The Indiana Wreath #1: The Quilt

 

Indiana Wreath pattern

See next week's post for the actual pattern.

I've spent some time working on a pattern inspired by the Indiana Wreath quilt pictured in Marie Webster's 1915 book Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them. The quilt, she wrote, is signed, dated and named by E.J. Hart in 1858.

Dust jacket picture with the central wreath &

 blue grapes from a later printing of Webster's book.

 Apparently this has been colorized to add blue to the actual 1855 quilt.

It wasn't a great photo to work with but I was familiar with several interpretations made in Kansas in the 1930s by women in Rose Good Kretsinger's circle. Rose hand drew patterns for her friends.

Kansan Emily Bigler began with the Kretsinger pattern

adding butterflies to the central vase.

 I used parts from various interpretations inspired by Rose plus others.

Four interpretations

My first attempts were stalled by lack of skill in C.A.D. (Computer Assisted Drawing.) I worked on my Photoshop skills and recently decided to tackle the pattern again. By then I'd found the picture of the actual 1858 quilt on the cover of  Rosalind Perry's edition of her Grandmother's book.

I was shocked to find it wasn't blue at all.

I bet Rose Kretsinger and her friends would be shocked too, although they

 might have read the book's description more carefully than I did.

Rose Good Kretsinger was a talented and generous artist who 

drew many patterns for her Emporia neighbors.

No mention of blue by Webster

Marie Webster did not give us much information about the maker. We assume she was from Indiana due to the pattern name inscribed on the quilt but E. J. Hart is a common name. I came to the hypothesis that the quiltmaker was Elizabeth Hart, born about 1825 in Pennsylvania and recorded in the 1850 census in Blackford County, Indiana, living with her father Adam Hart (1800-1876) and stepmother Mary. 

Her mother Rachel VanCleve Hart (1803-1848) had died two years earlier. This E. Hart lived about 20 miles from Marie Webster's home in Marion, Indiana. I assume she made the quilt.

An early Van Cleve dry goods store in Hartford City

Elizabeth Hart taught in the local schools when young. She's listed in later censuses as a housekeeper for family members. The Van Cleaves were successful dry goods merchants in Hartford City, Indiana. With family in the fabric business Elizabeth may have made many quilts. Looking at her Indiana Wreath you know this is not her first quilt---and probably not her last.

E.J. Hart about 1860, known as Libbie

From Xenia's paper

"E.J. Hart     July 1858"

1850 Census

Xenia Cord connected the quilt with the same Elizabeth Jane Hart and in a 2018 AQSG paper traced the quilt descending to William Van Cleve, a boy Elizabeth raised (born in 1858) and then to his daughter in Arizona; then back to Indiana where it was sold and is now in a private Indiana collection.

The 1900 census shows Elizabeth Hart living with the "adopted" child William and his family.

She died in Hartford City in 1904. 

Xenia's main focus was the popularity of the long border design, which she calls the "Vessel, Vine, and Floral Border." She wondered if E.J. Hart was the quilt's maker or its recipient, a good question as it was in some cultures a tradition to identify the recipient with an inscription.

In 1916, the year after Webster's book was published, mention

was made of the Indiana Wreath's appearance at an exhibit at the John Herron

Art Institute in Indianapolis.

That institution is now named Newfields.

The next reference I found in Newsapers.com was during the wild years of quilt trading in 1983.

Sandra Mitchell (1942-2000) was one of the leading dealers at the time, buying and selling with gusto. In the public relations feature above she has organized an exhibit at the "Home in Indiana" show in Indianapolis of Indiana-made quilts in her inventory including the original Indiana Wreath.

Sandra must have sold the quilt to collectors & dealers 

Jane and Henry Eckert, married at the time. Henry worked at the

 Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Read More:

 Xenia E. Cord, "Ohio, the Border State: A Regional Study of Vessel, Vine, and Floral Quilt Borders,"

Uncoverings: The Research Papers of the American Quilt Study Group 39 (2018)

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/aqsg-uncoverings/6/

Rosalind W. Perry, Quilts: Their Story & How to Make Them, 1990.

Cincinnati Enquirer, 1935

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Do see the results in my Etsy shop where you can buy the xx page pattern booklet for $x .

Below are the pattern pages.

Print each sheet out 8-1/2" x 11" and do note the inch-square scale on each page.

Just before I finished the booklet I did one more internet search to see if anything new popped up.

An up popped this picture with an Italian caption.

It looks just like the quilt on the cover of Webster's book but the grapes

are red---no blue in this quilt.

Then I realized it's on the cover of

Was it a really close copy? Many interpretations were made by quiltmakers like Mrs.

Horton but I'd never seen an exact copy.

"E.J. Hart     July 185?"

Rosalind and then me (Duh!) realized the photo with the red grapes was a photo of the original quilt.

The artist who illustrated Webster's book changed the grapes to blue.

The quilt seems to be in the collection of or on loan to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the photo from 2016. Click here:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_j._harts,_coperta_ghirlanda_dell%27indiana,_1858.jpg

In 1916, the year after Webster's book was published, mention

was made of its appearance at an exhibit at the John Herron

Art Institute in Indianapolis.

That institution has evolved into Newfields....

They also read the date as 1858.

That's as far as I've traced the original. It certainly would have been easier to draw the pattern with that clear photo of the quilt with the red grapes. I didn't want an exact copy of the original---it's all an interpretation of a great composition.