 A
new source for quilt history research and material objects is the updated and
expanded edition of the 1990 book with the same title. It covers all the
American made quilts and coverlets presently in their collection. If I may be blunt, don't
clump it in with coffee table books because of its size and large photos. Don't
lump it in with museum books with excellent photos and brief provenance but no
historical context. Instead put it on your shelf next to Orlofsky's "Quilts in
America" and Kiracofe and Johnson's "The American Quilt," the American Folk Art
Museum's "Glorious American Quilts." by Warren and Eisenstat, and recently
"Quilts in a Material World" by Eaton and quilts and textiles at Winterthur
museum. These books are ones I turn to repeatedly as reference books for history
of quilts made in America, They evolved as they did for reasons related to the
Industrial Revolution beginning mid-18th century in England and at the end of
the century in America as it pertain to textiles and their prints.
The Museum's collection is
predominately from the northeastern states, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey
and New England. The "highlights" of their collection are divided into these
sections: appliqué and pieced, including crazies, a BAQ, and Amish; whole cloth,
including wool, chintz, whitework, and toile; woven coverlets; and embroidered
coverlets that include bed rugs, whitework and blankets. "Materials and
Techniques of American Quilts and Coverlets" by Elena Phipps is another chapter
with useful details about dyes, printing methods and weave structures with
excellent detail photos to illustrate Phipps' points. For example, Phipps
divides synthetic dyes in two groups, synthetic and fully synthetic; the mineral
dyes, chrome yellow and Prussian blue, are synthetic dyes. In 1856, William
Perkins invented a coal tar dye, which was the first fully synthetic dye, and
named it mauvine based on the color.
The book ends with the catalogue, with two pictures per page and file
information covers the last seventy pages of the book. Information like this is
gold if you want the textile details, accession number, their notes and who gave
it when, for 216 total pages. The
index is laid out well, with bolded pattern and style names, useful!
The featured textiles include
large detail photos of incredible detail, seeing stitches, signatures, fabrics
and woven sections of the coverlets. My favorite section is the whole cloth
(they spell it as one word) quilts because they are simply spans of gorgeous
materials. Strippy chintz quilts are in here too. Eagle quilts and patriotic and
Centennial textiles are included throughout the categories of textiles
represented.
The women or families associated
with the highlighted items have their story told and pictures, letters and
ephemera are included on occasion. Here' an example of how this book and others
share our American women's history, using an analogy of mine; where today we
would test our new cell picture phone by sending a picture we just took with it,
in 1866 a woman wrote this to the man she was courting-
"My Friend, having a new pen &
being anxious to test its qualities, I don't know as I could do it better than
by writing you a valentine; for you know or ought to know that today is the day
sacred to St. Valentine….Did I say I would write you a valentine? Well I think I
will not (for if I did it would be the first I ever wrote) but instead will try
to write a plain common sense letter…" (p. 40)
Tracking the maker's story via
clues in the textile and looking at it through the material culture of its day,
made for enjoyable reading and was exemplary of the deductive reasoning
necessary in quality quilt research books and papers. Questions must be asked
when they arise, and answered only if supportable with primary evidence and this
can take years.
There is a Federal style
embroidered blanket, dated 1822, made of black wool with wool yarns in natural
dyed primary colors forming large feathered paisleys and exaggerated
cornflowers, palmettos and thistle cover the top ion serpentine vines with swags
and tassels around it. All of the motifs are large. In each bottom corner is a
tiny embroidered evening star quilt block with red star points and yellow
probably French knots in the middle square. It is so charming and to my eye, a
rare artifact.
Other embroidered textiles in the
book are equally impressive and unusual to south western U.S. eyes (I live in
southern California) where stunning and colorful geometric Indian blankets
reign. The northeastern states preferred curvilinear patterns of light with dark
contrasts or Jacobean style florals. So the one embroidered coverlet from
Yucatan, Mexico, 1786, was quite a surprise. Peck explains that its wavy
appearance from embroidery stitching is due to the silk thread being used in its
unspun state. It looks more like velvet than stitches. (p. 200-201)
They have a BAQ a.k.a. Baltimore
Album Quilt, ca. 1849, silk velvet and cotton. The maker is unknown but Mary
Hergenroder Simon is the attributed designer. The designer was once thought to
be Mary Evans. Recent findings about the Mary Simon vs. Mary Evans as BAQ
designers and kit makers are unfolded here. (p.56-59)
Marion Cheever Whitesides, known
for her appliqué storybook quilts, made a crib size Alice in Wonderland quilt in
1945 when the Museum commissioned her to do so for their collection. Their
interest was due to many inquiries at that time coming to the Museum about
contemporary quilt making, and yet they were lacking modern examples. Their
Textile Study room thought it would "provide a useful piece for study purposes."
(p. 114-115).
Can you tell I like this book? From the perspective of both a
self-proclaimed connoisseur of antique quilts and a fact freak, it fills me up.
If offers interesting reading, visual stimulation, quotable info, and personal histories
about quilts and textiles made in America.
You can order this book from
Amazon. |
