QuiltHistorySouth: Chrome Orange

Chrome orange sashing.

We call the color cheddar today.

Sara McLane posted this terrific Southern quilt on our

QuiltHistorySouth Facebook page.

Whig's Defeat quilt from the Alabama Decorative Arts Survey
shown in Bryding Adams's book Made in Alabama.

Dated 1854 from the Turk family in Monroe County.

Chrome orange for the blocks, a striped
Portuguese chintz with exotic birds for the border.

Our groupthinking about Chrome orange and its favor with Southern quilt makers last September invited a lot of comments. The blogmeister has cut and pasted some of the most relative comments dealing with technology, taste and trade and this particular shade of yellow-orange.

We'll begin with the blogmeister herself who posted information she read quite a few years ago.

TECHNOLOGY

The coloring agent:
"Over 50 years ago V&A textile curator Peter Floud wrote an article about chrome. A summary: Invention of the chrome dyeing and printing process is attributed to Englishman John Mercer. Floud wrote that Mercer suggested the use of the related mineral antimony to print yellow figures on a white background in 1817. Mercer soon figured out how to discharge a piece of dyed cotton to produce white figures on an orange or yellow background. Six years later he saw a piece of French cotton with a bright yellow discharged figure on a madder purple ground, “a novel style which excited much curiosity.” He then experimented with chrome in the same fashion. His biographer states: 'Mercer soon brought out styles having designs of chrome yellow or chrome orange on variously coloured grounds; and also for foreign markets, chrome yellow and orange grounds of designs in various colours.' "

Chrome orange and chrome yellow print with a figure that may once

have been purple. About 1825.

"Chrome Orange, a sample of fabric glued in ('tipped in') to a copy of William Crooks's 1882 dye book A Practical Handbook of Dyeing and Calico-printing. It seems a little dark in the picture but the acids in the book page may have discolored it.

Here's Crooke's swatch of Chrome or Canary Yellow,

again shading dark due to the glue or the paper.

Chrome yellow is lemon-colored, an intense yellow with a slight greenish cast.

From Bill Volckening's collection of Rocky Mountain/Crown of Thorn quilts

Kay Triplett directed us to the International Quilt Museum's paragraph on the chemistry:

"The yellow-orange color found in pre-1880s 'cheddar' quilts was produced with chrome orange, a mineral dye derived from crocoite, a hard, metallic element. Chromium, a by-produce of crocoite, was identified as a dye source by the French chemist Louis N. Vauquelin in 1797. Chrome orange was introduced as a pigment in 1809, and became popular in the 1820s, following the discovery of chromium deposits in Britain, France, and the United States.
Mineral dyes like chromium, also known as pigment dyes, were mixed with a binding agent, applied directly to the surface of a fabric, and then heat-set. The process was simpler and less costly than vat-dyeing, which required submerging fabric in a dyebath. In addition to a more efficient method, mineral dyes produced brighter, more colorfast hues than organic dyes extracted from plant or animal sources."

The caption goes on to read:

"The discovery, in the late 1850s, of pigments produced from coal-tar products—most famously, mauve—introduced the aniline or synthetic dyes that supplanted mineral dyes. Synthetic dyes were cheaper, more consistent, and safer, and by 1900, virtually all dyed or printed fabrics were produced using synthetic pigments. "

Sampler album in Miami Valley style dated 1912.

Sue Cummings identified many quilts this Ohio style,

most of which use chrome orange.

Many of us would disagree with that cut-off date as we see so much chrome orange in quilts reliably dated to the first 30 years of the twentieth century.

Sampler dated 1921 with plenty of chrome orange---

I'm guessing it's from New York based on the cat, the large date, the flag

and those red sashing bars. From Shelly Zegart's inventory,

Of course, fabric survives in the scrap bag for years after it's purchased but there is much evidence that Southern mills were producing chrome orange solids well into the 20th century.

1916 chapter on dyeing "conditions injurious to health"

"In America, high wages are apparently some consolation for evil conditions."

Flavin Glover sent this picture of an Alabama quilt

A bad trade with some collateral benefits to all of us who

like the color scheme.

