National Recovery Act Quilts from the 1930s

 

The Know-It-Alls are going to be talking about quilts from the Franklin Roosevelt

years 1933-1945 in our Episode #21 premiering on December 14th.

I've always been a fan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and have quite a collection of FDR artifacts collected in the thrift stores of the 1970s. But no quilts---just photos.

Appliqued and embroidered quilt by Sarah Anne Bauers, 1934

The Minnesota project included this quilt commemorating the

1933 National Industrial Recovery Act (N.R.A) in their book.

The Know-It-Alls recently got an inquiry about NRA quilts so I looked through the picture files and found out some things I hadn't noticed before. One thing: There are two kinds of N.R.A. quilts with the logo and words on them. Some are patchwork versions of the Blue Eagle.

This pieced, gridded version of the NRA logo has been traveling

with the Ken Burns quilt collection.

Julie Silber Collection

Three N.R.A. symbols in a sort of tile quilt or free-form applique.

But first I should tell you about the N.R.A., the National Recovery Act.

The N.R.A. was a Congressional law passed in June,

1933, soon after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was 

inaugurated, part of his New Deal to get the country out of

the Great Depression.

The act had dramatic actions, suspending antitrust laws and

establishing fixed prices, wages and production quotas.

It also had dramatic effects, thanks to a terrific public relations campaign.

Ad agency artist Charles T. Coiner (1898-1989) designed

 the effective Blue Eagle logo.

Janneken Smucker found this Library of Congress

photo of NRA Head Donald Richberg working under a yo-yo quilt.

See her website A New Deal for Quilts:

https://newdealquilts.janneken.org/collection/

The new Nancy Cabot quilt column in Chicago's Tribune

designed a pieced Blue Eagle for the October 8, 1933 issue.

Katharine Mantle of Bloomington showed off

her version in 1934.

No picture but Mrs. Arthur Smith of Belleville, Illinois may have

used the Cabot pattern for her "Blue Eagle Quilt."

Katharine Bridgeman of Mount Vernon, New York

seems to have appliqued her eagle,

"A unique record of the New Deal and the Diminishing Dollar."

I bet those ever-smaller circles represent gold pieces shrinking in value.

Mercer Museum in Pennsylvania

Embroidered slogan in a crazy quilt attributed to Laura Brashears (About 1875-1959), 

Doylestown.

Mercer Museum 

Laura & Frank Brashears in 1906

Embroidered corners in a quilt in Sharon Waddell's collection.

A tribute to bi-partisanship with the Republican and Democratic

symbols from 1931 Kansas City Star patterns designed by

Eveline Foland.

Similar corners in a 1933 embroidered quilt with

a portrait of unsuccessful Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate

Elza Leon Mitchell. Does this quilt survive?

Look for a quilt with this guy in the middle.

Americans were encouraged to display NRA posters and banners

and they certainly did. There must have been a large industry 

printing the logo on paper and cloth.

N.R.A. laws gave hope to Americans that the government could do something to relieve the economic disaster. The Act probably marked a turn around in the depression but business resented wage increases, price controls and regulations. The Supreme Court struck down the law in May, 1935, infuriating Roosevelt and the New Dealers.

The short life of the The National Recovery Act is a clue to dating quilts that feature the logo: 1933-1935.

 The second type of NRA quilt is one that uses the printed banners and flags. 

Mrs. Otto Herbert of Burley, near Tacoma, Washington sent

this quilt to the Roosevelts in 1934. It's probably composed of

printed eagle images.

Hexagon quilt in the collection of the Warm Springs Foundation (?) in Georgia

 The quilter here enhanced the Blue Eagle but the logo

 looks printed rather than appliqued.

The West Virginia project saw this quilt of printed yardage.

A banner

Roosevelt Library photo

Quilt attributed to Braymore, Missouri---as there is no

 Braymore, Missouri--- possibly Raymore or Braymer

Quilt made in Menlo Park, New Jersey

recorded by the Arizona Project and the Quilt Index.

A good deal of yardage must have been printed. After the 1936 ruling much was probably sold at a loss: Leftover banners, etc. were a surplus that may skew the date with quilts possibly being made beyond the act's 1936 end.

One industry affected by the act was the bedspread business in the south. Wages went up

and production increased.

One of these bedspread mills created a N.R.A. spread

Fringed bedspread in collection of either Hyde Park

Library or Warm Springs Home.

