Panel #5 Part 4: Style

Collector Electra Havemeyer Webb in the 1950s at her Shelburne Museum with two chintz quilts--- one of the Townsend/Pope albums from South Carolina on the left and a medallion with an impressive border on the right.

We've been posting about the many quilts made with Panel #5, the Fruit Basket Panel. We count over 50 in the U.S. and the U.K and Canada.

In the last post we contrasted two distinctive styles using the same fruit panel---chintz applique medallion on the left, British pieced frame quilt on the right. But many bedcovers do not fit neatly into that American/British dichotomy.

Dealer Laura Fisher had this quilt in her inventory years ago: 

Panel #5 in the center floating in a field of 

patchwork diamonds and hexagons, long hexagons.

From an online auction, sold out of Vermont

but made where? 

We might guess England, the hexagons, the field of patchwork framing the center.

Except one cannot just say Hexagons: Britain.

The hexagon quilt below is reliably said to have originated in 

South Carolina, according to the granddaughter who donated the quilt in 1942.

Collection of the Charleston Museum

Attributed to Catherine Barnwell Barnwell of Beaufort, SC (1809-1886)

See a post on this quilt.

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/06/catherine-barnwell-barnwells-civil-war.html

Initials A.E.W. crosstitched in the panel

Uncut panel in the center of pieced and appliqued frames in

the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Hexagons. 

This quilt, thought to be British, was given by American collector

Peggy Westerfield to honor Curator Peter Floud.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O136394/bed-cover-unknown/

Michigan State University Collection

Above: Another with complex borders around Panel #5, donated with

information that the family lived in Pearlington, Mississippi.

Collection of the DAR Museum, date inscribed 1852.

Descended in the Gillam family from Greenville, South Carolina.

Just the basics, one panel, a lot of chintz stripes cut to frame, in this late example.

The two below with sawtooth triangle borders are apparently American

Crib Quilt 40" Square

Found in York County, Pennsylvania.

Feathered Saw Tooth Star from the Triplett's Quilt & Textile Collections

Kay Triplett points out the use of the fruit panel's scalloped frame and corner scraps

to create cornucopias.

Detail of the scalloped frame

A few scallops under the basket plus a butterfly and a few leaves

added at the top. Clever use of small scraps.

What Have We Learned From Panel #5?

Collection of the Atlanta History Center

We've shown many of the bedcovers featuring the fruit basket panel.

• Panel #5 is the most commonly used panel.

• Quilts with reliable attributions come from both the coastal United States and Great Britain.

• We have many more pictures of bedcovers from the southern U.S. than the north, with two regional centers, Baltimore and the Carolinas.

Quilt from the MacMillan family

Collection of the North Carolina Museum of History

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4B-82-386

• Style includes formula settings indicating workshop production as well as unique formats indicating seamstresses working on their own designs.

• A stripe with fruit was likely printed as a companion fabric in a suite.

• We have three dated examples---all American: 1832, 1839 and 1852: a 20-year span indicating the general period 1825-1860, when these chintz quilts were being made.

Dated 1832, Rosannah McCullough, 

Possibly Lincoln County, North Carolina

North Carolina Museum of History Collection.

Curator Diana Bell-Kite recently sent us this photo. Thank you!

A good way to wrap up the ubiquitous fruit basket posts.

Panel #5 Part 3: Style Old World and New

Quilt from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts featuring Panel #5

the Fruit Basket design.

The caption indicates that little is known about this lovely spread. They estimate the date as about 1830 and the place of origin as middle Atlantic States.

https://www.mfa.org/collections/object/appliqu%C3%A9d-and-pieced-quilt-127415

Spreads with frames of chintz around panel #5 are quite common at that time and in that place.

Margaret Seyle Burgess 

Charleston Museum, a gift from her great-great granddaughter in 2010.

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

 gift of her granddaughter in 1928.

Charleston Museum

114" x 114" square

Attributed to the Boyle sisters, Petersburg, Virginia

Colonial Williamsburg

This gorgeous spread is from the family of

Anna Berwick Legare O'Hear  (1825-1905)

Charleston, South Carolina

Look at that serpentine stripe!

Her maiden name is inked on the reverse.

See more at Winterthur Museum's online catalog.

http://museumcollection.winterthur.org/

Do a search for Legare

(Pronounced LaGree)

From the Arizona project and the Quilt Index

Another beautiful example, this one photographed way out west with no information on the source. It's in Lenna DeMarco's collection.

We can guess it was made along the Atlantic coast from Baltimore south. Most museum curators, collectors and dealers feel pretty good about that location and a loose date of 1825-1850 with these chintz appliqued panel medallion bedcovers.

Photographed in Sumter County, South Carolina for Gladys

Marie Fry's book Stitched from the Soul, 1990.

The family story on this beauty said that the group of quilts were made by " 'sewing women'---slaves that were specially trained to do quilting."  We'd imagine many of these chintz spreads were quilted and finished by enslaved seamstresses.

The chain stripe cut from this popular print

Many of the American quilts featuring Panel #5 conform to a formula in the layout: Framed fruit basket in the center with borders of unpieced chintz (often a stripe) and appliqued chintz vignettes.

Which is why this piece with a similar look seems so out of place in London.

It was pictured in the 1991 book The American Quilt Story by Susan Jenkins and Linda Seward, in the inventory of the Antique Textile Company of London (in its early incarnation.) The caption tells us it is English but it looks so much like the quilts above that it's confusing.

British seamstresses did use the fruit panel, which was undoubtedly wood-block printed in England, but often in different fashion. Below two classic British quilts featuring panel #5.

Quilters' Guild Collection

In each of these pieced bedcovers the panel is featured in the center but a supporting cast of prints vies for our attention

Jane Lury's inventory, includes Panel #7 as well as #5.

The overall style is just as distinctive as the American chintz appliques. Supporting prints might be characterized as busy or textured with the look of Indiennes, inspired by classic Indian pattern. Patchwork is simple with a few wide frames in contrasting shades. 

Pattern of sorts for a British frame panel quilt based on Jane's quilt.

Ever larger nine-patches.

Bill Volckening's photo of a Baltimore spread. 

The background is a textured weave.

The most obvious differences between the British style and the American are (1) less emphasis on applique in Britain and (2) the white background in the U.S. Background fabric in the American bedcovers were sometimes a complex woven pattern rather than a plain-weave cotton.

Wooley & Wallis auctioneers in England

The four smaller panels are #15

Crib quilt 38" x 40" from an American online auction

There's not much to go on here but this quilt located in the U.S.

certainly has more in common with British quilts than with American.

We don't want to go too far in saying there is a definite British style and a definite American style

but....

From an old Quilt Engagement Calendar (Panel #36)

But some bedcovers look British...

Some American.

Collection of the Greensboro (North Carolina) Historical Society

(Panel #3) Photo from Ellen Eanes

Note the inner border stripe is the same chain print as in the Sumter County,

South Carolina quilt above.

We have set up a style dichotomy and, of course, there are exceptions

which we will address in the next post.