Small Floral Panels: #9 and #17

Panel #17

The last of the panels: Two small florals often seen scattered about a central, larger panel. 

Panel #17 is a circular bouquet with lilies, perhaps a Turk's Cap Lily

Lilium superbum....

also called a Tiger Lily.

The panel is smaller than most in the files.

It's the round corner image in this tree-of-life quilt from the collection of Old Sturbridge Village. The photo is from the Massachusetts Project and the Quilt Index. Little is known about this beautiful quilt; the mother of the donor bought it in Massachusetts in 1969.

Dealer Cindy Rennels sold this quilt a few years ago to Violet Vaughnes.

It looks more like an American pieced medallion with a cut-out chintz

or Broderie Perse center than a British frame quilt.

In the center four trimmed versions of Panel #17....

With triangular corners appliqued around each.

More corners than nosegays so they must have been

leftovers from another project.

Attributed to Mary Amelia or Eleanora Roche of Baltimore

Pictured in the book A Maryland Album.

Center panel is  #14 with the blue ribbon

Authors Gloria Seaman Allen and Nancy Gibson Tuckhorn noted the twelve block-printed medallions here "resemble motifs in an English cotton print produced at the Bannister Hall Printworks around 1826."

Quilt in similar style from the Charlotte (NC)

Museum of History with Panel #17 as the small circular images.

Could those be its corners floating like small birds through the composition?

Other panels in this quilt are #6 and #16

Another shot of that terrific border stripe

We love the term cabbage for the leftover pieces. 

1812 portrait of a tailor with a cabbage for a head.

Style in the quilts above seem to be a kind of cabbage salad. Below a completely different style in what looks to be more a British frame quilt than an American chintz applique.

Collection of Marjorie Childress

Four of panel #17 are in the corners framing the central panel #1

This is an odd piece. Techniques are unusual (appliqueing the panel where one would guess it was pieced). The quilt seems to have significant, fairly recent repairs.

Free-form spotty shapes are mid-20th-century patches that appear to be covering something else---probably a disintegrating fabric.

And although it's dated "Ann Price 1824" we are guessing that year is the date

of the woven textile that forms the base of the piece rather than when the chintzes were added---

appliqued atop an old bedcover.

But it's probably not much later than 1824.

Panel #9

Panel #9

Panel #9, an oval bouquet of roses and tulips with other florals is larger. Is that a ranunculus in the center?

.

Collector Lenna DeMarco has a pair of pillow covers with Panel #9 framed by a striped border, 

giving us a good view of the panel with its corners.

The only other full view (well, half a full view) of the panel is from

the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum

In the two quilts below Panel #9 accents the central round Panel #2 (at right) drawn in similar style. Was the smaller panel a companion pieces to the larger design?

From an auction at Skinner's

Many small panels

Collection of Andrea Frazier

Panel #9 alternates with one of similar scale inside the

swags in this basted example William Dunton showed

from Baltimore. The center panel is the fruit basket #5.

What have we learned from these small panels?

How cleverly seamstresses made use of every scrap and what a lot of scraps some of them had.

Illustration of a French sewing workshop about 1890

The cabbage on the floor

Next: Conclusions

Panel #4: Round Floral Bouquet

"S.C. Chester District

Sarah M. Wallace

1829"

Collection of the Atlanta History Center

The earliest date-inscribed American panel quilt is 1828 with Jane Allen Nesbitt's name on it. See a post here:
https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2019/05/atlanta-history-center-4-jane-allen.html

Sarah Wallace's, dated a year later, features Panel #4, a round floral with a central bouquet. A white, six-petaled flower catches your eye.

Sarah's quilt was sold at auction a few years ago.

Perhaps made by Sarah Knox Wallace (1803-1901)

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/46497871/sarah-wallace

Interestingly enough, Sarah Knox Wallace's mother was named Jane Nesbit who married Hugh Knox of the Chester District (Districts in S.C. are like counties) in 1790. This Jane or Janet Nesbit Knox was born in Ireland in the 1760s (d. 1843) and is probably not the Jane Nesbitt whose name is on the quilt. But considering Southern naming patterns there were probably several related Jane Nesbitts in the family.

A third quilt is from the Wallace/Stevenson families of Richburg, Chester District, South Carolina, in the collection of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian. Panel #5 is in the center.

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

But we digress. Back to Panel #4, which seems to have been printed in a second colorway.

Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Panel 4 in the center and #10 in the corners, all very tan.

They know little about its origins.

The Smithsonian has another quilt with Panel #4

Attributed to Annie Righton Smith, Gift of Patricia Smith Melton

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/appliqued-quilt-center-medallion-36874

We couldn't find any Annie Righton Smiths but the family may be that of Joseph and Elizabeth Fullerton Righton who had daughters Katherine Fullerton Righton Smith (1799-1843) and Ann Righton (1797-1857). 

The Rightons lived in this house in Charleston, the Righton House.

And interestingly enough Katherine married a man named William

Wallace Smith, born in Scotland in 1793.

The Wallace connection.

We don't know much about this one in a private collection

but it certainly looks like a Carolina quilt.

We've two more quilts with panel #4,  unlikely to

be related to any Wallaces in South Carolina.

This one is in Auckland, New Zealand in the Auckland War Museum where they have a typo in the date. It should read 1825-1850. It's attributed to Ireland.

https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/collections-research/collections/record/am_humanhistory-object-19159?class=Quilt%2C%20Bed&ordinal=8

And the last one: a very British looking with the frames of piecework giving a  textured look with small scale prints and the black panels that are most common in the U.K.

What Have We Learned from Panel #4?

When we began looking at Southern chintz quilts and panel quilts in particular we looked for family connections, figuring that women who were related might have worked together to make similar quilts with the same fabrics. 

1858 Portrait of a family

As we looked closer we realized family had very little relationship to style. Our conclusions now indicate that the chintz tops were probably purchased from workshops so women who didn't even know each other might have passed on similar quilts. However, quilts with this particular, rather unusual panel, may be an exception and knowing a family tree may help in determining the source of the fabric.

Panel #4 was not widely distributed in the United States: Six American quilts in the database. Perhaps some Wallace connection brought a few panels from England to the Carolinas as gifts.

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.

The differences in print quality raise questions:

Same mill?

One a knock-off?

Julia at Pique Trouver has this striped beauty for sale:

http://www.piquetrouver.com/new-products-2/chintz-strip-quilt

We wonder how many other panels were designed with a companion fabric.

Panel #3 the Trophy of Arms design was almost as popular as the fruit panel.

Were any of the borders we see in those bedcovers designed to match?

From Cora Ginsburg/Titi Halle

Ann Adeline Orr Parks quilt with panel #1 in the center,

From the North Carolina project

The Fife Coverlet,

Collection of the British Quilters Guild

Panel #2 in the center, a popular floral stripe as a border.

Some Reproductions 

Wendy Reed

Ann Hermes

Terry Terrell

Lori Lee Triplett

The Tripletts sell reproduction panels in 

 in 6, 12 and 25 inch versions.

https://www.quiltandtextilecollections.com/shop/textiles