seam lines around the applique, which

indicate the center panel was cut as an oval and the smaller pieces trimmed pretty closely.

Then four chintz borders of panels and stripes. Of course, obtaining panels and large-scale stripes is the hard part. Certainly, piecing would be easy and take no time at all. Then you could have the top quilted in an allover design of scallops. You'd have a spectacular bedcover with little investment of labor.

On the other hand, I am not going to recommend you copy this quilt from Patricia Smith's collection.

And I am not going to count the pieces. You would really have to love handpiecing (probably piecing over paper) to make this quilt, a long-time project of small squares organized in shaded bands with a chintz stripe border framing a center panel. It looks to be the dedicated work of a seamstress with a lot of scraps---cabbage, maybe, small pieces left over from a dressmaking or clothing business?

We have two very different quilt styles here---the pieced squares a labor of love; the Broderie Perse, perhaps, a labor for money. Looking at many panel quilts we are struck by how simple they are: Borders of chintz strips framing showy centers quilted in an allover design. Below a few very basic constructions.

Collection of the Charleston Museum, Unknown maker. Panel #2.

http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:89322

 All you needed was a good supply of chintz (panel or not), some skillful seamstresses, one woman with a good design sense and a customer base. We bet there was someone in Charleston or Columbia, South Carolina who had all that. Finding such similar quilts in so many antebellum aristocratic families indicates these were luxury goods, not made by plantation owners but purchased in the cities like their silver and porcelain.

Quilt from Woodard & Greenstein's inventory.

Broderie Perse/chintz borders.

Unknown maker, unknown place.

From an eBay auction.

Bluejays and cactus borders

Found in Pennsylvania.

Panel #3 Trophy of Arms

Panel #3 in full-chintz, wood-block coloring 

with golden-yellow shield on a white ground.

This round panel seems to have been used exclusively by American quiltmakers.

The panel, which has been trimmed of its corners in the quilt top above, depicts a set of bow and arrows in a quiver, a shield with a sunburst, a torch and a horn among flowers with a wreath of a climbing floral---some kind of morning glory?

Donna Stickovich's panel quilt is a classic chintz applique in

the style so popular in the U.S. between 1825 and 1850.

The featured panel is a demi-chintz of red, blue and green with a red shield.

The Winterthur Museum's piece seems to be the full chintz with added tan background ground, a tea ground, so we know of three colorways. This fabric, about 20", has not been trimmed and shows the corner florals that fill out the square. When Curator Florence Montgomery cataloged the panel in the 1970s she dated it to about 1815 and described it as a Trophy of Arms.

 Linda Eaton's recent Printed Textiles, updating their catalog, included the piece in the chapter on "Borders & Design Printed to Shape" (Page 249) as "Block-printed design probably intended for use in the center of a patchwork quilt. Printed in Britain: about 1820."

Collection of Patricia Smith.

The central focus is an uncut panel #3 on point.

The same colorway as Donna's.

We are dating the chintz applique quilts to 1825-1840 by style.

A second medallion with palm trees and game birds framing panel #3.

This one from Cora Ginsburg's inventory several years ago.

We have as of today 21 examples featuring panel #3, none attributed to anywhere but the  United States. In this post we examine this large group of quilts, looking for clues to origins, makers, design sources and hoping to set a few common assumptions askew. 

We begin with cut-out chintz spreads and quilts.

Newark Museum Collection, attributed to New Jersey

Panel #3 in the center with #7 on the sides and #6 at top and bottom along with numerous chintz applique blocks.

Detail of the corner of Panel#3 with a nice view of the quilting

from Barbara Schaffer's blog.

https://gallery.newarkmuseum.org/view/objects/asitem/8/1387/title-asc;jsessionid=A88A75374D86FDFA21BA7EC087A53905?t:state:flow=688f2374-563a-4606-9ec4-a6ee3b245a4d

Delia Hayes Claiborne (1794-1838), Richmond, Virginia

Collection of the Valentine Museum

Teddy Pruett shared a photo of this one with stuffed work quilting

and the maker's maiden name "Sarah M Johnson" quilted in the center.

