Here's a distinctive applique pattern based on rotational symmetry,
a scroll-like center shape with tulip-shaped flowers on the north/south
axes and a complex leaf in the corners.
The photo (with a little color correction) is from the North Carolina project, attributed by her descendants to Mary (Molly) Frances Lynch Phillips (1868-1936) who lived her life in Yadkin County, North Carolina. They called it Palm Leaf, which is as good a name as any. Family and documenters date it to last quarter of the 19th century.
Here's her grave at Find-A-Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/.../1146.../mary-frances-phillips
The design is a good first pattern focus as we covered it pretty well on our Facebook page.
Bill Volckening posted an example he has donated to the International Quilt Museum because
they have another one in the Carlson collection in an almost identical pattern.
Bill's is the one with the extra parts floating in the bottom.
When documented by the NC project it was in the collection of the Wake County Historical Museum in North Carolina. Signed in ink: "Francis" on the reverse. Another photo tells us:
By Julia A Pearce, Randolph County
Collection: North Carolina Museum of History.
Identical to this one except for fading....
From Mark French's ebay store
We found several others with the pierced corner leaves and the tulip.
This one has been recorded several times, sold on ebay as from
Davidson County, North Carolina.
It's an exception to the style rule that the pattern is appliqued of solid color fabrics.
The background here is a white shirting and there is a red print in the sash. The tulip is
a little different too--more like a cotton boll (another topic-another post.)
Dealer Xenia Cord showed it in her booth at AQSG recently.
From a Brunk auction
Almost all the examples we posted were four-blocks,
which means those blocks are rather large---Molly Phillips's is about 35 inches?
And many of them had a pieced sashing.
Another from Mark French, a medallion format exception to the 4-block style. The 12 smaller blocks are missing the tulips. We decided this is probably 1850-1880. The greens in this well-washed and well-worn quilt are fading like overdyed natural dyes rather than the synthetics seen after 1880.
Then we got into the smaller blocks without the tulips.
Cathy Erickson posted several similar designs in album/sampler quilts from her collection.
No tulips but pierced leaves stitched in reverse applique and the scroll in the center.
The scroll like center often has a square in the center.
We looked for examples of just that center scroll in album quilts and repeat block patterns
but found none.
We did find several examples of the center with other images in the corners
like this one that Kay Triplett posted.
A relative
More relatives with flowers, pineapples and leaves from my Encyclopedia of Applique.
None have names and all were drawn from mid-19th-century albums.
From a Maryland album dated 1846
Maryland Historical Society collection
It appears that the pattern (without the tulips) first appeared in the Southern quilt style we call Baltimore Albums. The symmetries, techniques, fabrics etc. are a common aspect of these quilts that date from the mid 1840s to the mid 1850s---a narrow window of time. The blocks were small; there was little room for tulips.
Cathy Erickson went through the Owen Jones index to classical ornament published in 1856. The Grammar of Ornament groups decorative arts and architectural ornament by culture. The band decorations above are from Greek vases.
Owen Jones notes that most of the various leaf shapes do not represent any particular
plant.
"Being produced by one or two colours, they all depend for their effect on pure form; they have mostly this peculiarity, that the groups of leaves or flowers all spring from a curved stem, with a volute at either end...."
A volute---a curlicue
Band decoration reformatted in Photoshop for rotational four-way symmetry.
One could have traced a design four ways in 1845.
From a Baltimore quilt made for Sarah Shaffer Weiss,
sold at a Skinner Auction.
It would seem that this applique pattern developed in Baltimore about 1850 when seamstresses there were experimenting with applique designs drawn from classical motifs. The pattern was never very widespread but seems to have inspired more than a few quiltmakers.
The Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts owns this
sampler, recorded by the Massachusetts project that does NOT
look Southern.
In the collection of the American/International Quilt Association.
The four-block from the Carlson collection at IQM.
The design was revived about 1900---bolder, larger and with an added tulip to fill the blank spaces.
Four block without the tulip posted by Lisa Rue Dickson
Lucy Joseph Whitley Hardison (1862-1952), Martin County
North Carolina project
No tulip, no reverse applique.
Collector Sharon Waddell posted this quilt top
with a setting pattern similar to Molly Phillips's at the top
of the page. The scroll here is four hearts.
Source? Fading greens to dun-colored tan indicate after 1880....
Could be way after 1880, here's an ebay quilt dated 1943---familiar components.
May have been appliqued in 1927, quilted in 1943 as there are 2 dates.
The Palm Leaf would look good in chrome orange and olive-green solids.
Many of us make quilts as well as study and collect them.
It's easy enough to make a pattern of sorts in Photoshop.
Print this out on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet.
What Have We Learned From the Palm Leaf?
How important classical decorative arts were to what is often classified as folk art.
It's often silly to make a distinction.
Source?
And it is interesting how several of these Southern classic quilts first appear in album samplers in the 1840s' & '50s and then two or three decades later as repeat blocks.
Reproduction made by Susan Cummins Derkacz
of New Braunfels, Texas in 2001.
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