Flavin Glover sent a photo of this unusual Alabama quilt a while ago.

Chrome is not safe.

"Chrome dyes and heavy metal relatives are quite poisonous. I read that by 1993 22 states had banned heavy metal colorants in industry. You start seeing colorfast substitutes for chrome yellow and orange in the early 20th century." BB

And I do believe you could buy packets of powdered chrome orange to dye fabric at home and put your own health at risk.

STYLE

Pennsylvania quilt in oxblood brown and chrome orange from

the Christ Collection.

Quilt with a rainbow of solid color stripes, including

what looks like chrome orange, dated 1883. The pattern

Joseph's Coat and that rainbow of solid shading are strong

clues to southeastern Pennsylvania.

We are interested in chrome orange dyeing because it helps us identify and date quilts. Quilts above from Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York indicate that quilters all over the country used chrome orange solids; it was quite colorfast and relatively inexpensive.

Another distinctively Pennsylvania style quilt signed M.C. Harter & M. Boyer,

1882

From Stella Rubin's inventory

Asherman family, Waynesboro, Franklin County, Pennsylvania

Jean Power took this photo of a quilt by Ellen Aycock Jones, York County,

South Carolina in the current exhibit at the McKissick Museum.

They are thinking about 1880---but Ellen lived till 1920.

Why not 1915?

Lynn Lancaster Gorges posted this Pine Burr from her collection of

North Carolina quilts.

But there is something about the way Southerners used the fabric. Chrome orange may have been a consistent product of Southern mills after the Civil War. and it looks to have been a favorite of Southern quilters in the same time period. The fabric is one clue in assigning a regional origin. As far as a date on the solid fabrics dyed with chrome orange: About 1840 to 1930---90 years is not much help. As far as a date on the style of quilts using solid color fabrics featuring chrome orange: 1870 - 1930. And we need to explore that further.

Joy Branham:

"Before we completely leave the discussion of chrome orange, I want to post this quilt which was made by my husband's great-great-grandmother Edna Cable Stanton in Johnson County, Tennessee. 'Big Edna' Stanton (she was six feet tall) was a midwife and farmer, widowed when her husband died in the Civil War. This quilt top, which was made sometime after the War, descended to her great-granddaughter Mara Branham, who had it quilted by Anna Stout in 1953. Mara always called it Shooting Star. I'm inclined to think that it started out as lilies and never had the leaves added!"

Joy posted another:

Collection of MESDA, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts

Attributed to Eleanor McCauley Atwater (1801 - 1872), Orange County, North Carolina

http://mesda.org/item/collections/quilt/1758/

Were those pale peachy feathers once bright red?

The caption indicates it was made 1840 - 1860, but that's why this discussion is so important. I just can't buy that date. Eleanor lived till 1872---even if she made it in her last year---it's still too early I think. Look at all her daughters & daughter-in-laws at Find-A-Grave. Based on style and fabrics--- after 1900, perhaps by one of them.

Pepper Cory posted this 20th-century quilt she bought

from a member of North Carolina's Lumbee tribe on line

The 20th-century synthetics are redder---

more a true orange and they were quite colorfast.

TERMINOLOGY

What's the best term for the fabric? Chrome orange refers to the dye; the modern "cheddar" to the color, which is also close to the shade of “safety yellow” that appears in highway paint. You probably want to be as specific to the technology as you can.

Pepper: "Cheddar is a 20th-century term for the shade. In the 19th-century and on the dye packets, it was usually referred to as 'golden orange.' "

Julie Silber owes someone 10% on this quilt sale.

When did the cheddar become the quilt term? Long-time quilt dealer Julie Silber wondered in a blog comment several years ago:

"When I first opened a store, specializing in antique quilts, in 1972, we could not sell a predominantly orange quilt to save our lives. NO ONE wanted them. It seems to me that in the early 1980s, 'someone' started calling that 'kind of' color 'cheddar,' and -- coincidence??? -- ORANGE quilts started selling. I was hoping you could tell me who it was and to whom I owe 10% of all those sales?"