ChintzPanelQuilt: fruit

Thursday, June 20, 2019

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.

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.