Sarah Mason Johnson (1810-1896) was born in South Carolina; married in 1836 to John S. Lee in Columbia, South Carolina and died in Georgia.

Chintz medallion in the collection of 

Mississippi's Old Capital Museum. 

Photo: Courtesy of Collection of the Museum Division,

Mississippi Department of Archives and History

Information from a label on the reverse: Made for the birth of Georgia Butt, born in Columbus, Georgia in 1834, quilted by enslaved seamstresses.

Georgia's mother Priscilla Banks Butt named her daughters after Southern states.

See more about her in the comments by Curator Mary Lohrenz.

Her quilt is on display now in Jackson, Mississippi in the permanent exhibits of the Museum of Mississippi History. Also up is a temporary exhibit Stories Unfolded: An Exhibit of Mississippi Quilts at the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

Collection of the Charleston Museum,attributed to 

Mary Withers Read (1790-1817)  first wife

of John Harleston Read of  Georgetown, South Carolina.

The quilt has a central panel of #3 uncut with the larger panel #2

in the corners.

It's attributed to Mary due to the presumed date, thought perhaps to have been made before her death in 1817. But the quilt probably dates from the 1820s or later based on what we have seen of similar quilts so it may have been made by or for Read's second wife Emily Ann Huger Read (1804-1834).

http://www.charlestonmuseum.org/research/collection/chintz-appliqu-quilt/7B339E49-0C6C-4F84-B698-567495756700

The Read quilt is remarkably like one in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, attributed by the family to Mary Brewton Motte Alston (1769-1838) who lived near the Reads in their winter home in Georgetown and their summer house in Charleston.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556379

Mary Motte Alston, miniature painting in the collection of the 

Gibbes Museum of Art. She is of the right generation to have

made or purchased the quilt. 

The Alston quilt has panel #3 cut in half

to frame the central panel which is uncut and placed on point. 

There is a border vine of chintz applique.

When the pair is laid one atop the other proportions and size are quite similar.

Read more about the Alston family and their quilt at this post:

http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2012/04/8-theodosia-burr-alston-carolina-coast.htm

Center of a quilt attributed to Catherine Crenshaw Holman

The maker trimmed the square's four corners and used them in another area, a typical approach to making the most of the fabric. The oval of triangular shapes is also probably cut from panel corners.

Smaller panels (#6) fill corners inside the

floral swag border. Abundant white space gives an airy look.

Catherine Crenshaw Holman (1804-1889) lived in Newberry, North South Carolina where the family believes this quilt was made. She died in Louisburg, Mississippi. Documented by the Mississippi project, it appears in their book Mississippi Quilts.

The Charleston Museum owns a similar, smaller quilt with an airy look.

They have no information about the maker. She

incorporated a circular ring from panel #2

and the long-necked red and blue birds from panel (#11) in the corners.

Smaller birds perch in both quilts, in fact the same birds.

The tan birds in the black outlines are from the Charleston Museum's;

laid atop the Holman family quilt.

Hannah Noland Henderson's quilt. Charleston Museum #2013.6

The Charleston Museum's rich collection of chintz bedcoverings includes another medallion applique with panel #3 in the center---plus four other panels in whole or parts arranged around it. Hannah (died 1890) is buried in Newberry County, South Carolina.

Close looking reveals that those small appliqued lozenge shapes among the butterflies in

the center are cut from the same stripe in the Alston quilt which is on the

bottom in this photo.

Cindy Vermillion Hamilton's collection.

Photo courtesy of Julie Silber.

This block quilt seems to have the same lozenge fabric in a different colorway as the sashing strips.

