1912: The Old Quilt #2

Photo taken in 1912 from the Lund family in Taos, New Mexico.

Arizona's star was the 48th, added in February, 1912. New Mexico was added a month earlier in January. We've been looking at quilts date-inscribed 1912 trying to get an idea of what was happening when Marie Webster began publishing her "New Quilts," modern applique designs.

Quilters working in 1912 had many published patterns for inspiration, among them the Ladies'
Art Company catalog from St. Louis, which featured a popular pieced alphabet.

Collector Lila Laurette Carroll had to have this L quilt

dated 1912.

Quiltmakers might follow traditional designs passed hand to hand as in this strip quilt of diamonds set with double pink strips (strip patterns hard to show in magazines and catalogs.)

And then there are independent artists---

Made by Ms Gehman for Jacob H. Gehman in Lancaster County.

The Gehmans were Mennonite.

Quilters all over the country had access to mail order patterns but in some areas they put their own stamp on the style.

The date is hard to see:

Perhaps Ella ETH 1912

We might guess the quiltmaker was a Southerner although the regional clues are
rather weak.

Mainly her use of a triple strip sashing, no border and the solid fabrics she chose for the sashing.

Teal blue-green and a red that faded to salmon tan.

Quilt inscribed Flora 1912 made by Laura Jones Pressgrove for her baby daughter who brought it to the Tennessee project for documentation decades later. Flora called it Bat Wing. All solids in red-brown and teal blue-green. This pattern we might call Pickle Dish was not published until 1931. When Laura made it the design must have been passed around
hand to hand.

From the Brown Collection of Amish quilts

Holmes County, Ohio

98 Y?

1912

JEH

Amish quilters had developed their own style based on their household fabrics, wool and wool blends, which included a good deal of black and other fabrics more colorfast than the solid cottons of the time.

Applique was no longer as popular as it had been during the 1840-1880 period, but women in Darke County, Ohio made many album samplers using pieced and appliqued designs in traditional primary colors. The eagle in the center was often added to these quilts dated between 1880 and 1920.

Again solid cottons were preferred.

This one 1912.

Tomorrow: If applique was out of favor just what were quiltmakers doing

instead in 1912?

1912: The Old Quilt #1

 

"Sunbonnet Lassies" by Marie Webster

Ladies' Home Journal, August, 1912

English writer Virginia Woolf remembered: 

"On or around December 1910, human character changed." 

She was talking about modernism in general, but modernism in quilts may have occurred about a year later with Webster's series of "New Quilt" designs beginning at the end of 1911. Webster's ideas of new compositions and pastel colors were innovative at the time.

What was going on in 1912 before readers were inspired by her new ideas?

A look at some of the "Old Quilts."

Quiltmakers relied on traditional style,

here pieced blocks set on point.

Quilts shown are date-inscribed 1912.

1912 album nine-patch from Iowa.

But more often blocks were set on the square.

Fabrics tended towards the minimal: plains and woven stripes and plaids. 

Is this modern minimalism or just a reflection of the difficulties

printers had with the new, rather unreliable synthetic dyes for cotton?

Dyeing the yarns and weaving the pattern was easier.

Marie Webster in a striped dress in the teens.

And everybody was wearing woven stripes and plaids.

Postcard portrait dated 1912

From the West Virginia project

1912, Jessie Cleveland, Michigan Project

Some of Jessie's stars have faded completely, a frequent problem

at the time.

Certainly people were using the fashionable blue, red, gray and black

palette of the era for their pieced quilts (with accents of double-pink prints.)

And the new shade of claret, wine red.

I'm showing mostly pieced quilts because applique was relatively rare.

Very few dated 1912.

Amelia Felderman, Bellevue, Iowa

from the Iowa project

But quilters knew if you wanted a reliable red that would remain

fast after washing and light exposure (and even bleach) you had

to spend more and buy genuine Turkey red.

Turkey red prints with black figures were popular.

Quilt with inked names by members of a church

in Fort Plain, New York.

Solid Turkey red and plain white had been a popular

choice for name quilts/fundraisers since about 1880.

1912, New York

Did the quilters at the Zion Missionary Baptist Church

use a red that faded to brown? Or did someone still like

an old-fashioned color scheme.

Read Deborah Devine's Marie Webster and Her Quilts: Their Story

Paste this into your browser:

https://www.in.gov/history/files/Deborah-Divine.pdf 

Tomorrow: More "Old Quilts" with Regional Style in 1912.

Flora Delanica #9: Poppy and Botanizing

Flora Delanica #9 Corn Poppy (Papaver rheus) by Becky Brown

The corn poppy recalls some giants of early botanical sciences and their friendship with Mary Granville Delany.

Daniel Carlsson Solander (1733 – 1782)

 Portrait from a ceramic Jasperware medallion

Daniel Solander was a Swedish naturalist who worked with Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), the great scientist who formalized the nomenclature of organisms. Linnaeus gave us the two-part name (Papaver rheus) still used to describe biology. Linnaeus advised his student and editor to study in London where Solander found work at the British Museum.

Corn Poppy by Nancy Phillips in wool

In 1768 Solander and Joseph Banks accompanied Captain James Cook as botanists on a three-year voyage to the Southern hemisphere on the ship HMS Endeavour. 

Joseph Banks (1743-1820) at 30.

National Portrait Gallery

Joshua Reynolds painted this portrait after Banks's return in 1771.

