Conclusions 2: Style & Fabric

Attributed to Anna Legare O'Hear, Charleston, South Carolina

Winterthur Museum Collection

We're summarizing our blog posts, here discussing a few conclusions we've reached on style and fabric sources after expanding Merikay's original database of panel quilts. In this post we discuss our  observations about style and fabric sources.

Regional Style

Several historians looking at American panel quilts over the years have noted the abundance of Southern examples with distinct regional styles. These are not quilts one would typically see in Boston or Ohio.

Attributed to Ann Adeline Orr Parks, North Carolina

The largest group is found in museums and families in the Carolinas, with South Carolina having the most. Similar quilts are seen in Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi and Virginia.

Quilt made for Georgia Butt, dated 1834 

Museum of Mississippi History. Georgia was born in 1834 near 

Columbus, Georgia. The quilt is in their long term display.

The Southern quilts tend to follow a few structural formats, a pattern with variations. In one the central panel is on point; in the other on the square.

Panels are cut into parts with corners pulled out to enlarge the central area.

Center of a quilt in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,

thought to be Southern. The triangles in the corners

were cut from around the circular panel and moved out.

Smaller panels and other florals are appliqued in borders with chintz strip borders common. Pieced patchwork is not common.

Another large group of panel bedcovers was made in Baltimore, many of them attributed in the 1940s  by William Dunton to the workshop of Achsah Goodwin Wilkins. 

Again there is a standardized format to these appliqued quilts. 

Atlanta History Center

Philoclea Edgeworth Eve lived in Augusta, Georgia, quite

close to South Carolina. 

Other quilts are reliably attributed to cities and rural areas north and south and many are of unknown origins. 

Indianapolis Museum of Art. Nothing known about its origins.

While most Southern quilts tend to follow distinctive styles; some of those found north or west of Maryland look as if the seamstress was following her own muse. 

Seen in the Massachusetts project, dated 1830, attributed to Mary Green,

Vermont. British or New-England-style???

American Style Change

We have enough visual images to see a definite style change in American quilts about 1840.

As we've noted, date-inscribed British quilts range from 1810 to 1836 while

American quilts lag about 20 years behind, ranging from 1828 to 1855.

British frame quilt style, generally uncut panels framed by piecework, was fashionable for about 25 years. American style lasted about the same span but saw a style change that revitalized patchwork fashion. Of the ten American quilts dated before 1840 all are medallion format, based on a central focus. After 1840 only 1 of 7 is true medallion-format. The rest are block-style albums. Americans continued to cut up panels for patchwork but the images were secondary to the block-style look.

Eliza S. Howell's 1848-1849 quilt. 

Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Eliza inked a self-portrait in the center using trimmed pieces of the morning glory wreath (Panel #3). The central focus lingers but one wouldn't classify this as a medallion. 

These findings reinforce the view that American quilts underwent an important style change in 1840 as block format quilts became dominant, a change that helps us date unknown quilts using style.

Fabric Sources

Edgefield Advertiser

"Furniture Prints" advertised in 1853 in South Carolina

"Some Striped for bordering Quilts."

Information about how quiltmakers purchased panel fabric has been difficult to find. Searching for ads with the words panel, Sheraton or similar ideas, has been futile. Panels must have been sold in America's retail dry goods shops, described as furniture prints or furniture chintz, terms often seen in newspaper advertising such as the above. But patterns of use (why so much of the fruit basket panel in the U.S.?) make us wonder if  goods were typically wholesaled rather than retailed.

1842 "Cheap Store:" Direct from New York and Philadelphia:

"furniture, Chintz' [,] copperplate patterns"

A ship owner or wholesaler might buy a quantity in England and deliver to ports like Charleston and Baltimore where customers could negotiate for a lot, a quantity of chintz.

"Sheraton-style" chairs were  upholstered in these "Sheraton panels"

Upholsterers and seamstresses would be smart to buy in quantity, fabric they might use themselves or retail to customers, a system that would explain why a few of the English panels are seen so often in  bedcovers in one city like Baltimore.

The fruit basket panel has been found in 59 quilts,

more than any other.

We would hope to find some business or personal correspondence mentioning the panels, but until we do, we must base ideas on visual evidence and the meager published information.

Sets or Companion Prints

In the 1940s William Dunton noticed that some fruit basket panels

were bordered with "fruit borders," a separate but related stripe.

The color border above is from Merikay’s 1833 quilt with Panel 2 at the Center.

In her 2018 AQSG paper Ronda Harrell McAllen cited an 1819 ad offering "a few sets of very elegant printed moreens, chintz patterns, a new article...sold in sets to private families." As we have viewed more bedcovers we suspect more "sets" or "suites" were printed as companion fabrics and sold together. 

In the Winterthur Museum's latest catalog Printed Textiles Linda Eaton quotes furniture designer and taste maker Thomas Sheraton who showed this picture of a chair. "The covering of the seat is of printed chintz which may now be had on purpose for chair seats, together with borders to suit them." Sheraton, who published several books on furniture, died in 1806, before the panels in question seem to have been printed but his decorating ideas endured.

Smaller panels used in several quilts with larger panels similar in style may have been printed by the same English mill at the same time and perhaps sold together (marketed to upholsterers?) as part of a suite of prints.

