Indigo Blue Resist #1: Florence Harvey Pettit's View

 

About 25 years ago premiere textile dealer Titi Halle of Cora Ginsburg, Inc. published a pretty little catalog of their inventory...

Featuring this double-sided whole cloth coverlet with cut-out corners.

https://issuu.com/coraginsburg/docs/coraginsburg1995

Their information told us that these indigo print bedcovers were found in Connecticut and New York and at that time were called "Hudson Valley Blue resists," with the assumption that since so many  examples were found along the Hudson the fabric must have originated there. Their source cited is Florence Harvey Pettit's 1974 book America's Indigo Blues.

Florence Harvey Pettit (1909 - 1995)

Pettit had published an earlier book with an indigo resist print on the cover in 1952. America's Printed & Painted Fabrics, 1600-1900: all the ways there are to print upon textiles, a most complete history of world fabrics, all about the printers and patterns of America, & other things that went on from 1600 to 1900 

She lived in Stamford, Connecticut. As a fan of antiques and vernacular crafts she saw many examples of these out-sized blue prints in early bedcovers such as the one above about 40" square from the Buttolph/Williams house in Wethersfield, Connecticut.

Florence, born in Iowa, graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago and spent her art career as a sculptor specializing in cast metals and also as a fiber artist designing fabric, this resume tells us. Her textile specialty was block printing. She was also a critic, reviewing books and exhibits for Craft Horizons magazine (later American Craft) and an advisor to the Cooper-Hewitt's Friends of Textiles organization.

By 1979 she'd published 7 books on folk art and textiles, several

with husband Robert's photos.

She seems to have been good at capturing the look of crafts for Americans who were eager to make traditional decorative items in the 1970s. She taught children's workshops, e.g. this one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983.

From America's Indigo Blues

Pettit's dust jacket introduction addresses the mysteries surrounding the indigo resist prints. Her connection to the Cooper-Hewitt as a textile advisor places her in the midst of their continuing discussion of geographical sources for the blue resist bedcovers in so many local museums.

Next Post: More on the Cooper-Union/Cooper-Hewitt's history with the topic.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has this blue resist bedcover

attributed to Clara Harrison of Middlebury, Connecticut.

https://www.si.edu/object/1790-1810-clara-harrisons-resist-dyed-cotton-quilt%3Anmah_556453