Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Political Quilts #3: Clay Campaign Ribbons & Badges

Silk quilt by Rebecca Vanuxem Lombart Williams (1819-1880)

Collection of the Museum of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The quilt has two Clay campaign ribbons stitched into the border. Family history indicates it was made in Philadelphia in the 1840s. Rebecca spent much of her life in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.

The years that Henry Clay ran for President were decades that changed the way American conducted elections. The "Selling of the President" became established with the two major parties, Whigs and Democrats, developing slogans, songs, parade scenarios and trinkets to persuade the voters to choose their man.

Numerous Henry Clay ribbons were printed on silk.

The ribbon in Rebecca's quilt says "The Peoples' Choice"

and "Pride of America."

Here's the ribbon in white.

We call them ribbons; they might have called them badges at the time.

See more about the quilt here:
http://www.quiltindex.org/~quilti/fulldisplay.php?kid=46-7A-DC

Collection of Cornell University

New Jersey's Whig delegates to the nominating convention

may have worn these badges in 1844

Had women had been able to vote Henry Clay might have been president rather than a long-term also-ran. If surviving quilts are the evidence they favored Clay over his rivals.

Polk and Dallas won the 1844 election.

The Quilt Index shows a New Jersey silk quilt with hexagonal stars pieced between strips of Clay campaign ribbons....

All featuring Henry Clay and Theodore Frelinghuysen (a New Jersey native son), the Whig party's unsuccessful candidates for President and Vice President in 1844.One ribbon reads, "Barbecue by the Whigs of Ohio to the Whigs of Kentucky at Dayton. Sept. 29th, 1842". Clay's name is printed above his picture with the date 1844 below. A farmer and a team of horses is shown, promoting Clay's image as a farmer.Remnants of other ribbons mention "Clay now, Polk never" and "Henry Clay, Nation's Choice.

Clay Ribbon quilt made in Belvedere, Warren County,

New Jersey, About 1844.

See an allover photo in the HQPNJ's book New Jersey Quilts - 1777 to 1950, page 223.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4A-7F-512

The Barbecue ribbon, which is dated 1842.

From the collection of the Western Kentucky University

Museum and Library.

Monday, October 8, 2018

Political Quilts #2: Quilt for Henry Clay from Philadelphia

"To Henry Clay from Ladies of Phila."

Silk quilt, 1844

The large dedication block is in the center of this silk

star quilt in the collection of Henry Clay's Ashland museum.

( # 1988.147)

From an old postcard.

A postcard from Ashland, 20th century

Here is how I got into the whole Henry Clay quilt search. I found a letter published in the United States Gazette, July 13, 1844, mentioned in a recent book on Clay's papers:

June 6, 1844, From an unknown woman:

"Sends for the ladies of Philadelphia a quilt, 'Fashioned by their heads and wrought by their hands.' Notes that it 'has not been spoiled by a multiplicity of counselors for although nearly one hundred ladies have participated in it, it has come out fair and square.' "

The quilt "made of satin and velvet with embroidered flowers was displayed for a time in [a Philadelphia] store" according to the Lexington Observer & Kentucky Reporter, June 19, 1844.

I wondered if I could find that quilt. Here it is. I saw it pictured in the old postcard and it is in the Quilt Index, recorded by the Kentucky Quilt Project, which is where I found the detail of the center.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1A-39-27D

See the catalog page at Ashland here:
http://henryclay.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/B7C1820E-1B9C-11D9-A336-080860265390

The museum now has a reproduction quilt made by Carole Crabtree and Mitchell Baumann of Quilter's Square of Lexington.

According the the museum catalog, the 2001 reproduction will be displayed "since the original is too fragile to be displayed anymore. Reproduction of this quilt, as well as conservation for the original, were funded by a group of ladies from Louisville."

http://henryclay.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/B7C184B5-1B9C-11D9-A336-080860265390

Here's a link to the letters in The Papers of Henry Clay, edited by Melba Porter Hay:
https://books.google.com/books?id=b58eBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=Fashioned+by+their+heads+and+wrought+by+their+hands&source=bl&ots=MxN-oOlgiw&sig=IZU7PogBber0uJdBDqGQh9JK-HY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYvYDB3vPPAhVFPj4KHcxgALEQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=Fashioned%20by%20their%20heads%20and%20wrought%20by%20their%20hands&f=false

Sunday, October 7, 2018

Political Patterns #1: 1852 Reference

"Old Zack"

Collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts

https://www.mfa.org/collections/object/printed-cotton-general-taylor-at-the-battle-of-palo-alto-may-8-1846-119326

In May, 1852 the Lancaster (South Carolina) Ledger published a humorous feature in dialect, a fictional letter from Hosher Storrins to his Kuzen Stukely. Few dialect stories were complete without a "regular quiltin" and this one included a short political discussion about the quilting pattern.

I'm translating here:

"It was sometime before they could decide how to make the quilt. Some wanted Clay, and some wanted Old Zack, a few wanted Polk quilted in the center; but Sue insisted to have your Moody hat put right in the center."

I don't know what a Moody hat is but the tale went on about the hat contrasting it with a flamboyant Kossuth hat with a feather. Too bad they abandoned the political quilting.

The political references are mysterious and anachronistic in 1852, a Presidential election year.

Scott on the North of the Mason Dixon line; Pierce on the South

Opponents were the successful Franklin Pierce versus Winfield Scott. By May of that year the three politicians discussed at the quilting were no longer viable choices at all. President Zachary Taylor had died in office in 1850; James K. Polk had been dead for three years while Henry Clay was on his deathbed, expiring in June, 1852.

