Style: Unconfined Applique

Ann Robinson's quilt

dated 1813-1814

Collection of the Shelburne Museum

 

The caption in this catalog of the Shelburne's collection reads:

"Appliqed and Pieced Counterpane, Floral Medallion Pattern 1814. Made by Ann Robinson. New England, possibly Connecticut. Cotton; marked 'Ann Robinson October 1, 1813' and 'Finished January 27, 1814.' 100" x 95". Museum acquisition 1954-439 (10-140) 

 

I've been thinking about Ann Robinson's quilt for years.

 

I began a copy and have finished my 4 cornucopia. Being quite familiar with those cornucopia with their tulips and blade-shaped leaves I was surprised to come across this photo in Averil Colby's English book Patchwork.

 

Colby's caption reads: " 'The Isle of Wight' coverlet with applique and patchwork patterns in chintz and cotton dress prints, ca. 1820". She said in 1958 that it was lost and this black and white photo the only record.

 

Same cornucopia, a lot less stuff. I should have copied this one. I'd probably be finished.

 

The "American" quilt on the left,

the Isle of Wight spread on the right

 

Could it be that Ann Robinson's quilt is English? And my whole theory about an early American applique style is on a slow boat to the Isle of Wight.

 

 

 

In this 1958 book Colby also included a quilt made by the Sharman sisters about the same time as the Isle of Wight coverlet.

 

 

This quilt by "the two Miss Sharman's ca 1820" includes horns of plenty in the corners.

 

I am thinking a lot more work needs to be done on the Ann Robinson quilt: more geneaology, more looking at English pictorial quilts. I'm becoming more doubtful of a Connecticut origin.

 

 

It has more in common with English applique such as this one that Colby also pictured "applique coverlet with a great variety of cotton prints." She dated it to about 1850. It's now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

 

The applique style with pictures not confined by blocks seems very British.

 

 

So when we see something like this one dated 1845 we can guess it's British, even though it was found in the United States.

 

 

The human figures, the horses and other animals and particuarly the freedom of the unconfined applique seems to define a style found in the English quilts below. 

 

An English quilt dated 1852 signed Lucy Hasell (?)

Horses and hearts are a recurring theme.

From an English auction in 2004---probably 1840s

 

Averil Colby drew up some of the appliqued images, but her book seems to have inspired few to copy these pictorial quilts in the 1950s.

 

 

Here's a British quilt with an orderly center and a border of scattered flowers, hearts and leaf shapes, again probably 1830s or '40s.

 

Similar to this one

I think this style resonates better with us today than with Colby's original readers.

 

This pair of panels was probably separated a long time ago.

The one above is on the Cora Ginsburg site.

http://coraginsburg.com/chintz_applique_border.htm

A shorter, more faded piece that sold at an online auction.

 

They may have been borders once and even though they are in the U.S. are probably English.

 

American Quilt

Unknown Maker

About 1850

 

It's not that we don't see hearts, horses and people in American quilts. They just stay inside their blocks where they belong.

 

This brings us back to Ann Dagge's quilt, dated the 1 of May, 1818. 

 We shall consider its origins next week.

 

 

 

Conventional Applique in Calicoes

Center of the Ann Daggs or Ann Dagge quilt

 

Ann Dagge's 1818 quilt, attributed to Rochester, New York, in the collection of the Smithsonian, looks like a singular piece of folk art but it shares several characteristics with other quilts from the teens. All these quilts found in the U.S. rely on the latest multi-color calicoes rather than large-scale furnishing chintzes. For the next few weeks we shall consider this style.

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=36860

 

Like Louisa Brigham's quilt below Dagge's quilt has a swag border with triple leaves.

Louisa Brigham 1818

Found by the Connecticut Quilt project.

The triple leaf motif is seen throughout the Brigham quilt

Louisa also included a pair of reptiles (alligators?) appliqued from calico. A family member brought this quilt to a quilt day. According to the wife of Louisa's descendant she was born April 9, 1793 in Barre, Vermont. 

