Description:
Cotton whitework quilt that has a tag on the quilt inscribed: "Quilted spread. / Designed and wrought by / Mary R. Goodrich Whiting [in] 1840." In 1840, Mary R. Goodrich Whiting (1815-1902) married Calvin Whiting (1812-1884); the quilt was probably made the quilt in preparation for her impending marriage. Calvin Whiting became the manager of the Massassoit Paper Mill in Holyoke where they lived. In 1895, Mary Goodrich Whiting and her two daughters, Margaret C. Whiting (1860-1946) and Julia Draper Whiting (1843-1916), moved to Main St., Deerfield. The quilt consists of a plain weave face fabric and slightly coarser matching plain weave backing fabric with a thin layer of cotton batting in between. The quilting design includes center basket of flowers, birds and individual flowers; an undulating feather design and floral sprays around the four edges; a background of vertical lines, spaced about 1/4" apart; and bound on all four sides with matching cotton braid. Both loom-quilted and and hand-quilted versions of what is now referred to as whitework (white quilts with white embroidery or surface design) were widely available in American during the 18th and 19th centuries. Current scholarship suggests that the contemporary use of the the term 'marseille' referred only to quilting done on the loom, while hand-made examples were referred to as a 'white quilt' or 'white quilted counterpane.' The whitework quilts evolved out of the intricately quilted, stuffed, and embroidered bed quilts, petticoats, and waistcoats produced in France, India, and England in the 17th and 18th century. Called "marseille" after the port through which the French quilting was exported, this work was replicated by the drawloom in a technique patented in 1745. Improvements throughout the 1760s to this quilting accomplished "in the loom" led to the general availabliliy of the fabric, sold as yardage or made up into garments, by the 1770s. The designs of Marselle quilts produced in the loom were based on the traditional handmade marselle bedcovers made in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The neoclassical whitework quilts inspired by the machine-woven examples also display the framed center medallion designs, often with realistic and elegant floral motifs. Both stuffed and embroidered versions of all-white bedcovers were popular during the first third of the 19th century. Stuffed whitework quilts, such as this example, were often made to be included in a bride's wedding outfit, and were particularly prized because of the amount of labor that went into them. Although more difficult to keep clean, white domestic textiles, especially those made from cotton, could be easily laundered.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+F.196 |