Album quilt shown at the Virginia Quilt Museum in 2016

The figure of President Zachary Taylor as a war hero is cut from the

rainbow print at the top of the post.

Set of album blocks once in

Julie Powell's collection of political textiles

Polk must have been more inspirational as a few Polk quilts survive.

See this post on some possible Polk symbolism:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/08/poke-weed-politics.html

Winfield Scott, another Mexican War hero and the unsuccessful 1852 nominee, leaves no partisan quilts that I have seen, although his purported signature is on a few.

"Frank Pierce"

Hexagon quilt dated 1850-1856 by the Cronmiller sisters of

Baltimore. Documented in the Maryland project.

Franklin Pierce was also fairly uninspiring, if we take quilts as evidence.

Virginia Ivey's quilt with a quilted representation

of a Henry Clay statue, Kentucky.

Henry Clay who never won a Presidential election but was a perennial candidate motivated more quiltmakers than any other mid-century politico.

Detail from Mary Worrall Perry's 1844-1845 album

Freeman's Auction

For the rest of the week I'll be focusing on political quilts from the mid-19th-century. Politics has never been pretty but the quilts are.

Read more about Virginia Ivey at this post.

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/11/virginia-iveys-quilt-honoring-henry-clay.html

See the South Carolina reference to political quilting at the Chronicling America site:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026900/1852-02-26/ed-1/seq-2/

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Raffle Quilts

No Two Alike

Kansas Prairie Guild in Topeka

A short survey of some recent raffle quilts giving you an idea of what quilters are making lately.

New York Radiance

Courthouse Quilters Guild New Jersey, 2015

Disconnected Pieces Guild, Florida

Hancock Shaker Village

Friends of the Queen Anne’s County Library, Maryland

Quilts in a Stitch Guild, Wisconsin

Umpquah Valley Guild

Kaleidsoscope Stars, Janna Thomas design. Loveland Guild

Boise Basin Guild

Garstang Patchwork Quilters

Webster Guild, Designed by Judy & Brad Niemeyer

Hannah Dustin Guild

Brooklyn New York Guild

Just do a websearch for Raffle Quilt 2018. You'll see some great work.

Monday, October 1, 2018

Stripes for Bordering Quilts: Poppies

Broderie Perse or Chintz Applique quilt sold by Northeast Auctions.

Not much is known about it but my first guess was "Carolinas, 1830-1850."

https://northeastauctions.com/product/floral-chintz-broderie-perse-appliqued-and-pieced-cotton-quilt-circa-1850/

The quilt is very much like the one below.

Chintz Applique Album dated 1848 & 1849, Mary V. Yeadon,

Greensville, South Carolina International Quilt Study Center & Museum

#2006.003.0005

https://www.quiltstudy.org/quilt/20060030005

25 graceful blocks, same proportions, both over 100 inches square,

with identical border stripe of poppies.

Both quilted in a diagonal square grid.

See a post on this quilt here:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/09/marion-family-quilts-in-carolinas-low.html

Repeat in the poppy stripe, pink, orange, red and white with teal green leaves

and blue morning glories.

Detail of the poppy from the Yeadon quilt. Background is a fancy machine ground

in a vermiculate (worm-like trails) or meander pattern.

Dated 1865 & 1866 by Dibble, Evans, Zimmerman and Edwards

families, Charleston, South Carolina. From the North Carolina

project & the Quilt Index. Now in the collection of the Charleston Museum.

A smaller quilt with only nine blocks, all the same. Each is about 20"; the quilt is 91" square. This one is quilted in arcs: fans and clamshells.

The talented N.C. team measured the outside stripe too. It's 13" wide.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4B-82-B01

The date-inscribed examples are late in my mind. I'd have guessed mid 1840s, but then I found this advertisement:

"Furniture Prints, some Striped for bordering Quilts"

July 6, 1853

Edgefield [SC] Advertiser

Edgefield is way west of Charleston but what mattered was not so much distance as river travel and Charleston merchants seemed to advertise in the Edgefield papers, knowing that the well-to-do and middling families traveled back and forth or sent agents to shop for them in the port city.

Edgefield about 1910

I found an earlier ad for stripes from the Sumter Banner in 1847 advertising

"Furniture Prints, Quilt bordering, Quilt patchwork..."

From M. Thomson in Sumterville (now Sumter)

"Quilt Bordering"

Furniture print is a period name for what we'd call chintz or decorating prints.

Floral stripes were quite the fashion in the Carolinas. I'd now date these quilt 1830-1865 rather than 1830- 1850. When Laurel Horton analyzed quilts in the South Carolina project she noted that chintz borders lingered there as a style decades after chintz was considered "chintzy" by Northern quilters.

Another auction quilt, this one from the McCarl's collection, sold at a Pook & Pook auction a few years ago. The center panel is numbered 15 in Merikay Waldvogel's panel index. Smaller panels are Number 2. The double border is the poppy print.

In this photo from Stella Rubin you can see the

quilting is a square grid on point.

Colonial Williamsburg has a medallion quilt framed by diagonal stripes, including the poppy next to a rose stripe that may have been a companion fabric. The quilt descended in the family of James Betts, a dry goods merchant in Charleston. Betts, confined to a chair, is said to have finished the quilt, perhaps after his wife Emily Margaret Silliman Betts appliqued the center. Emily died at 28 years old in 1841. James never remarried and lived into 1875.