Text & Textiles: Embroidery at the Asylum

 

Lorina Bulwer

A look at textiles stitched in mental hospitals over the past 100 plus years. Lorina Bulwer of England had a lot to say and it looks like a lot of time and thread. This record of her thoughts is one of several finished pieces.

Lorina Bulwer

Collection of Norwich Castle

Agnes Richter had similar ambitions embellishing a finished piece of clothing---her institutional straight jacket---with her opinions and perhaps delusions.

A patient identified only as Myrllen created an embroidered

 patchwork coat at a Knoxville asylum. 

Collection Tennessee State Museum

Garment made by Myrllen

Arthur Bispo do Rosário (1911–1989), Brazil

https://rawvision.com/blogs/articles/the-finery-of-art-brut?

Art school project by Londonite Kate Daudy, a poem....

...perhaps inspiring New York's Representative Alexandria Ocasio

Cortez's outfit for the 2021 Met Gala.

 British artist Madge Gill (1882–1961) 

Madge Gill was not incarcerated or did she use words but a similar obsessiveness is evident in her textiles. She also produced many fanciful drawings on paper (a more mainstream art form that may contribute to high prices for her female-oriented work.) The photo is from Spitalsfield Life.

A piece of Gill's embroidery set a new auction record when it sold for $120,650 at Christie’s New York on February 26, 2026.

https://museumcrush.org/the-art-of-madge-gill-and-myrninerest-the-spirit-who-possessed-her/#google_vignette

See another:

https://newsletter-prinzhorn.ukl-hd.de/exhibitions/aktuell/precious-item-of-the-week/handkerchief/?L=1

Kentucky Regional Design & The '33 Fair #2

Design for trapunto or stuffed work

Judges & the 1st Prize winner at 1933's Chicago World's Fair

Final Judges: Sue Roberts of Sears, Anne Orr and Mary McElwain, quilt pattern designers, and Beth Burnett of the Art Institute of Chicago. The stuffed work leaf quilted in the spaces between the stars must have impressed them.

Merikay Waldvogel and I have been studying the '33 fair and its quilt contest for years. See the bottom for posts on various aspects. We have come across many surprises and one of them is the history of the stuffed quilting at the top of the page, a compound leaf branch with feather-like leaflets.

Stuffed work quilting is unusual. One place we see more of it is in the hills of Tennessee, Kentucky and places settled by women coming from those states.

Kentucky silk star in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

attributed to sisters Ellen Norton Littlejohn and Margaret Morton Bibb,

made before the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation when the 

Mortons were enslaved in Logan County.

So far two silk trapunto quilts are attributed to the women, the second is in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.

And we see variations on the quilting design in other quilts before the prizewinning quilt pattern was published by Mountain Mist in the mid-20th century.

Mountain Mist batting wrapper showing their Star of the Bluegrass

When the Caden sisters commissioned a quilt for the contest they must have decided on a typical Kentucky design. Margaret Caden, whose name was on the entry, did not make the prizewinner but hired contract needleworkers to do the stitching, etc. and never shared credit or cash with them.

It's not only the hired quilting that is indicative of Kentucky regional design but the star design seems to be too. Stars pieced of diamonds seem among the most common of quilts. But I'm surprised to find this particular arrangement is rather uncommon---before the 1933 contest. 

Stella Rubin's Inventory 

Corner of a mid-19th-century quilt with BlockBase pattern #3772: Four diamonds in each star point,

an uncommon pattern at the time. Such stars usually had 9 diamonds or more per point.

The Morton sisters quilt at the Smithsonian also is a star with four diamonds. The Met's has the more common arms of nine diamonds.

Silk quilt from the Eyestone family in the Illinois State Museum, last half 19th century. 

Donor's mother lived in Kentucky.

After publicity about the winner in 1933 one finds many stars with a four-patch of diamonds in each point, some made from the popular Mountain Mist design.

Indiana Project & the Quilt Index
http://www2.matrix.msu.edu/~quilti/fulldisplay.php?kid=68-104-A3D

Copy of the winning quilt by Elizabeth Nesbett Cooper of Crawfordsville, Indiana.

That new green shade was hard to find so she made good use of black.

Stuffed-work sampler by Virginia Ivey at the Speed Museum in Kentucky. 

 Corner of the Russellville Fair quilt by Virginia Ivey at the Smithsonian

Links:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2026/08/kentucky-regional-design-33-fair.html
https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2017/08/star-of-bluegrass.htm

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2013/02/online-shopping-drama.html 
https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556181
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/13884

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2019/11/southern-spin-kentucky-stars.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/02/silk-quilts-in-kentucky-source-of-silk.html

Kentucky Regional Design & the '33 Fair #1

Sears, Roebuck sponsored a quilt contest at the depths of the Depression promising an enormous $1,200 first prize. Almost 25,000 quiltmakers entered. Merikay Waldvogel and I have spent years looking at the quilts, the contest and the scandal. 

Color added to a 1933 sketch from Capper's Weekly of the top winner. 

Stuffed work quilting & the newly fashionable shade of green 

that came to define the 1930s were undoubtedly assets in the judges' eyes.

Two of the four final judges pose with their choice: Sue Roberts from Sears Publicity Department and Mary McElwain (standing) owner of a custom quilt shop in Wisconsin. 

Margaret Rogers Caden of Lexington, Kentucky won the $1,000 award.

We have no color photo of her "Star of the Bluegrass" as the quilt remains missing 

despite our 40 year search. 

Collection of the International Quilt Museum

https://www.internationalquiltmuseum.org/quilt/19970070550

This is a copy by an unknown maker from a post-fair pattern by Mountain Mist.

Not quite the same green or skill level in the stuffed work quilting.

The stuffed work or trapunto leaf design was an important part of the winning design and its copies.

Mountain Mist sold the patterns as "Star of the Bluegrass."

Reverse of the fernlike spray between the stars

The quilter layered two fabrics and quilted the design's outline;

then added extra cotton batt through small holes to puff out the leaflets.

The scandal is that Margaret Caden whose Lexington quilt shop commissioned the handwork from several contract needleworkers did not share the glory or the cash with the women who actually did the stitching. Read our 1993 book, out of print but easily available used.

And we did an online lecture a few years ago on the topic.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2023/03/chicagos-1933-quilt-contest-updated.html

Merikay is the keeper of the World's Fair stories. Do see her Legacy file at the Quilt Index which connects you to about 30 entries.

https://quiltindex.org/view/?type=specialcolls&kid=33-133-2

And see a post from a few years ago in which I HOPED the winning quilt was up for sale.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2013/02/online-shopping-drama.html

Jennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilts series most recent entry The World's Fair Quilt retells the story as fiction.

In the next post more about the pattern and it's Kentucky regional links.