Here's a detail of Ann Dagge's quilt (bad color) showing her calico birds. Also note her flat cookie-shaped roses and three-lobed tulips, something we see a lot more of in later applique quilts.

 

Ann Robinson's 1813-14 quilt in the Shelburne Museum collection is similar---using flat flowers and tulips with many flowers composed of hexagons

 

Robinson also included calico animals and birds and many triple-leaf designs.

With several cornucopia.

 

Quilt inscribed Maria Whelpton,

aged 19, Feb. 27 1828.

Here's a similar calico quilt, a little more orderly and ten years later.

Maria used small-scale calicoes and a lot of oval leaf shapes.

 

My photos are fuzzy because I copied a photo in the 1991 Quilt Engagement Calendar.

The page has been hanging in and hanging around in my studio or twenty years. Those calico leaves in a white square are so much like Ann Robinson's.

 

 

Sources for all of these designs are not too hard to find.

 

Embroidered Pocket

Triple leaf motifs are common in embroidery

Embroidered blanket

with a similar swag border

 

Triple leaves along the top border.

 

 

Embroidered sampler by Anna Braddock 1826

Braddock's sampler includes a cornucopia, tulips, birds and animals and, like Ann Robinson's quilt, a rather chaotic composition more familiar in samplers than in appliqued quilts.

 

These early conventional applique quilts, all found in the U.S., share so much---a certain early style, which then seems to disappear in the U.S. replaced by block-style design with more restrictions

 

1861 applique quilt by Esther Griffin

 

Griffin used similar design units but sashing confined her compositions forty-five years later.  

 The block below with the floating perspective common in samplers is unusual in a mid-century quilt.

 

Detail of a quilt signed M.S.from the  Byron and Sara Rhodes Dillow Collection at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum. Estimated date about 1850.

See the whole quilt here (#2008.040.0114)

http://cdn.firespring.com/images/512277e0-ff89-44fe-94dc-5364f177493c.jpg 

 

Did early-19th-century American applique artists develop a short-lived, rather unconfined style that was forgotten when block-style applique became the dominant style in the 1840s. Were these calico quilts from the teens derived from a particular school or teacher?

Madame Grelaud's Female Seminary

A Phildelphia Eagle Sampler by

 Matilda  Filbert

1830

Madame Grelaud had the honor of owning the most fashionable girl's school in Philadelphia from about 1800 into the 1850s.

 

In 1810 Mme. Grelaud's Seminary

was on the north side of Arch Street above 3rd,

 with the Second Presbyterian church on the corner.

 

Like many of the foreign women who relied upon a school for income, Mme. Deborah Grelaud's past was a bit mysterious. She was French, probably a refugee from the colony of Sante Domingue, modern Haiti, one of the white aristocrats who fled during the revolution there in 1790s. Her husband's end is also mysterious. He may have been killed in that slave rebellion or died after escaping to the United States.

Madame Grelaud advertised an

embroidery curriculum in this ad from the

Pennsylvania Gazette in the fall of 1801.

The widowed Deborah with three boys and a girl to support started her successful school, known for its French curriculum, lessons in art and music and public musicales that entertained Philadelphia society in the evenings. During the War of 1812 the three Grelaud sons, Titon, John and Arthur sailed with naval officer Stephen Girard from Valparaiso to Canton. Her daughter Aurora taught with her. Both women lived into their late eighties, so the school had a long infuence.

  

Mme Grelaud's Female Seminary was expensive and exclusive. Among Amelia Russell's classmates in the teens were daughters of many of the society women we've discussed over the past year. Martha Washington's granddaughter Eliza Law was sent there after her parent's separation. Martha Custis Peter's daughters Columbia and America were among the many Southern girls who boarded as were Nelly Custis Lewis's girls Parke and Agnes. Rosalie Calvert's daughters Caroline and Eugenia went when the Calverts had the cash to spare. Diplomat's daughters like Amelia Russell and Maria Hester Monroe boarded and Philadelphia's upper class girls attended the day school.

Later students included Varina Howell Davis and Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut.

