Stuffed-work Dressing Table Cover

Dateca. 1800

Artist/Maker Elizabeth Roberts or Esther Morton Roberts

OriginAmerica, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

MediumCotton

Dimensions42 3/8" wide x 24 1/4" high

Credit LineGift of Beatrix T. Rumford

Object number1982-147

DescriptionThis is a rectrangular white cotton stuff-worked dressing table cover with stuffed and cord quilting in a design of an openwork fruit basket filled with melon, pineapple, peach, pear, grapes, strawberries, acorns, and cherries. The basket is surmounted by a laurel bough tied with a ribbon. Stitched in cross stitch in the basket foot are the initials "E.R." A casing on all four sides with a cotton tape allows the cover to be drawn up around a table top for a secure fit. At sides and bottom of cover is a 1 3/8"-wide attached fringe with eyelets at top of fringe. The cords on back are exposed where they cross each other.

Technical Notes:
Stitches: back and cross
Quilting stitches: 21 per inch
Top edge lapped 3/8" over back, overcast down, then top-stitched
Cotton thread: single ply "S" twist
Cotton top: 72 x 80 threads per inch
Cotton back: 33 x 40 threads per inch
Label TextDuring the last quarter of the eighteenth and first quarter of the nineteenth centuries, it was fashionable to own silk, linen, cotton, or embroidered covers for the toilet table. In the United States white cotton covers that were either stuffed-work quilted or embroidered in white cotton threads were especially popular. These covers were sometimes the products of young ladies who made them as part of their textile trousseau.

This example was worked in a quilting technique that is sometimes called trapunto today, and known as “stuffed work quilting” around 1800. Family history states that the dressing table cover was made either by Elizabeth Roberts (3/2/1781-5/21/1868) or Esther Morton Roberts (1785-1876) for her mother Catherine Deshler Roberts, the donor's fourth great-grandmother.
ProvenanceFamily history states that the dressing table cover was made either by Elizabeth Roberts (3/2/1781 to 5/21/1868) or Esther Morton Roberts (1785-1876) for her mother Catherine Deshler Roberts, donor's fourth great-grandmother. Both girls were born and raised in Philadelphia where their father, Robert Roberts of Welsh Quaker background, was a successful businessman associated with his father-in-law, a German immigrant named David Deshler. In May 1803 Elizabeth married James Canby and moved to Wilmington, Delaware. Esther Roberts never married and eventually moved in with her mother, Catherine Roberts, to Wilmington, where both ladies lived with the Canbys for the remainder of their lives.