We discussed the smaller panels (#10) at a recent post:

https://chintzpanelquilt.blogspot.com/2018/08/rare-floral-spray-panel-10.html

The center block

Sophia Watson Boatwright, Saluda County, South Carolina

Collection of MESDA Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts

http://mesda.org/item/collections/quilt/21457/

Sophia Watson Boatwright's quilt uses the Trophy of Arms panel in a supporting role, framing Panel #13. See our post on the butterfly panel here:

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

Collection of the Greensboro Historical Society

Photo from Ellen Eanes

The photo doesn't give us much detail but we can see two very

popular chintzes, one a basket cut from a pillar print

and the other a stripe with kidney bean shapes lining up alongside a chain.

Collection of Katherine Ratcliffe and Eleanor Bennett

This one from the Holmes family of  Rockbridge County, Virginia uses the panel's corner triangles in the same fashion as the Holman quilt with a repeat of a large floral motif in the wide border. It was

pictured in the Virginia project book Quilts of Virginia. The Turkey red dogtooth borders indicate the change of taste in the 1840s that soon replaced the fashion for chintzes.

Documented in the South Carolina project, pictured in their book Social Fabric.

Medallion style was also replaced by the fashion for block-style album quilts. This one made for James Hammond and dated 1846-1848 is one of the latest quilts we have with the panel. The red arrow points to a block with panel #3. Other blocks feature wreaths cut from panels.

Eliza S. Howell's 1848-1849 quilt in the collection of the 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Typical block-style sampler, probably from New Jersey. Eliza inked a self-portrait in the center using trimmed pieces of the morning glory wreath in Panel #3. Panels may have been out of fashion but flowers---never.

See a post on Eliza Howell's quilt here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/08/inked-extravaganza.html

Below two that combine chintz style with calico patchwork.

Collection of Merikay Waldvogel

A kind of Delectable Mountains medallion of red and green with

chintz focus and border.

Collection of the American/International Quilt Association.

Six panels frame a star.

Framed tea-ground panel sold at an online auction

The Winterthur Museum has this pretty little chair with

a painted Trophy of Arms on the back. 1800-1810, Baltimore.

The Trophy of Arms is a traditional heraldic image indicating triumph over a military enemy, but this one with its arrows and hunter's horn on the left is also called a hunt trophy or a hunt cornucopia (although the horn is not really a cornucopia.)

In 1750 William Hogarth depicted a riot of instruments of mayhem, 

including a bagpipe.

18th-century French furniture with an inlaid wooden trophy of arms

Fashionable empire look with trophy motifs on the walls

from George Smith's 1833 furniture guide.

"Sheraton wall paper" was fashionable again

in 1911: quiver of arrows below a floral basket.

The "Sarah M. Johnson" quilt

Additional symbolism might have been added with the sun on the shield reflecting young America's image of a Rising Sun.

Rising Sun in a Chippendale chair at Independence Hall

in Philadelphia

What Can We Learn From Panel #3?

The Trophy of Arms chintz is important in that it is a large panel found only in American quilts. We have numerous examples but not one quilt attributed to England, Australia, Ireland or any other part of the British empire. We can wonder whether the fabric was printed in the U.S. but the sophisticated multi-color woodblock is not typical of American workshops in the 1820s. With three colorways, one with an added blotch ground, the current thinking is that the chintz was printed in England exclusively for the export market.

Trophy of Arms with a Rising Sun shield, constructed of sandstone in 1796

The Fort Jay Eagle Sculpture on Governor's Island in the New York harbor is thought to be "One of the earliest, if not the earliest, American monumental stone fort decorations."

 The Trophy of Arms imagery often symbolized a country, e.g. the bagpipes in the Hogarth print standing for Scotland perhaps, so this image with its Rising Sun may refer to the U.S., being printed only for export to America, which is why we have no British quilts using the panel.

The popularity of the panel in South Carolina also makes us think that the fabric came through the port of Charleston and that professional quiltmakers there bought large stocks of it to make fashionable Broderie Perse, chintz applique compositions. The repetitive nature of the fabrics and style in the Carolina quilts makes us wish we knew more about where fashionable Carolinians obtained their bedding.

The closer we look at high-style panel quilts, particularly the cut-out chintz medallions, the more we doubt that they were made in individual households but rather were purchased from workshops by the wealthy.