Cullman, Alabama. 1935

The article uses the word quilt but I'd guess they mean woven bedspread.

And I bet you didn't know that the Philadelphia Eagles were named for the Blue Eagle symbolizing The National Recovery Act.

A label quilt from the Michigan project & the Quilt Index.

Perhaps a ribbon to be worn or a label.

Clothing carried a label that the manufacturers complied with

the program.

A few more mentions with no pictures:

Mrs. L McManus, Pineville, Louisiana, signed and dated hers

and took it down to the newspaper office to show it off.

Family of Mrs. George Hoerath of Kansas showed

her blue eagle quilt recently.

Sexagon Quilt in Savannah 1828

Patchwork cover of 6-sided shapes, pieced over papers dated

1792-1803, Newark Museum

In her 1828 will, 57-year-old Esther Sheftall of Savannah, Georgia left 2 "sexagon" bed covers to her 17-year-old niece Perla Sheftall (Solomons) (1811-1897). We'd call these hexagons, but Esther dying in Georgia, called them sexagons when she made her will.

"unfinished sexagon bed quilt"

Esther was from a well-to-do Savannah family. She never married and seems to have spent some of her leisure time stitching quilts, a pastime shared with her mother Frances. One of the sexagon quilts was marked with mother Frances's name and age. None of their quilts has survived to be linked with the makers.

 "Sexagon" quilt possibly altered or finished decades after the date inscribed

Mary Jones, 1812

Esther also left a "china bed spread with fringe" to niece Rebecca B. Cohen, probably 30-year-old Rebecca Benjamin Bush Shaftell Cohen (1798-1881.)

Rhode Island project & the Quilt Index

Possibly similar to this one of indigo print fabric often

called China Blue.

An early 19th-century quilt of small stars

To her oldest brother Sheftall Sheftall: a "Bed spread made of small stars," because her mother had made it for him. 

Frances Freidel Hart Shefthall (1740 - 1820)

From a miniature portrait

 

During the Revolutionary War father Mordecai was Commissary General to the Georgia militia and was captured by the British. As a merchant in the import/export trade in the port city he was affluent enough to use his own money to buy rebels' supplies. When Savannah fell in 1778 Mordecai (1735-1797) and eldest son Sheftall were jailed on a prison ship then sent to Philadelphia.

Escaping Tory-occupied Savannah Frances took her children to Charleston where she wrote her husband she was "obliged to take in needle worke to make a living for my family.” Times became so difficult she took in laundry to get by.

Perhaps those small stars in Sheftall's bed spread were pieced of scraps left over from the wartime sewing business.

Small stars in an early 19th-century quilt

Mother Frances was born in The Hague in Holland, emigrated to Antigua in the West Indies and then to Charleston where she married a friend of her brother's in 1761. (Her wedding costume---a wedding girdle and buckles left to niece Frances Sheftall in the will---is in the Georgia Museum.) 

Patchwork is one of many traditions the United States shared with Holland at the time, so Frances may have learned her needlework skills there as a child.

From Natalie Norris's Collection, Inscribed 

1805 Rebeckah Morrison

Frances, her husband and eldest son were reunited in Philadelphia in 1781, returned to Savannah and prospered in the small Jewish community. Esther was their youngest, born in 1791 (when her mother was 51?) Esther's father died in 1797; her mother in 1820.

From Susan Mueller's collection, pieced over papers dated 1800-1808

Sexagon was an uncommon name for a hexagon. Sex meant 6 in Latin; hex the Greek word and that's the term that has become the standard.

1808 Old Sturbridge Village Collection

Hexagons or sexagons

But there are other references earlier and later. 

Linda Baumgarten & Kim Ivey cite an 1808 will

describing a Sexagon quilt.

As late as 1887 Mrs. Scholz's entry was described as a 

Sexagon Quilt in the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair.

Perhaps she read this British magazine.

Read Esther's will here:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_American_Jewish_Woman/sOwcwe-OW-wC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=quilt

Cecilia Solomons's block

One more quilt link to the Sheftall family. Esther's niece Perla Sheftall Solomons and her daughter Cecilia signed blocks on an 1850s album quilt made for Eleanor Solomons, Perla's mother-in-law. Read more here:

https://www.judithwshanks.com/old_family_things/RIMbook_CH3_8MAR10b.pdf

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2022/02/miriam-moses-cohens-civil-war.html

Perla's chintz applique block is half out of the photo,