DAR Seminar Papers 3: Facts

From the Nadal Baltimore album

NMAH, Smithsonian Collection

The symposium topic at the DAR Museum in November was Culture & Technology in American Quilts so Lynne Z. Bassett also talked about technology, in particular inking on album quilts.

1847 from Cindy's Antique Quilts

These papers are not published but Lynne has written on the topic in the Massachusetts project book

Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Wealth.

"The argument has been made and frequently repeated that signed friendship quilts became possible...because of improvements in commercially available ink and the invention of the steel nib pen...." 

That argument is not supported by facts. If you go to her footnote...

"the best ink...was India ink, imported from China, which had been known...for centuries already. Even so, many women continued to make their own ink at home...."

From a quilt dated 1852

India ink did not deteriorate the fabric like this

"Inking designs on cotton cloth was not new [in the 1840s]; inkwork was a fancywork technique practiced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."

Lynne mentioned reticules, bags with inking like this English item dated 1810.

https://threadingthroughtime.wordpress.com/

Album quilters combined an older fancywork with patchwork

in their new-style quilts of the 1840s. There is no cause and

effect between ink technological changes and album quilts

Augusta Auctions

Well, who has been spreading this misinformation about manufactured ink being

the genesis of the album quilt fashion?

Signature on a moth's wings

Possibly MOI.

Get out your copy of Clues in the Calico,

my 1989 book, and cross out as shown on page 118.

Forget that first paragraph. The rest about inking still holds up.

Collection of the American Museum in Bath, England

Tomorrow: My Paper