ChintzPanelQuilt: May 2019

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Panel #5 Part 2--Using Fabric Efficiently

Panel bedcover from the Wallace/Stevenson families

Richburg, Chester County, South Carolina.

National Museum of American History, Smithsonian.

"A type often found in the Carolinas."

The center of this medallion shows an efficient use of Panel #5

the fruit basket.

The maker cut up one panel, using the parts to compose her piece. She stitched the basket in the center, four corners in the corners and cut the scallop frame into four pieces to be rearranged.

She also had a dozen smaller panels (#17) and cut out the bouquets with lilies.

Panel #17

Same panel (the quilt photo may be flipped over)

The Wallace/Stevenson piece is an impressive bedcover designed by a clever seamstress without a lot of printed fabric or a lot of applique work. Here's a link:

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556253

Here's a variation on the same theme---panel parts used efficiently. In this one the scallops and panel corners frame the basket.

Four copies of Panel # 7 fill in the space.

Quilt attributed to Sarah Alexander Harris Gilmer (1806-1832)

Cabarrus County, North Carolina, pictured in

The North Carolina Quilts book

No wasted chintz, no leftovers from one panel.

North Carolina Museum of History, from the MacMillan family

One the other hand, this North Carolina quilt had several leftover pieces.

Included

5 Panel Centers

11 frames - 1 complete, 10 quartered

18 corners

Missing Parts
6 quartered frames
2 corners

Winterthur Museum has another variation on using the panel parts--- curved scallops from the frame are reversed, a more graceful composition. They have no information posted about this quilt but odds are good it is from a Carolina family.

The corners use the pieces of Panel #12 in the same way---

its frame cut away and then expanded to fill more space

Panel #12 and its frame

Commercial production of stitched or basted panels would explain the abundance of panel corners and frames we see in some of these Carolina quilts. The efficiency of these distinctive arrangements seems to point to the planning of an efficient businesswoman.

The Mint Museum has a quilt attributed to Rocinda Winslow Wilson,

shown in Ellen Eanes article on Mecklenberg Quilts in Uncoverings

Rocinda's quilt looks far more labor intensive. It would be hard to make a living selling this much handwork with all those pieced stars and pieced border. Perhaps some hobbyist bought the center and framed it with her own ideas.

Collection of the Charleston Museum

The bedcover attributed to Hannah Noland Henderson features Panel #3, the trophy of arms in the center. Smaller oval panels are #6 and #32. The larger triangular pieces are all corners from Panel #5, the fruit basket. The maker had 14 corners, the leftovers from 4 fruit baskets, which she did not use in this quilt. What did she do with the 4 central baskets?

Williams family, Charleston Museum of Art

Make another quilt and sell it to someone else?

Collection of the New England Quilt Museum.

This quilt features the Princess Charlotte panel framed in the scalloped wreath from panel #5---the only parts of #5 in this particular quilt, which is probably English.

Collection of the Atlanta History Center

The presence of so much "cabbage"---left over scraps---from various panels does imply that the makers had access to a good deal of surplus panel parts. It's the type of fabric use one might see in a workshop producing numerous related pieces rather than in one individual hobbyist's sewing basket.

In Baltimore as well as in the Carolinas.

The Lassotovitch family spread from Baltimore

Our looking at the quilts, particularly those made from Panel #5, has led us to believe that many were produced by commercial workshops.

Ad in the Baltimore Pilot, 1840

"Just finished, a large supply of Comfortables, an excellent article for the approaching winter...."

This stock of warm bedding would not be what we are talking about.

After years of reading advertisements, fair records, diaries and letters we have yet found no mention of such places, but the bedcovers provide the evidence.

Looking at the photos of the Baltimore panel medallions in Dunton's book brings up another question. What happened to all the fruit panel corners and frames in Baltimore?

Plenty of parts but no fruit frames or corners

The DAR Museum's bedcover from the Volckening family

Floating peaches and pineapples from the corners.

One of the few Baltimore uses of the corners.

They must have done something with the scalloped frames and

corners. You don't throw out good chintz.

More careful cutting with Panel #2

Margaret Selena Perkins (1808-1883)

MESDA Collection

Margaret's quilt has a unique solution to the cutting corners issue.

It's a fruit tree.