Betty Ring, the authority on embroidered samplers, identified various sampler styles, using details such as eagles in Philadelphia samplers to link samplers visually to schools and teachers in England and the United States. She found none attributable to Madame Grelaud's. Ring's collection was sold at a Sotheby's auction earlier this year.

Another Philadelphia Eagle sampler, this one from the Sotheby's sale.
The eagle samplers date from 1820-1840.

 

See the catalog of Betty Ring's sampler collection here:
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/important-american-schoolgirl-embroideries-the-landmark-collection-of-betty-ring-n08832/lots.list.1.html

And read Ring's research here:
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2012/important-american-schoolgirl-embroideries-the-landmark-collection-of-betty-ring-n08832/overview.html
 Click on the three files of her work American Embroidery and 2 volumes of Girlhood Embroidery, a great online resource.

Margaret Moss sampler 1825

Collection of the Cooper-Hewitt

 

 Once you read Ring's work it becomes quite obvious that sampler patterns were passed on by professional teachers to their students.We can use a parallel logic to connect quilts from the early 19th century and wonder where these two quiltmakers got the pattern for their swag borders.

Ann Daggs, Dagg or Dagge

Dated 1818

Collection of the Smithsonian Institution

Louisa Brigham

Dated 1817

Connecticut Quilt Project

 

These two medallion quilts dated right after the War of 1812 have a lot more in common than their swag borders with triple leaf details. Both are unusual for the time in their reliance on conventional applique of small-scale calico prints rather than on Broderie Perse or cut-out chintz applique.

Maria Monroe stitched a sampler in 1814. You can buy a kit for the copy above here:
http://www.posycollection.com/AshLawn/ASHLAWNMariaMonroeSampler5.html

Eagles Appliqued and Embroidered

Quilt dated 1808 by Rebecah Foster (detail) 

Appliqued and stuffed-work eagle.

Collection Tennessee State Museum

Eagles are among the earliest conventional applique in which the images are cut from small prints rather than transferred from a printed chintz. Eagles were popular even before the War of 1812.

An overall view of the Foster quilt. She combined embroidery and conventional applique using indigo prints.  The image is the Great Seal of the United States, featuring a bald eagle holding laurel leaves and arrows with a shield on his breast and a banner in his beak. The seal, adopted in 1782, inspired many artists.

 

Quilt dated 1807 by Esther S. Bradford, Connecticut,

appliqued eagle. Collection: Henry Ford Museum

A similar quilt in red and white. It's hard to believe this is appliqued, as the lines are so fine, but that's what the catalog says.

See more here:

http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/quiltinggenius/quilts/59_41_2.asp

Here's a sharper picture in black and white. The maker is perhaps the Esther Bradford born on December 2, 1782 in Montville, New London County, Connecticut, who married Reynolds Johnson on August 25, 1821 and died on December 1, 1823 in Colchester, Connecticut.

 

Patchwork can be considered an efficient form of embroidery. These quilts seem to be appliqued adaptations of traditional embroidery designs. The embroidered bedcover below in red and white is almost identical to the Bradford quilt

Embroidered bedcover

Brooklyn Museum

This piece was on the cover of Rose Wilder Lane's

Woman's Day Book of American Needlework

And here it is again in colored yarns in an embroidered bedcover sold by Copake Auctions.

We assume a needlework pattern was passed around or perhaps a professional pattern drafter marked  fabric.

The quilts above make good use of two fabrics---a white background and indigo or madder prints. The fabrics might be domestically produced, since these simple prints were the kind of thing American printers could do.

Eagle applique by Susan Strong Bell (1809-1875)

Collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

The catalog information dates it to 1825-1840

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object.cfm?key=35&gkey=169&objkey=9568

Susan's eagle quilt is unusual in it's use of white applique on indigo. It seems related to the earlier quilts in design and fabric use.

Eagles were such popular imagery in this early period that I have three  posts from last year on the subject

http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2011/09/quilt-from-era.html

http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2011/09/another-eagle-quilt-in-field-of.html

http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2011/10/more-eagles-for-ideas.html