Quaker quilts from the Delaware River Valley, 1760-1890

Magazine Antiques, August, 1999 by Patricia J. Keller

In the waning days of March 1889 Sarah Levis Miller (1803-1890), a Quaker, began to write down her earliest memories. She was one of nine children born to Mary Levis and George Miller on the family farm in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. She wrote:

"Memory" goes back to many small Items - for instance, I remember Sitting - on a Stool at my - GrandMother Levis feet - & Sewing 'Patchwork "when I could not have been more than 4 years, or than 5 years. And that Bed Quilt, was quilted when I was 9 years of age.... The most of a was my own sewing. I was very fond of Bright colors.(1)

Like many girls in England and America, Sarah Miller was taught to sew patchwork for quilted bedcovers at a very young age. And like many others, her introduction to needlework was supervised by an older female relative. We do not know if Sarah's quilt has survived, but other Quaker quilts do - quilts pieced in floral and geometric designs from brilliant silks and roller-printed cottons.(2)

Quakerism advocated plainness of speech and dress and avoidance of worldly concerns that threatened to obstruct the "Inner Light" - the spirit of God that Quakers believed dwelled within everyone. This and other requirements were set down in the Book of Discipline, which was revised and disseminated over time.(3) Given these written principles of conduct we must develop a framework for reconciling Quaker doctrine with the recurrent presence of opulent and ornamental objects in Quakers' lives.

Despite the exemplary plainness of some quilted bedcovers belonging to Friends, as a group, extant quilts owned or made by Quaker women between 1760 and 1890 frequently feature luxurious and expensive silks in jewel tones, a kaleidoscope of brightly patterned cotton prints artfully arranged in geometric or naturalistic patterns, and exquisite ornamental quilting and calligraphy. How were Quaker women able to justify these elaborate bedcoverings within the model of Quaker plainness and simplicity articulated in the Discipline?

Both physical and documentary evidence suggest that at least some of the earliest quilts belonging to the Quakers residing in the area under the jurisdiction of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting were made by professional upholsterers and quiltmakers in Philadelphia or England. Accounts drawn against the estate of Thomas Coates show that in May 1721 his daughter Elizabeth Coates Paschall (1702-1767), a first-generation American Quaker, spent the considerable sum of two pounds for "a Quilt," which would have been payment for quilting services or for an imported quilt.(4) Later the same year payments were made in the name of Elizabeth's sister Sarah for "Quilting." These expenditures suggest that despite Quaker emphasis on a useful education for girls and the association of Quaker women with fine needlework, such work might be commissioned from specialism by eighteenth-century Philadelphia families - Quaker or otherwise. Certainly by 1739, eighteen years after the Coates accounts were filed, the services of professional quilters were available in Philadelphia. An advertisement in the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Gazette of August 2, 1739, offered "All Sorts of Upholsterer's Work, as Beds and Sacking Bottoms, easy Chairs, Couches, and Seats, as also Quilting, done by Joseph Stockdale."

Stockdale was continuing an urban English craft tradition of long standing. In 1688 Randle Holme, a self-described "Gentleman Sewer in Extraordinary to his late Majesty King Charles 2," included the following definition of quilting in his discussion of professional upholsterers' tasks in his Academy of Armory:

Quilting is to put Cotton Wool of an equal thickness most, and a two Silks, or a Callicoe or other Cloth undermost, and a Silk above, which is wrought in scrolls, flowers, & c. To keep the Cotton from shifting its place.(5)

By the second quarter of the eighteenth century imported professionally made English quilts were readily available to residents of Philadelphia and its immediate surroundings. The Pennsylvania Gazette regularly carried announcements of new shipments from England, such as the one placed on February 3, 1737, by the shipmaster John Stedman, whose store in Water Street offered "Blankets, Quilts, [and] Cotton Counterpains" among the many "goods from Europe, very cheap" available "direct from London."(6)

Documented quilts with a history of ownership in Delaware River valley Quaker families in the eighteenth century conform to Holme's definition insofar as they are of whole cloth construction, which is to say that the front is a single fabric, usually plain-woven silk or calimanco [ILLUSTRATION FOR Pl. IV OMITTED]. The backing material is typically block-printed cotton or plain wool, although in at least one example, silk was used for the front and back. With one exception, which is quilted with a backstitch, these bedcovers were quilted with fine, regular running stitches, typically using silk sewing thread. The quilting patterns regularly incorporate a traditional border layout surrounding a central element [ILLUSTRATION FOR Pl. IV OMITTED]. A double or triple line of quilting often defines the outside edge of the central element and delineates the various borders.(7)