What Have We Learned?

1810 Date Inscribed

By Margaret Gundacker

Collection: Lancaster Quilt & Textile Museum

After a year and a half of this blog on early quilts I have said about everything I have to say, so we are coming to an end here in November. What have we learned?

My goal was to organize my thoughts and teach myself about the first two decades of the 19th century in America. I wanted to give some guidelines to people interested in making reproduction quilts for the War of 1812 anniversary.

Harmony Before Matrimony

by British cartoonist James Gillray 1805

I had read a lot about Regency England and wondered about Americans' parallel lives from 1800-1820.

1811 Date-Inscribed

Hewson panel in center

Collection: Cincinnati Art Museum

I wanted to get a good handle on quilt fabrics, styles and techniques of the era to help in dating antique quilts too.

WOMEN'S LIVES

1816 Date Inscribed

British quilt with Princess Charlotte panel in the center

Sold at Christie's in London.

The border is the same fruit print that Baltimore's Achsah Wilkins favored.

It's fairly easy to find information about English women from the upper class such as the Duchess of Devonshire to the middling people like the Austen sisters, but understanding the lives of American women is not so easy. I began with Cokie Roberts' book Ladies of Liberty, a group biography of American women from the era, and branched out from there using her list of sources.

John Lewis Krimmel- The Pepper Pot, 1811

A German-born artist's view of Americans.

Over the past 18 months I have tried to share information about a diverse group of American women. One thing I have learned is that Americans had values different from England's. Upper classes here may have gotten into debt and enjoyed sex outside their marriage vows but these behaviors did not seem to be licensed by the same set of conventions that framed British and French society. Americans did not seem to gamble as much as the English and French. They borrowed and defaulted but not with the same abandon. People had affairs and marital separations but there was little public conversation about it.

1807 Date Inscribed

Esther Bradford

Collection: Henry Ford Museum

And of course people found it easier to rise above their origins here. I learned how many foreign-born people were assimilating into American culture, surprised to find how strong the Caribbean influence was in places like Charleston and Philadelphia.

QUILT STYLE

1813 Date Inscribed

Collection: International Quilt Study Center & Museum

 

I wanted to explore how quilt fashion changed, figure out what was new and fresh and what was old hat in 1810. I classified quilts by style, looking at set, technique, color, etc.  I had a file of dated American-made quilts and I refined it, mainly by taking some quilts off it and moving them to the English-made list.

 

1812 Date Inscribed

I had wanted to find more conventional applique quilts, particularly pictorial appliques but a year spent looking for them suggested the quilts might not be American. At the end of the search my view of American quilts made before 1815 is a bit more narrow than it was when I began. My view of English-made quilts shows a more diverse group.

1813-14 Date Inscribed

By Ann Robinson

Collection: Shelburne Museum

I now find it hard to believe this variety of  fabric in these dyes

was available in the U.S. in 1813-14.

FABRIC AVAILABILITY

Quilts grow out of the available fabric and my views changed about what Americans could buy. I began the search with a mental picture of a lively international trade, ships importing Euorpean and Indian cottons to ocean-side ports and inland harbors.

 

I knew the war was about trade but it was hard to believe that such a vital econony could be inhibited. I learned that trade came almost to a halt, disrupted far more than I'd initially believed. This may be the most important thing I learned. Imported fabric was in short supply and domestic fabric was rather unsophisticated. The wondrous variety of roller printed calicoes and fanciful chintzes that were common in England seem to have been scarce here until after War's end in early 1815.

1817 Date Inscribed

By Elizabeth Marple

From Nancy & Donald Roan's

Lest I Shall Be Forgotten: Anecdotes and traditions of Quilts

I'll do posts here through November and then MAYBE we'll move on to post-war American quilts. Check here periodically in 2013 to see if that idea progresses.