Nancy Page Quilt Column: Ghost Artist!

 

Florence May (Mae) LaGanke Harris (1886-1972) maintained a popular syndicated quilt pattern column in the mid-20th-century, despite the facts that she never put a stitch in a quilt and considered the whole idea of quiltmaking "laborious."

Florence was a food writer, a dietician and one-time teacher at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University. In 1919 she moved to Oakland, California for a Home Economics position, returning to Cleveland four years later as the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Home Economics Editor with a daily homemaking column focused on food. She also was a food editor at rival paper the Cleveland Press. Above she gives us her opinion about quiltmaking, an art she never took up.

"I have never turned a stitch on a quilt myself in my life."

Florence was a Cleveland native, growing up in this neighborhood at 13091 Forest Hill Avenue.

Her father Robert LaGanke emigrated from Prussia to Ohio in 1860 where he married Lillie Isabel Greene in 1883. Florence was educated in New York at the Pratt (Mechanics) Institute and Columbia University where she earned a Bachelor's degree in education. 

In 1923 she married English-born widower Frederick A. Harris (1872-1947) who was in sales. They lived here at 21180 Colby Road in Shaker Heights.

Drat! We missed the 1972 estate sale.

Florence wrote many cook books and served for years as telephone advisor for homemaking questions at the newspaper. Did people call about quilt stitches as well as soufflés? I cannot imagine Florence coming up with a good answer as to the differences between a buttonhole stitch and a blanket stitch.

D for Doll from the popular Alphabet Quilt

This non-stitcher fell into the quilt column business due to reader interest at the onset of the great quilt revival. The Nancy Page column ran for 17 years from 1928 until 1945 (Louise corrects me: 1927-1944), appearing in papers around the country and in Canada. The Tuesday column describing a fictional quilt club was attributed to the appropriately Colonial byline Nancy Page. (Certainly "LaGanke" would not evoke the New England ideal.)  I imagine Florence's contribution was the narrative and perhaps the choice of pattern to feature as she had a collection of antique quilts. Readers also sent in favorites.

The Nancy Page Club stories take a strange narrative position. Instead of just giving readers instruction we overhear "Nancy" talking to her club members.

Many of us are fans of "Nancy's" art and design rather than the instructions. Whether simple pieced blocks or more elaborate applique series the patterns are skillfully drawn and lettered. 

One signature style is the rounded lettering.

Rather up-to-date and simple.

Someone has counted 21 27 Nancy Page series patterns; the Swallow is from the "Quilt of Birds" series.

1931 Series pattern for the Garden Bouquet

When Florence LaGanke Harris was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame in 2022, Amy Korn wrote about her:

https://quiltershalloffame.net/florence-laganke-harris/

This was the first in-person meeting after the Covid lock down so the usual audience was not in attendance and Louise Tiemann's presentation about the column did not receive the notice it should have. We are going to call your attention to her findings and a different way at looking at "Nancy Page" here.

Do note that little squiggle in the lower right corner of the "Balloon Flower."

One of Nancy's popular series pattern Garden Bouquet

That is the artist's signature logo and the artist is NOT

Florence LaGanke Harris.

She had, not a ghost writer, but a ghost artist.

Cleveland Press photo of their artist Ann Kerven, 1925,

with her logo signature

Anastasia Kerven, 1913 Yearbook from the Mechanic's Institute

Illustrator Ann Kerven also attended New York's Mechanic's [Pratt] Institute. She and Florence may have met in New York or Cleveland or the newspaper may just have signed Ann to fill in the art that Florence had no interest in.

Ann did a great job. But all these years we've been thinking these graceful appliques were Florence LaGanke Harris designs.

Ann not only drew the signature series diagram with "a tall, slim voguish model" holding the quilt

but it seems quite likely she drew the designs and patterns too

Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1936

Note the signature at the top right.

It's time to start thinking about Nancy Page as two people----Ann Kerven and Florence LaGanke.

Summer Garlands 1936

I appreciate Louise Tiemann and Merikay Waldvogel (avid newspaper sleuths) for bringing Ann Kervin's work to my attention.

Silhouettes were a 1920s design craze. Here are two from an inhouse

publication where Ann worked in 1923; she's pictured on the left.

A little more about the elusive Ann....

1940. Ann at 30 was living alone perhaps in an apartment at 2894 East 132nd Street in Cleveland. No occupation listed. In the early '40s she married Robert Delahanty but he did not live long dying in February 1944 of a heart attack. UPDATE:  Louise notes she says that although she said she was 30 in 1940---people were allowed to be dishonest about their ages back then---she was 48.)

Robert's obituary

The Nancy Page Quilt Club column ended that year.

We need to give the artist the credit for the designs we have long admired. 

As Louise writes:

"I have always said the popularity of the column was due to the illustrations…when you look at a newspaper page…what catches your eye…not all the text, but the picture….then you read the article ….On a page crammed with text….the drawing of Ann Kerven stood out."

Alphabet Quilt

From Nancy Page (Harris/Kerven)

My favorite Ann Kerven---1931's Magic Vine,

which I made of plaids and pastels.