Description:
Template-pieced, cotton "quilt" (although there are only two layers with no batting or wadding sandwiched inbetween) in a hexagonal mosaic pattern made with a variety of printed cottons cut and sewn into six-sided shapes. At the center top of the quilt is embroidered in cross stitch using black thread "ED Ellery / 1821" over "732000 Stitches / 9750 Squares" on two hexagons. This identifying embroidery could have been done later, and by two different hands, not necessarily Ellery herself. Emiline Ellery (1805-1865) was the daughter of Christopher Ellery (1768-1840) who married Clarissa Bird (c.1772-1811) in 1792. He was a lawyer; served as a US Senator from 1801-1805; appointed by President Thomas Jefferson as United States Commissioner of Loans at Providence in 1806; and appointed Collector of Customs of the state Rhode Island at Newport, holding that office from 1820 to 1834. Christopher Ellery's uncle was William Ellery (1727-1820), a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Newport certainyl had access to imported textiles like the printed cottons used in this example; America's own printed textile industry was only just beginning in the early 1820s. The fabrics range in date from the late 18th century to the early 19th century. The period's advances in textile manufacturing are evident in the cylinder-printed fabrics, some featuring mineral dyes like chrome orange, quercitron, madder, and prussian blue. Additionally, there is a variety of "dimities" (white cotton with a woven rib), and some copper-printed fragments of handkerchiefs depicting genre scenes and possibly commemorating historical events. There are both dress and furnishing fabrics, glossy glazed cottons, and common woven stripes. Emmeline considered the layout of her quilt carefully. Within stripes of printed cottons, dark and light colors alternate in diagonal or zigzag lines. The quilt is nearly symmetrical, with the arrangement of colors and stripes mirroring each other from the center to the outer pieces. In template piecing, each piece of fabric was basted over a consistently-sized paper hexagon, and then the edges were whipstitiched together and the templates were removed. The finished pattern was a overall mosaic similar to centuries-old tile work. In using this method, Emilene was working in the English tradtion of sewing patchwork, a fancy-work technique that was reserved for those with ample time and money for the expensive fabrics that were required. The first evidence of template patchwork appears in American near the end of the colonial period, around the mid 1700s; however, pieced quilts did not become common here until the 19th century. By the 1820s, template piecing was being superceded in the United States by pieced block designs cut and stitched without benefit of templates - a much faster, though less precise method, but one which opened up an enormous range of design possiblities. Hexagonal, template-pieced quilts like this example reached their height of popularity in the 1820s and 1830s, and are in fact still made today, known as Grandmother's Garden.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2002.32 |
