Indigo Resist #2: "How Fools Rush In"

From a Skinner auction a few years ago.

During the 1950s, New York's Cooper Union/Cooper-Hewitt Museum textile staff & volunteers spent time studying these early indigo resist prints, considering the geographic sources of fabric and bedcovers.  Florence Montgomery of the Winterthur Museum remembered attending a Cooper-Hewitt (Cooper-Union at the time) Museum seminar in 1958 (it was probably in 1956.)

UPDATE: I see I misread this paragraph. Montgomery is talking about a second seminar in 1958 where they invited English textile expert Peter Floud of the Victoria & Albert to consult. Did Montgomery attend the Cooper Union seminar two years earlier?

A dressed bed from the Metropolitan Museum's collection in Montgomery's 2007 Textiles in America 1650-1870: A Dictionary Based on Original Documents.  

Following the Cooper-Union conference two Cooper-Union curators spoke at the ninth annual Williamsburg Antiques Forum in February, 1957, a four-day event at Colonial Williamsburg that attracted 600 fans of "the architecture, furniture and decorative arts of the early colonies and young republic."

The event was publicized in late 1956 with a list of speakers who

were experts on "Colonial" collections. The Museum and

the influential magazine Antiques were co-sponsors.

Calvin Hathaway of the Cooper-Union Museum gave a slide presentation:

"American Blue Resist---A Puzzling Textile."

Calvin Sutliff Hathaway (1907-1974)

The kind of print Hathaway was discussing...

Much admired for Colonial decorating whether cotton or fiberglass

as in this set about 1960

Hathaway showing a textile to students at the Cooper-Union, 

where he was a curator from 1930 to 1963. He spent his later years

 as a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until retirement in 1973.

Before his presentation Hathaway included a warning about drawing conclusions. "How fools rush in, " quoted Valarie Edinger, women's page editor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Hathaway's assistant Alice Baldwin Beer (1887-1981) also gave a presentation: "The Problem of the American Blue Resist." Ms. Beer had spoken on textiles at the 1956 Williamsburg gathering about a broader topic "Quality in 18th -Century Textiles." Her publications include the 1970 catalog Trade Goods: A Study of Indian Chintz in the Collection of the Cooper Union.

Valarie Edinger, summarized their talks: "While museums and finer Colonial homes of today have been happily using the blue resist as authentically American, textile experts have been scrutinizing the material under microscopes, studying old probate records, inventories and papers with a growing suspicion." 

Hathaway suggested blue resist is not authentically American but wouldn't commit himself to an actual geographic source. The experts were stumped, according to the reports of the papers. But were they really unsure or did they just refuse to give opinions on where the blue-resist textiles were printed? And if they refused to commit themselves to the obvious source---India---why would they be straddling a fence?

Recent IKEA sofa

Reproductions remain a standard decorating look.

It is important to recall the times in the mid 1950s and Ms. Edinger understood them well.

"Others are putting up a hard fight to prove it goes right along with other things Colonial."

Edinger outlined the problem:

Those putting up a hard fight refused to admit that a standard of "Colonial" decorating was not "authentically American" but made in India. The code here is "authentically American," in a time when anti-American hysteria was a tool of Senator Joseph McCarthy and other right-wing demagogues. By 1957 McCarthy was dying of liver cirrhosis.

He'd been condemned by the Senate three years earlier but in 1957 the Supreme Court was striking down some of his "loyalty oath" requirements, which were still in effect for many jobs. Was Hathaway hesitant to draw conclusions because of the political times, worried about espousing the heresy that an authentic American decorating mainstay was the work of foreign artisans? If we deny his hesitancy we  underestimate the political power of the Colonial Revival and the view of textiles as evidence of Anglo-Saxon and New England superiority.

Postcard showing the fabric use as bedcurtains in a Shelburne Museum room.

Captain Calvin Hathaway MFAA

Controversy over textile geography was a small event in Hathaway's life. In 1942 he joined the Army's Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Unit tracking stolen artwork and cultural items plundered by the Nazis and hidden in mine shafts and palace basements. His work there was awarded a Bronze Star. Did George Clooney or Bill Murray portray him in the movie "Monuments Men" about the MFAA?"

Philadelphia Inquirer

Hathaway died in 1974. This obituary mentions his Army service but no specific information about the
Monuments Men and their search for stolen art. Perhaps it was still an official secret 20 years after the war.

https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2017/04/24/calvin-s-hathaway-museum-director-and-war-hero/

Yesterday's post on Florence Pettit's influential ideas:

Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE: Indigo Blue Resist #1: Florence Harvey Pettit's View

Alice Baldwin Beer's Publications:

Trade Goods: A Study of Indian Chintz, 1970

Beer provided an extensive and detailed catalog of painted and printed quilts, panels and assorted textiles manufactured in India for the Dutch and English markets.

Alice Baldwin Beer, "Block Printing: Europe, 17th and 18th Centuries," The Cooper Union Museum Chronicle, III, no .5 (October, 1963 ), pp . 114-142.

Next Post: Testing hypotheses on the sources.