Faded grapes. Surely, they were once purple.
We've been looking at purple in July in our 6KIA Facebook group
Kris Dreissen posted details of a top with different purples fading in different ways.
The seaweed stripe may have been engineered to fade in rainbow shades of brown.
The small ditsy print's spotting to brown was not planned but typical.
We looked at purple silks and wools. Purple dyes in animal fibers have been well documented in books about coal-tar, synthetic dyes. See Simon Garfield's Mauve.
Purple in the cellulosic fiber cotton, hasn't the same drama or documentation. Here's a review of our discussion about madder purple cottons:
For centuries dyers have known how to obtain a variety of colors depending on the
metal salt mordants used with madder root...
...from purples on the left to reds and browns.
The problem with purple cotton prints is they faded.
One mill had a reputation for the best purples: Thomas Hoyle & Sons' Mayfield Printworks in Manchester, England.
Collection of the Manchester School of Art
"Hoyle's Lilac"
In our Facebook posts British chemist and seamstress Carolyn Gibbs considered the causes, information expanded upon here. See her site where she teaches techniques and history.
Hoyle's printworks were in Mayfield.
Mayfield Print Works
Mayfield, once a separate town, is now part of Manchester
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The Victoria & Albert Museum has a scrap of a printed plaid Hoyle's Lilac (1810-1815) with identification stamp in the selvage. Their photo is flipped.
The Cartwright Quilt from the British Quilters Guild Collection, About 1860.
Variations in purple prints are abundant in British quilts, indicating
how many scraps of lilac from Hoyle's or other mills were leftover from garment making.
In class-conscious Britain a subdued purple calico was considered the
appropriate garment for those in the lower orders, particularly servants and the poor.
Servant Hannah Cullwick's dress was probably a print in a muted shade of purple. Advice in 1860 for dressing a poor family: "The elder girl would require three frocks...Hoyle's lilac prints are the best."
What made Hoyle's purple prints best? Reporter George Dodd told us of all the steps he observed in obtaining a purple cotton at the Mayfield Printworks.
"The soap used must be exceedingly neutral. That used by the celebrated firm of Thomas Hoyle and Co., of Manchester, consisted of the best curd soap remelted with palm-oil, and to this simple expedient their well- known success in the production of madder-purples was mainly due."
The unusual fading effect:
The border applique has consistently faded more than the setting squares of the same print. The first thought: The border was subject to a different amount of light which has an effect on these purples. One often sees a faded border where the sunshine hits the quilt through the window daily. But this border has faded in similar fashion on all four sides.
Carolyn Gibbs' remarks on seeing Lenna's quilt: "Very Strange." And indeed it is.
Dana Auctions
So what has happened??? It may be that the prints' figures are identical but color is slightly different as shown in this sample book with two close purples as two options.
Or it may be that one fabric is a pirated version of the other made by a different mill. Perhaps the copyright ran out on the original and the design was in the public domain. It seems the American quiltmaker used two dye lots, varied runs of the same print, maybe both from the same mill with subtle differences. Or it may be the yardage was printed on different days and under different supervision.
And using different soap.
British Quilters Guild Collection
Thanks, Carolyn, for the careful reading and analysis.
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