Thursday, October 2, 2025

Indigo Resistance: Peer Review

 

 Indigo Resist Print, a vining arborescent with a six-lobed floral
in a whole-cloth bedcover from an online auction.
When and where similar indigo prints were manufactured is a topic of conversation lately.

Ronda Harrell McAllen is writing a guest post today. She's an independent researcher who has published in the American Quilt Study Group's annual publication Uncoverings (see references at the bottom of the post.)  Ronda's text here is in indigo blue, Barbara's captions in black text.


Kay and Lori Lee Tripletts’ 2024 paper, “Seventeenth-Century Indigo-Resist Textiles from Bermuda,” published by the Mingei International Museum for their 2024–2025 Blue Gold exhibition, makes a bold claim: "Bermuda hosted a 17th-century workshop producing indigo-resist printed textiles."

Bermuda is an archipelago, a chain of 7 rocky islands and 170 smaller
outcroppings rising from the Atlantic Ocean about 650 miles east
 of North Carolina and 800 miles north of the West Indies.

Museums recently have been attributing early indigo prints
to this unlikely geographic source. Bed curtain fabric here 
was used in the New York colony.

On its face, this would be an extraordinary discovery. 

St. George (northeast corner,) settled by the English in
1612 is the oldest continuously occupied British settlement
in the New World


 The Bermudian, known for engaging pieces that reflected Bermuda
 to the outside world, especially American visitors. 

But a search for supporting documentation leads not to archives or official records, but to a single magazine article from 1935. Charles Wilson’s “A Lost Art and a Dead Industry of Bermuda,” published in The Bermudian—a polished lifestyle magazine appealing to tourists rather than scholars—is the earliest mention currently found of the alleged Stirrup & Wright textiles. The question is: Does Wilson’s nostalgic sketch actually support what the Tripletts conclude?

This is not a personal attack on the authors, but part of the essential scholarly process: Every new theory must be scrutinized not with hostility but with clear-eyed regard for plausibility and the strength of the evidence on which it rests. In that spirit, let’s return to Wilson’s article to see what it actually says…

Charles Wilson's 1935 article was not a scholarly study; it was a nostalgic feature. Wilson described a surviving set of dimity bed hangings preserved in the St. George’s Historical Society.

Textile definitions like "dimity" vary over time and place.
 In general, dimity is defined by differing yarn sizes in the weave.
Thicker yarns can produce textured stripes as in the piece above.

Photos of the hangings show them to be indigo-resist block printed. Wilson identified two 17th-century figures, Stirrop and Wright, as weavers of dimity and the supposed source of the textiles. He also mentioned the presence of cotton and indigo in Bermuda.

Interior photo of the Mitchell House at the St. 
George's Historical Society from 1922.

That was the extent of his evidence. He cited no sources, explained no techniques, and never claimed that resist-printing actually took place in Bermuda. Indeed, he admitted that information was scarce. He wrote: “I set to work with numerous Bermuda histories and sought information from local historians as to the relative importance and inspiration of this weaving and dyeing. Neither records nor our Clio could help me at all.” Even as a Bermudian himself, Wilson could find nothing in the records, noting only that “both weaving and dyeing had been done on the island during the seventeenth century.”

Recent photo of a bedroom at the  Mitchell House

Wilson also described design motifs on the hangings, including a pomegranate and the night-blooming cereus flower. He praised them as “sure proof of the skill of the artist.” Crucially, however, his conviction that the textiles were locally dyed rested not on archival research or technical analysis, but almost entirely on what the museum staff told him. In other words, the strongest link between the hangings and Bermuda was hearsay. This reliance on staff opinion gave the claim a veneer of authenticity without providing any verifiable evidence, and those uncorroborated impressions became the kernel of evidence that the Tripletts later developed into something far larger.

How the Tripletts Built on Wilson’s Article

In their paper, the Tripletts expand Wilson’s brief impressions into a sweeping historical narrative. Stirrop and Wright become the leaders of a “workshop” producing indigo-resist prints, assisted by enslaved and indentured servants (though at least two of those indentures began after Stirrop’s death in 1665). The surviving set—three bed curtains, a bed skirt, and a seat cover—is presented as a catalogue of named patterns. From there, they link the Bermuda textiles to American museum holdings and even to broader transatlantic influence. In short, where Wilson offered fragments, the Tripletts build a full narrative of 17th-century Bermudian textile printing, despite the lack of documentary foundation.

Conclusion

Over-interpretation of Wilson’s nostalgic, speculative article resulted in a paper that leapt to conclusions without documentary foundation. The claim that 17th-century Bermudian indigo-resist printing can be proven is not supported by either material or archival evidence. It rests on weak or misstated sources that provide no proof.

The Tripletts have looked at other secondary, and also some primary, sources in an effort to support their theory. But these additional references do not connect enough dots to prove that more than weaving and dyeing took place in Bermuda—and weaving and dyeing are not the same as two-color surface design, whether stenciled, painted, printed, or resist-dyed. But when we compare their paper closely to Wilson’s article, the parallels are unmistakable — the names, dates, crops, and motifs they emphasize all trace directly back to his 1935 sketch. Their larger narrative seems less an independent discovery than an expansion of Wilson’s nostalgic impressions. They go so far as to suggest that Bermuda served as the foundation for a much broader group of textiles—a claim we will take up at a later date.

This comparison underscores the importance of rigorous, evidence-based scholarship in textile history.

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I owe a debt of gratitude to Laura Johnson for her invaluable review and input on this blog. I am also grateful to Alden O’Brien, Lynne Zacek Bassett, Madelyn Shaw, Barbara Brackman, Merikay Waldvogel, Debby Cooney, and Julie Silber for their generous insights and support.

Papers by Ronda Harrell McAllen in the American Quilt Study Group's annual publication Uncoverings 

Read here: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/aqsg-uncoverings/

"Jewish Baltimore Album Quilts" 2006

 "Baltimore Album Quilts: New Research" with Deborah Cooney 2017

"The Chintz Gardens of Achsah Goodwin Wilkins, a Baltimore Quilter" 2018

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Posts Barbara's done on Indigo Resist and its sources last year:

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