Collection of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum

Sometimes you get the idea the artist is just not as good at choosing, cutting and composing as other seamstresses.The parts are in the quilt above--- but there may be just too many. She should have left some in the cabbage basket.

See a post on the old-fashioned term cabbage for sewing scraps here:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-cabbage.html

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Panel #5 Basket of Fruit---Part 1

Panel #5 features a basket of fruit in a round ring of scallop shapes...

with leaves and berries. Four identical corners also feature fruit---

the pineapple, grapes and peaches predominating in the basket.

Colonial Williamsburg owns two bedcovers with the panel as well as two pieces of the fabric, one trimmed into a circle, perhaps meant to be featured in a bedspread.

This one has a flaw in the printing, a streak, perhaps

why it was never used.

The curators describe the panel as about 25 inches square, "block-printed in madder colors with the addition of yellow and pencilled blue on cotton ground with glazed finish."

We have photos in two colorways, at the top whole chintz with

green, yellow, orange and a slightly fading purple.

The lower a demi-chintz in red, brown and blue

The influences are obvious with lush fruit a symbol of abundance in decorative arts.

Sevres plate in Pompadour pink

And plump peaches perhaps a metaphor for sensuality.

Furber's fruit print for October, published in 1732

Furber's prints undoubtedly inspired British textile designers.

Chintz bedcover

Colonial Williamsburg #2009.609.1

This piece is 128 inches wide.

When William Rush Dunton collected information for his book Old Quilts in the 1930s and '40s he found that quilt in the collection of Mrs. Jacob Baer. He attributed a number of similar quilts to Achsah Goodwin Wilkins but it makes more sense to attribute them to her family and household servants rather than one individual

He pictured many similar quilts and seven with the fruit panel in the center.

A few years ago collector William Volckening found another that Dunton had not photographed.

The Volckenings have given the eighth spread to the DAR Museum.

These Baltimore medallions often include several examples of Panel #6, a smaller oval.

See our post on #6 here:

https://chintzpanelquilt.blogspot.com/2019/01/panel-6-basket-with-primrose-pair.html

Several spreads are bordered on three sides with stripes of a related print...

with the same fruit and a chain of scallop shapes.

The Goodwin/Wilkins family had access to a good deal of panel fabric. Achsah's husband William Wilkins was in the dry goods business, the possible source.

But Baltimore was not the only city with an abundance of fruit panel fabric.

Quilt attributed to Catherine Osborn Barnwell Barnwell (1809-1886)

Charleston Museum

The Charleston Museum owns four quilts featuring the fruit basket, all descending in the families of Charleston's pre-Civil-War elite families.

Margaret Eliza Darley Seyle Burges (1804-1877)

Charleston Museum

The ring around the basket is cut from the scallop shapes,

a detail we often see.

Attributed to Sarah Eliza Reynolds Croft (c. 1790-1859)

From the Walker family

Hannah Noland Henderson (About 1810-1890)

Pomaria, Newberry County, South Carolina

Charleston Museum

This quilt's focus is the Trophy of Arms Panel (#3) but

14 fruit panels are included in the border---the leftovers

from 4 fruit baskets.

We have numerous examples of quilts in which the corners from panel #5 are the decorative details.

A swag of fruit panel parts in a quilt from the Wallace & Stevenson

families of Richburg, South Carolina in Chester County up by North Carolina.

This is the most common panel seen in American quilts with more than 25 examples in our files featuirng the panel and a few in English collections.

British quilt from the collection of the British Quilters Guild.

And we have many other pictures with fragments of panel #5.

The fruit panel raises many questions:

Why was this particular panel so popular?

When and where was it printed?

When did it arrive in the U.S.?

We'll post again about the fruit panel.

What Have We Learned from Panel #5?

The Baltimore quilts attributed to the Wilkins/Goodwin families often pair the striped fruit border with the center round basket. We assume these were companion fabrics, printed by the same unknown British mill and offered for sale at the same time.

Dunton described it as "a beautiful arrangement of fruit, pineapples, peaches, grapes, strawberries, cherries, plums, persimmons and ears of wheat."

We've photos of three colorways of the stripe, the left one--- the basic design in madders with added blue. The center has added yellow and some more clumsy blue and the one on the right a rather graceful full chintz or whole chintz with green.