Quilt, Pieced Fan

Date1886

Maker Anna Eliza Blackwell Clark (ca. 1859-after 1940)

MediumPlain, printed, and damask silks with silk embroidery threads

DimensionsOH: 86" OW: 75" (218 x 191 cm)

Credit LineGift of Dr. William Lehman Guyton

Object number2008.609.12

DescriptionThis is a rectangular show quilt pieced of plain and patterned multicolor silks against dark solid backgrounds, bordered by 9 to 10-inch red satin that has been mitered at the corners. The quilt design consists of 30 blocks, each about 11 to 11 3/4 inches square, with a pieced half-open fan emanating from the lower right corner of each block. The seams and some solid areas are decorated with embroidery stitches. The quilt is backed with red floral and wheat patterned silk damask in four panels seamed vertically. It is not quilted.

Stitches: coral, couched, cross, feather, fern, herringbone, knots, outline, and straight

Label TextThis jewel-tone quilt combines thirty repeated half-open fans, each facing the same direction, yet constructed of slightly different silks and outlined with a wide variety of fancy embroidery stitches. The resulting quilt relates to crazy quilts made about the same time, but the organized and regularly repeated fans give a greater sense of unity within the variety that was so fashionable. A handwritten tag sewn to the face of the quilt states that it was made in 1886 and identifies the owner as Anna E. B. Clark. Anna was the seventh child of Captain Benjamin Duval Clark of Baltimore and his Virginia-born wife Octavia Augusta Ball.
InscribedA cloth tag stitched to front of quilt reads "Made in 1886/ Anna E. B. Clark/ The St Paul Apts."
ProvenanceGift of Dr. William Lehman Guyton.
History of quilt maker:
The show quilt is said to have been made by Anna Eliza Blackwell Clark in 1886. Anna was the seventh child of Capt. Benjamin Duvall Clark (b. Baltimore, Maryland; d. 1873) and Octavia Augusta Ball (b. 29 Sept. 1827 in Lancaster, Virginia). The couple was married 17 or 18 March 1845, in Lancaster, Virginia (note 1).

Notes:
1.
Horace Edwin Hayden, A Genealogy of the Glassell Family of Scotland and Virginia, also of the Families of Ball, Brown, Bryan, Conway, Daniel, Ewell, Holladay, Lewis, Littlepage, Moncure, Peyton, Robinson, Scott, Taylor, Wallace, and Others, of Virginia and Maryland (Baltimore: Southern Book Co., 1959), 129; 1940 U. S. census, Baltimore City, MD, enumeration district 4-259, page 2A, Walter L. Clark household, NARA microfilm, T627, roll 1518, digital image as found on Ancestry.com (2012); and 1860 U. S. census, Baltimore Ward 15, Baltimore, MD, page 420, image 420, Benjamin Clark household, NARA microfilm, M653, roll 464, digital image as found on Ancestry.com (2009).

Exhibition(s)