Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE

Wednesday, September 9, 2026

Crazy Cronies

You can't call this 1895 wool embroidered quilt crazy.

Or this one dated a year later.

Dated 1860 from the Rhode Island Project & the Quilt Index

A 20th-century example: 1931

This composition of hundreds of embroidered floral squares was shown years ago at the Columbia Gorge Museum in Washington. Perhaps a bit OCD but not Crazy....

Ruby? 1905

Collection of the New England Quilt Museum

Attributed to Emily L. Wiley Munroe (1823-1894)

Lynnfield, Massachusetts

Estimated Date: 1860s

Essay by Lynne Zacek Bassett: https://massquilts.org/Docs/Munroe_Essay.pdf

1910, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania Project & The Quilt Index

Jeanne Poore's Family

The style tends to be wool suiting squares or rectangles, often embroidered with hand-drawn florals and other images, rather than commercial patterns.

Donna Vitale's Inventory

Some vignettes were drawn more skillfully than others.

1899. Florals may look familiar.

1896

The same images one sees in truly crazy quilts.

Embroidered wool rectangle

Perhaps copied from published designs meant for crazy quilts and clothing trim.

On a silk crazy quilt

Butterick Needlecraft Pattern

Donna Vitale comes across these in her collecting trips.

None of the examples here is quilted, which would be problematic with the heavy suiting wools used for the squares and rectangles.

Volckening Collection, New England

The style is probably related to the craze for "postcard" quilts, swatches of suiting fabric cut the size of a penny postcard.

Tailors' swatch books must have been in high demand.

Above: Ella wants to trade rectangles with other

readers of the Civil War Veterans' paper The National Tribune

Rather than a postcard she suggests using an envelope.

If those popular postcard sized rectangles are decorated the embroidery is usually a name.

But this is a different style.

Tuesday, September 1, 2026

Yayoi Kusama: Thanks for her Vision

Yayoi Kusama died recently at the age of 97 in Japan. She was an artist focused on a figure---the circle. Her pumpkins were genius. Here's a tribute in some quilts she might have enjoyed.

The pictures have no information with them, just things I have saved over the

years as I am a fan of dots myself.

Stella Rubin's Inventory

See an earlier post on her.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/03/dots-very-nice.html

Monday, August 24, 2026

Text & Textiles: Embroidery at the Asylum

Lorina Bulwer

A look at textiles stitched in mental hospitals over the past 100 plus years. Lorina Bulwer of England had a lot to say and it looks like a lot of time and thread. This record of her thoughts is one of several finished pieces.

Lorina Bulwer

Collection of Norwich Castle

Agnes Richter had similar ambitions embellishing a finished piece of clothing---her institutional straight jacket---with her opinions and perhaps delusions.

A patient identified only as Myrllen created an embroidered

patchwork coat at a Knoxville asylum.

Collection Tennessee State Museum

Garment made by Myrllen

Arthur Bispo do Rosário (1911–1989), Brazil

https://rawvision.com/blogs/articles/the-finery-of-art-brut?

Art school project by Londonite Kate Daudy, a poem....

...perhaps inspiring New York's Representative Alexandria Ocasio

Cortez's outfit for the 2021 Met Gala.

British artist Madge Gill (1882–1961)

Madge Gill was not incarcerated or did she use words but a similar obsessiveness is evident in her textiles. She also produced many fanciful drawings on paper (a more mainstream art form that may contribute to high prices for her female-oriented work.) The photo is from Spitalsfield Life.

A piece of Gill's embroidery set a new auction record when it sold for $120,650 at Christie’s New York on February 26, 2026.

https://museumcrush.org/the-art-of-madge-gill-and-myrninerest-the-spirit-who-possessed-her/#google_vignette

See another:

https://newsletter-prinzhorn.ukl-hd.de/exhibitions/aktuell/precious-item-of-the-week/handkerchief/?L=1

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Kentucky Regional Design & The '33 Fair #2

Design for trapunto or stuffed work

Judges & the 1st Prize winner at 1933's Chicago World's Fair

Final Judges: Sue Roberts of Sears, Anne Orr and Mary McElwain, quilt pattern designers, and Beth Burnett of the Art Institute of Chicago. The stuffed work leaf quilted in the spaces between the stars must have impressed them.

Merikay Waldvogel and I have been studying the '33 fair and its quilt contest for years. See the bottom for posts on various aspects. We have come across many surprises and one of them is the history of the stuffed quilting at the top of the page, a compound leaf branch with feather-like leaflets.

Stuffed work quilting is unusual. One place we see more of it is in the hills of Tennessee, Kentucky and places settled by women coming from those states.

Kentucky silk star in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

attributed to sisters Ellen Norton Littlejohn and Margaret Morton Bibb,

made before the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation when the

Mortons were enslaved in Logan County.

So far two silk trapunto quilts are attributed to the women, the second is in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.

And we see variations on the quilting design in other quilts before the prizewinning quilt pattern was published by Mountain Mist in the mid-20th century.

Mountain Mist batting wrapper showing their Star of the Bluegrass

When the Caden sisters commissioned a quilt for the contest they must have decided on a typical Kentucky design. Margaret Caden, whose name was on the entry, did not make the prizewinner but hired contract needleworkers to do the stitching, etc. and never shared credit or cash with them.

It's not only the hired quilting that is indicative of Kentucky regional design but the star design seems to be too. Stars pieced of diamonds seem among the most common of quilts. But I'm surprised to find this particular arrangement is rather uncommon---before the 1933 contest.

Stella Rubin's Inventory

Corner of a mid-19th-century quilt with BlockBase pattern #3772: Four diamonds in each star point,

an uncommon pattern at the time. Such stars usually had 9 diamonds or more per point.

The Morton sisters quilt at the Smithsonian also is a star with four diamonds. The Met's has the more common arms of nine diamonds.

Silk quilt from the Eyestone family in the Illinois State Museum, last half 19th century.

Donor's mother lived in Kentucky.

After publicity about the winner in 1933 one finds many stars with a four-patch of diamonds in each point, some made from the popular Mountain Mist design.