Images(2)

Quilt, Pieced Hexagon with Copperplate Obverse

Date1850-1870, backed with ca. 1790 Copperplate

OriginEngland (probably)

MediumCottons

DimensionsOH: 76" X OW: 83" Copperplate Textile repeat about 34" Copperplate Textile width about 27 1/2" (as quilted)

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1973-4

DescriptionThis is a rectangular bed quilt pieced on one side with large hexagons in a pattern sometimes referred to as "mosaic" or "Grandmother's Flower Garden." The piecing consists of multicolor printed and woven plaid cottons with white plain-woven and striped dimity cottons. The pieced side of the quilt is backed with an earlier sepia-tone copperplate-printed textile that was probably purple or black originally. The print consists of two classical mythological scenes that include Neptune and Juno surrounded by a heavy border of flowers and C-scrolls. The first scene shows 2 females and a male in a wheeled vehicle drawn by lions with standing figures nearby and putti overhead. Another scene consists of a female and crowned male holding a scepter seated on a shell, with flailing horses and various figures in the water below with flying putti overhead.
The quilting is worked with cotton at about 8 stitches per inch following the hexagon pieces. The edges are turned inside and stitched with running stitches. The printed backing consists of selvage-width panels and smaller strips and pieces. The quilt may have been cut down at a later date.
Label TextThis quilt is an excellent example of reusing earlier materials. The nineteenth-century hexagon pieced side has been backed with panels and fragments of an eighteenth-century copperplate print in a heavy mythological classical scene.
ProvenanceTimothy Trade, Peekskill, New York, by sale to Colonial Williamsburg.