Saturday, November 17, 2018

Butterfly and Bowl Panel #32

Panel #32 is a bouquet topped with a parrot tulip in a low vase, a bowl or dish,
framed in an oval floral border.
This red, brown and blue colorway seems to be the only version printed.

Panel #32
In the corners: four identical butterflies.

Technically, moths. 
(We call them butterflies---No complaints, you entomologists.)

The panel is seen in Southern quilts. The Charleston Museum in South Carolina has examples.

This small piece, 37" square, has the panel trimmed of the butterflies
then spaced at a distance.

Hannah Noland Henderson's quilt top has several popular chintzes with panels 
3, 6 and 5 (corners) framed by a stripe of  large tropical birds
.
The bowl of flowers panel is in the corners of the outer appliqued border and
six butterflies are in the first ring around the central Trophy of Arms.

The Charleston Museum's collection includes a set of album blocks.
This wreath of zinnias includes the butterfly in the center. The inking:
"1855 M B Crow"

UPDATE:
You will note in the comments that Glorian Sippman
sent photos of a block-style chintz album from her
collection with Panel #32 in one of the blocks.


From Glorian: "Based on my genealogy research, this quilt is from the Seyle/Burges families of Charleston. Margaret Seyle Burges is named on the quilt, and there are two other quilts in the Charleston Museum that may have been made by her."
Thank you! Glorian.



Colonial Williamsburg has 25 album blocks attributed to Beech Island, South Carolina, dated 1848-1850. This one includes the butterfly in a collage of chintzes focused on Panel #35, the Chinese garden. See a post here:
https://chintzpanelquilt.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-chinese-garden-panel-35.html

The butterfly is not the only scrap we find. That scalloped frame was too good to toss out.



Block signed H (or M) G Oakes
Someone's used it to highlight a bouquet of roses in this block
from the Charleston Museum's collection.

This quilt, now in the Poos Collection, attributed to Lavinia Eason, uses a half frame, cut from 8 panels for a scalloped border.  It was sold at Charlton Hall Auction in Columbia, South Carolina.
The butterflies are not the same as those in the panel #32. The oval wreaths are panel #7.



Another Update. Lynn Evans Miller just bought a chintz album with the bowl and the frame in different blocks. (July, 2019)

Don't see the butterflies though.

It seems apparent that Panel #32 was widely available in South Carolina
 but we have two examples from Great Britain (both very poor photos.)

One is shown in this detail of a quilt in Jane Lury's inventory.
The second is below.

The panel is used in a different, very British manner, framed by pieced borders rather than by the cut-out chintz borders typical of the Carolinas. 

What Have We Learned from Panel #32?

The International Quilt Study Center & Museum has a quilt
in their Dillow collection of 36 cut panels alternating with
plain white blocks.


IQSCM #2007.040.0001
IQSCM has a second quilt with the panel.The medallion includes three panels. The large center oval
is #2 with #32 and #36 in a border.

Yardage is cut in strips for the side borders.

The top and bottom borders are Panel #35, the Chinese Garden also cut as strips.

An English piece from Rosemary Blackett-Ord's Helbeck Collection
includes the same two panels, apparently also cut as strips.

The panels are the same size and printed in the same repeat with white intervals of the same size.

Two strips digitized together

If we were going to reproduce this panel we'd print it in stripes adjacent to the Chinese Garden  It's tempting to think this may have been the way the fabric was originally printed in the early 19th century, but doubtful. Their fabric was narrower than ours. 

It does seem obvious, however, that these panels were printed as companion fabrics, obtainable from the same place at the same time.

We shall explore the idea of companion fabrics as we look at other panels.

You may be lucky enough to have one of these repro panels
from Reproduction Fabrics, but they are now out of print.

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Panels #23 & #28: Baskets of English Flowers

This post is about two similar floral baskets found only in English quilts.
They may have been printed by different mills, one copying the other's designs.

Reproduction of Panel #28 from Makower
This one has a pair of birds in the basket

Center of a quilt in the Bowes Museum, Panel #28
Both feature a wicker basket with a bouquet framed in a floral wreath. 

The framing wreath is not so formal as those we see in many panels...
More like a country garden than a formal garden.

We have three British bedcovers with Panel #28 in our files and two with #23, both linked  to famous quiltmakers. The first with #28 is from the Bowes Museum.

Quilt by Elizabeth Norman, Lowick, Northumberland, England.
Estimated date 1820-1829, outer border perhaps added about 1850.
Bowes Museum

This shot of the center shows 12 repeats of panel #30 framing this larger panel.
See a post on #30, another distinctly British design, here:

This piece is a finished quilt, quilted mainly in scallops.
Elizabeth Norman was fond of stripes.

The second quilt is a photograph found floating about on line.
Anybody recognize it? It's titled English Museum.

The third bedcover, unquilted, is the famous Austen family coverlet in the Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton.


The women of the house cut the basket
tightly to fit inside their diamond patchwork.


Chawton Cottage where Jane Austen,
her sister and her mother resided after 1809 with a few other women:
servants and friend Martha Lloyd.


Makower UK printed a reproduction of this panel, calling it the Austen Panel a few years ago.

Cynthia Collier used one for the center of her medallion.

Rosalee Clark did a mini from her Austen pattern.

Attributed to Joe Hedley
Collection of the Beamish Museum in Durham

Our second panel #23 is in the center of two bedcovers attributed to Joe Hedley (Joe the Quilter) (1749?-1826)

Detail of the panel in the Beamish Museum quilt
showing the ribbon-entwined wreath with wheat in the corners.


In her 1954 book Traditional Quilting - Its Story And Its Practice, Mavis Fitzrandolph showed a patchwork quilt from a private collection also attributed to Hedley with the same panel.

"This quilt was done by Old Joe, the quilter
 in 1824. who was Murdered Jan 5, 1826"
inked on the reverse of the Bowes Museum's quilt

Hedley was a professional quiltmaker. The Bowes Museum also has a white work quilt attributed to him with the Herdman family story that it "was ordered and bought direct from Joe the Quilter in 1820 by the English family and was passed down to James Herdman of Wall village."

https://thebowesmuseum.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/joe-the-quilter/

What can we learn from Panel #28? 

"My dear Cassandra, have you remembered to collect pieces for the Patchwork? --
 We are now at a standstill."

In 1811 Jane Austen reminded her sister they were working on a bedcover at Chawton Cottage. The date of the piece is somewhat of a mystery.

Detail where the center field of patchwork
meets the framing border. The central diamonds
look as if they could have been collected about 1811.

Jane died in 1817, so we wonder how much of the finished bedcover she saw. The inside field of patchwork looks earlier than the outside border---a ten year + gap?--- based on print styles. Did Jane help with the larger diamonds in the central field while the outer border was finished after her death?

Brighter colors, roller prints (?) as well
as wood block calicoes in the border.
The museum has estimated 2,500 smaller diamonds in this 11" border.


New combinations of color that appeared in the teens?


We only have photos to examine and it's hard to tell what the true colors are but the overall style change in the two sections is apparent.


As we move the date on the panels from the accepted "ca. 1810" date to more like teens and 1820s we wonder if Jane ever saw that center panel. Was the Chawton bedcover finished in the late 1820s? Jane's mother lived until 1827 and her sister and Martha died in the early 1840s. 

And Joe Hedley's two panel quilts probably date from the 1820s too. He lived until 1826.

https://www.jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk/39-patchwork-coverlet
https://www.jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk/quilt-blog
http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2012/04/austen-quilt.html