Banks and Solander reportedly brought back 30,000 specimens from the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. On their own later excursions they added to British collections with plants gathered in Iceland and the northern latitudes. When in England Banks and Solander continued their work at the British Museum but they also worked and socialized at the private museum at Bulstrode Park. Margaret Duchess of Portland hired Solander to use the Linnean system to catalog her own collection. 

HMS Endeavour setting off on its voyage of discovery

Soon after the Endeavour's return Margaret Duchess of Portland and Mary Delany went to visit Banks "to see some of the fruits of his travels....[We] were quite delighted with paintings of the Otaheite [Tahitian] plants, quite different from anything the Duchess ever saw, so they must be very new to me!"

Corn Poppy by Ilyse Moore,

wool on linen

Margaret also hired German Georg Dionysus Ehret (1708-1770) as her resident botanical illustrator and her childrens' teacher.

Ehret's illustration of common poppies.

Ehret has a reputation as one of the" finest plant illustrators of all time."

He illustrated one of Linnaeus's publications.

Mary Delany herself owned Ehret illustrations of "rare plants at Bulstrode...impossible to describe the perfection of the drawing, colouring, and individual texture given to the leaves and flowers of each plants."

Aristocrat Mary Parker's 1756 portfolios with watercolors she

painted under Ehret's instruction.

"In the year 1749 I began to give instruction to the highest nobility of England, and in my whole life I have not been so prosperous as during the last years." Georg Ehret.

"Surely an application to natural beauties must enlarge the mind? This house with all belonging to it is a noble school for contemplations." Mary Delany on Bulstrode.

Corn Poppy by Barbara Brackman

Mary and Margaret were not dilettantes although they were amateurs in the sense of the French word's origin "a lover of....." They were lovers of science but they were cautious in making their enthusiasms and skills known.

The common wisdom at the time was that women were incapable of abstract thought such as taxonomies. Philosopher Jean Jacque Rousseau (another amateur botanist) who joined them at Bulstrode believed females should focus on practical reason (growing plants?). Did he listen as Mary and Margaret discussed their ideas on expanding Linnaeus's systems? Did he disapprove of the frankly sexual in Linnaeus's discussion of plant anatomies. 

Detail of Mary's passionflower

Many believed frank images of stamens and pistils too much for proper females.

After Mary began snipping and gluing colored papers as botanical illustrations Joseph Banks praised her work as "the only imitations of nature that he had ever seen from which he could venture to describe botanically any plant without the least fear of committing an error." 

An evocative portrait of Mary scanned in an old edition of her letters.

Interpreting Mary Delany as a late bloomer who began her "visionary" paper Flora Delanica out of the blue one morning in 1772.....

["Mary, at the age of 72 (yes, 72!)"

Someone's comment---obviously not someone in their 70s.]

...is to completely ignore the heady context in which she lived. Like Rousseau Mary was an amateur who loved the work. Like Banks she benefited from the conversations around the tea and sherry tables, walks in Margaret's arboretum and visits to the Queen's gardens at Kew to see new imports from around the world. She was a member of a studious and privileged group that included some of Europe's leading botanists and naturalists. If Mary had been a man and 45 instead of 72 she'd be getting a different kind of credit---the kind of respect denied to little old ladies across the generations.

After Margaret's death in 1785 her foolish heirs dismantled her Museum and sold the art, botany, animals, etc. in a 38 day sale in 1786, an event that must have dismayed her friend Mary.

The catalog disbursing Margaret's life work.

Poppy (Papaver rheus)

https://www.bmimages.com/preview.asp?image=01164355001&itemw=200&itemf=0001&itemstep=1&itemx=36

The Block

#9 Poppy

Photoshopped onto a light background

Applique on the diagonal to a square cut 10-1/2" or on the vertical center of a rectangle cut 9-1/2" x 12-1/2".

One Way to Print the Pattern:

Create a word file or a new empty JPG file that is 8-1/2" x 11".
Click on the image above.
Right click on it and save it to your file.
Print that file out 8-1/2" x 11". Note the inch square block for reference.
Adjust the printed page size if necessary.

I have a few poppies that come out in May when they feel like it---

they are biennials--- primadonnas in the garden.

Didn't feel like it this May.

A Little More Mary Delany

Spirae Solander, Mary Delany

British Museum

A red meadow sweet named for Daniel Solander in Linnean taxonomy

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1897-0505-835

When Margaret died in 1785 John Lightfoot, a member of the Hive, described the grief at Bulstrode:

"All her Domesticks are sobbing privately in Corners; but poor Mrs. Delany's Affliction is beyond Expression..."

Further Reading

At Bulstrode Park and back in London Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander worked on their Florilegium  cataloging hundreds of specimens but Solander died suddenly in 1770 and Banks never finished the work. It was published in 1980 as Banks's Florilegium.

https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/topic/576

Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science (2008). Joseph Banks is Chapter 1.

Preview: 

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Age_of_Wonder/sSLJnGMUw9wC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=banks

Andrea Wulf’s The Brother Gardeners (2008) That's not a Mary Delany Magnolia Grandiflora on the cover.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/194382/the-brother-gardeners-by-andrea-wulf/

Banksia from the Florilegiumby artist Sydney Parkinson

 who sailed on the Endeavour and died on the voyage.

An odd name for an odd Australian plant but now you know the name's source.

Banksia's flower