From a South Carolina estate, Collection of Glorian Sipman

Large trimmed panel #2 in the center circled by smaller ovals

in similar style.

British quilt in the collection of the International Quilt Museum

with a cornucopia panel in the center and a cornucopia stripe as border--- a set?

Next Conclusions #3: The quiltmakers

See Ronda's paper on the Baltimore quilts here:
Uncoverings 2018, "The Chintz Gardens of Achsah Goodwin Wilkins, a Baltimore Quilter," Ronda Harrell McAllen

Conclusions 1: Revisiting the 2013 Study

In her 2013 AQSG paper "Printed Panels for Chintz Quilts" analyzing her study of panels and the quilts using them, Merikay Waldvogel presented several conclusions. After two years of summarizing her data and looking at new examples on this blog we can confirm and update those conclusions.

See the abstract for the paper here:

https://americanquiltstudygroup.org/uncoverings-2013-printed-panels-for-chintz-quilts-their-origin-and-use/

Recent photos of a quilt dated 1839 in the collection of Texas Tech University's museum

One of the most useful findings is in dating the panels and dating the quilts.

George III's 50th anniversary on the throne was celebrated

in 1809 and 1810 (Panel #24)

She noted that about fifty years ago Peter Floud and Florence Montgomery dated the actual panels to originating "about 1815" (a span of 1810-1820). Nothing has changed that estimate or defined it more specifically. The earliest panel example seems to be the King George III Jubilee design (1809-1810), which may have initiated the fashion. Four panels are associated with events (Jubilee, two similar Wellington Victory Panels, 1813 & 1815, & Princess Charlotte's 1817 wedding)

As Merikay wrote: "The 'about 1815' date pertains only to the panel not the quilt."

Panel #9, from a pillow cover in Lenna DeMarco's collection

Floud and Montgomery identified 10 panels; her paper indexed 32. The database now includes several more. That paper looked at 185 quilts from the U.S. and the U.K.; the database now includes 255 quilts.

British quilt dated 1834, Panel #26, Wellington Victory

She also found that the panels appeared in quilts over a longer-than-expected 50-year time span with dated examples ranging from 1828 - 1869.

The one quilt dated after 1855 is 1869, so much an outlier from similar medallions that we are not going to consider that as the date it was made.

"O.C.R. 1869" Reddick Family, found in Florida,

probably originated near Augusta, Georgia in 

South Carolina in the 1825-1840 period.

A top now in Cathy Erickson's collection.

Without this outlier the range in the U.S. and the U.K. is now 1810 - 1855.

Dated British quilts range from 1810 to 1834.

Dated American quilts range from 1828 to 1855.

If you put them on the same timeline you can see the lag in US quilts.

We see a cluster of American  medallion-style quilts dated from 1828 to 1834 with the majority about 1833-34 and then a smaller cluster, mainly block-style album quilts after 1840.

This indicates that a reasonable estimate for an undated American medallion is 1825-1840; an estimate for a block-style chintz applique with a panel: After 1840 but no later than 1860.

In the past American quilts have been dated by the conventional wisdom concerning the English panel's printing as "Ca. 1815. " This seems ten years too early. References to an 18th-century date would seem far too early.

The original database showing quilts from the United States and Great Britain (England and Ireland) indicated consumers on both sides of the Atlantic purchased panels and that conclusion has not changed. We also see quilts in British colonies: Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Album quilt dated 1855, South Carolina

Collection of the Spartanburg County Museum. Panel #12 in lower left corner.

The original database showed that American quilts tended to date a decade later than those in Great Britain, a trend that remained the same despite more examples.

Merikay saw this as evidence that panels were sent to America when British popularity waned and/or when trade resumed after the War of 1812. Both conclusions remain reasonable although we found no written evidence in advertising, trade communication or other records.

American    ------     British

Panel #5 Fruit Basket

She saw a distinct style contrast with British quilters favoring "framed pieced quilts with a panel in the center" (as on the right) and Americans favoring "chintz appliqué quilts with a large central medallion panel surrounded by four or more smaller printed panels."  The British used uncut printed panels;  Americans "more often cut them and rearranged the components in innovative ways."  

Typical American use of a large panel (#3), smaller panels and parts of others.

Attributed to Hannah Noland Henderson

Charleston Museum of Art

More examples and close looking have confirmed those style differences.

Typical British style, uncut panels in a field of piecework

Thorne Quilt, Dated 1824

British Quilters' Guild Collection

#3 -------------------#11

We'd hoped with advantages of internet searching and updated museum cataloging we'd gain more insight into a most intriguing question, whether we could find "evidence of an American textile establishment producing panels." Looking at the Trophy of Arms panel (#3) and one featuring birds with long necks (#11), neither seen in British quilts, one wonders if the fabric were American-made.

Panel #19 with butterflies is stylistically quite different

from other panels and found only in American quilts (four of them.)

But fabric printed in such sophisticated multi-color woodblock techniques is not seen in the U.S. at the time (with the exception of the Hewson printworks in Philadelphia).

Quilt dated 1811, Cincinnati Art Museum

The American Hewson vase panels seem a separate category all their own

and definitely attributable to that firm.

Our current thinking remains that panels were printed in England (with the Hewson vase exception) . Those pieces seen only in American quilts must have been manufactured exclusively for the export market.

Holmes Family, Virginia

87" x 86" 

Next: New Observations

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