Ladies's Album Print: Love's Token

Love's Token from Ladies' Album

Each of the prints in my new Ladies' Album collection

for Moda is named for a sentiment one might find in an album quilt...

Signature with flourish from the Quilt Index

or a paper autograph album.

I've collected autograph albums and I've found many more great photos in online auctions.

I've also made notes on some of the inscriptions found in album quilts such as this one:

Please accept this as a
token of remembrance
from your friend
S. I. Robinson
May 23, 1845

I named each print in Ladies' Album after phrases I've seen, which

is where "Love's Token" got its name.

The largest print in the line, this one's a reproduction of a late 19th-century cretonne. Read more about floral cretonnes here:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2014/01/floral-cretonnes.html

Over the next few months I'll post more about the album sentiments and the album traditions.
Here's a nice rhyme from a quilt in the Oxford Connecticut Historical Society.

"May every blessing be thy lot
I only ask forget me not.

Mabel B. Hotchkiss              Bethany, Conn
A Gift of Friendship        Feb. 3, 1851"

"True Friendship

The earth can boast no purer air,

No brighter richer gem

No jewel of a lovelier die,

Than 'Friendships diadem.' 

Sarah E. [name unclear]

Belfast [Maine] March 26th 1858"

"Remember your friend

Nannie G. Reed

April 5th 1872"

"Presented to

Eugenia E. Bumgardner

by her mother

on the 15th anniversary

of her birth 1855 Aug 13"

See more of this quilt here at the online show Antebellum Quilts from the Upper Shenandoah Valley: 

http://vshadow.vcdh.virginia.edu/quilts/quilt.html

It's quilt #21.

"Mrs Hannah Bliss, W. Rochester VT

When on this you view

Remember the aged maidens present to you."

View more signatures on this quilt:

http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/quilt/quiltmaker.htm

"My album is a garden plot

Where all my friends may sow,

Where thorns and thistles flourish not

But flowers alone will grow.

Mary M. Criswell

Lower Oxford

March 13 1852

Chester County PA"

A simple sentiment from 1857.