This edited volume showcases a collection of quilts made primarily in the United States before 1870 at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum (IQSCM). Chapters analyze quilt traits and quilt history from the colonial period to the Civil War period, especially as they relate to styles and makers of the nearly six-hundred pieces in this collection. Essays address how U.S. quiltmaking began as the province of wealthy households and then shifted around 1830 to the middle class; and they grapple with why it diverged at that time from its mostly English roots.
The preface acknowledges that IQSCM collector-donors and curators “sought out quilts that represent the finest examples in terms of artisanship and aesthetics,” and that the latter tend to be “family heirlooms” rather than “utility or everyday” quilts. Thus, “curatorial and collector bias have influenced the holdings,” and the collection “does not represent the gamut of American quiltmaking evenly” (viii-ix).
Historical themes set out in the introduction include the rise of technology that allowed quiltmaking to democratize; the spread of quilt styles through migration; the growth of the middle class; women’s work in textile mills; women’s increasing access to education, participation in cultural life, and involvement in consumerism; and the influence of decorative arts movements (1-7). Introduction co-authors Carolyn Ducey, Christine Humphrey, and Patricia Cox Crews write that just under twenty percent of the pieces in the collection were made before 1830 when “Quilts were typically found only in homes of upper-class and upper-middle-class women, who had the available funds to purchase expensive imported fabrics and the leisure time to spend on fine needlework.” After that, “Quiltmaking became a common pastime for many women across the country” (9).
The introduction also describes quilt styles that are the basis of the book’s five chapters, and notes the regional distribution of pieces for which there is any geographic provenance (about seventy percent): a bit more than sixty percent of these are attributed to the Mid-Atlantic states, about fifteen percent to New England, fifteen percent to the Midwest, and five percent to the South (9-12). Finally, the introduction notes the frequency of traits such as maker-inscribed names and dates, and various piecing and appliqué techniques, design layouts, border and edging styles, quilting styles (one quilt has machine-quilting, three are tied, and the rest are hand-quilted), and number of quilting stitches per inch (12-24).
Chapters generally consist of an overview essay that places a certain quilt style in historical context followed by essays on particular examples (often those with substantial provenance information) and “Galleries” (several pages with four-to-six images each). The first three chapters, “Early Spreads” and “Whole Cloth Quilts,” introduced by Lynne Z. Bassett, and “Chintz Appliqué Quilts” introduced by Ducey, cover U.S. quilts and related textiles of the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. Designs of these pieces generally were modeled on those of their English counterparts but with subtle differences, such as favoring yarn-conserving “frugal” embroidery stitches (43). Also, as of the early 1840s, U.S. chintz appliqué quilts began to take on more distinctive U.S. traits (135-136). While non-specialists may not easily recognize the pieces in these chapters as forebears of twentieth-century U.S. quilts, Bassett predicts, “Quilt scholars and enthusiasts will find it useful to analyze and understand textiles such as this [1816 embroidered blanket] bedcover, which though not quilted or pieced, offers insight into the design vocabulary of early American quilts” (43). These chapters compile current scholarship on the origins of U.S. quiltmaking, countering the notion put forth in less rigorous histories of the 1910s to 1970s that it was born of necessity in humble New World households.
Chapters 4 and 5 (“Pieced Quilts” and “Appliqué Quilts”) bear on how and why U.S. quiltmaking acquired a distinctive character around the 1830s, as both pieced styles (pieces of cloth sewn together to make patterns) and appliqué styles (pieces of cloth sewn onto a solid background to make patterns) diverged from Old World models. Major changes included: (1) preference for block sets (rows of same-size blocks) rather than medallion sets (center-focused designs), (2) emergence of new styles (album, red-and-green floral), and (3) individual creativity in developing myriad new patterns and variations on old ones.
Introducing “Pieced Quilts,” Janice E. Frisch relates the changes to “a shift in worldview connected to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution,” involving, “the emergence of Neoclassical design, changes in women’s education, and the development of interchangeable parts in American manufacturing” (191). While persuasive, this argument would be stronger if it addressed why such trends did not similarly affect English quiltmaking.
Introducing “Appliqué Quilts,” Virginia Gunn mentions another factor, this one particular to the U.S.: the influx of German immigrants (who had no Old World quilt tradition) between 1820 and 1870, their entry into quiltmaking and the U.S. middle-class, and their impact on new appliqué quilt styles that commonly featured block sets and pattern creativity. Also influential were traits of jacquard (figural) coverlets made by professional male German (and Scots-Irish) American weavers and fashionable by the 1830s (340-343, 394-396). In “Pieced Quilts,” Xenia Cord writes of another block-set German American style, Pennsylvanian fraktur (277-281).
Other scholars, including Fawn Valentine and Maggi McCormick Gordon, have associated traits seen in some mid-1800s U.S. quilts with African and Scots-Irish Americans, who were quiltmaking by that time amid living conditions and design traditions that in many cases differed from those of northerners and English Americans. Their possible role in shaping a distinctive U.S. quiltmaking tradition is not discussed here. According to the preface, future IQSCM publications will feature African American, Amish, and Mennonite quilts (vii).
The preponderance here of quilts made by northern white women of means apparently reflects the reality of U.S. quiltmaking through the early 1800s, but perhaps less so in the mid-1800s. For additional resources on the diversifying social base and aesthetic criteria of mid-1800s quiltmaking and for more quilts documented with provenance (facilitating study of regional trends), see the following: state quilt surveys (http://www.booksandoldlace.com/quilting/StateQuiltHistoryBibliography.htm); American Quilt Study Group Research Library materials, including the journal Uncoverings (https://libraries.unl.edu/american-quilt-study-group); and The Quilt Index (http://quiltindex.org/).
This generous volume testifies to the wealth of data available at the IQSCM and demonstrates its dedication to using its collections for cutting-edge research. In conjunction with its earlier volume, American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870—1940 (2009), it is a rich resource for quilt studies education and related courses in American history, women’s history, decorative arts, and textiles.
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[Review length: 1071 words • Review posted on June 21, 2018]