Baltimore album quilts

Magazine Antiques, March, 1994 by Jennifer F. Goldsborough

Nineteenth-century American quilts are known the world over for their beauty and inventiveness. Most highly regarded of all are the exquisite album quilts made in Baltimore, Maryland, between about 1846 and about 1854. These are characterized by exceedingly complex, delicately layered appliques and other intricate needlework techniques; a highly developed sense of balance and color; the clever and sophisticated use of unusual fabrics; beautifully inked inscriptions recording hundreds of names; and intriguing geometric and pictorial designs representing baskets of fruits and flowers, local landmarks and buildings, ships, and human figures. As extraordinary works of textile art, Baltimore album quilts rank with the unicorn tapestries of medieval Europe.

Baltimore album quilts were first identified by William Rush Dunton Jr. in Old Quilts (Catonsville, Maryland, 1946). They were brought to international attention in the early 1980's in a major traveling exhibition and accompanying catalogue entitled Baltimore Album Quilts, by Dena S. Katzenberg. Her study located about fifty examples, and recent research has turned up another 250 or so pictorial album and closely related quilts, thus providing a much larger sample from which to draw conclusions. In addition, exhibition records from the Maryland Institute fairs for the relevant years have been explored, period letters and diaries referring to album quilts have been located, the genealogy of hundreds of names inscribed on or associated with the quilts have been researched, and other period resources have been examined. Together, this information has provided a much clearer picture of who designed and made these quilts.

Baltimore album quilts seem to have developed as a result of four influences. First, the name itself comes from the popular early nineteenth-century custom among girls and young women of assembling verses, watercolors, drawings, signatures of friends, pressed flowers, and other mementos into scrapbooks, or albums. Album quilts represent the same concept using cloth squares. The second factor was the fashion for broderie-perse quilts among Marylanders of British descent during the first four decades of the century. On these quilts a piece of printed chintz was cut up and "exploded" into a symmetrical design of appliqued flowers and birds, often with a central medallion. The third factor was the popularity of geometric, cut-paper-patterned quilt squares in red and green calico among those of Pennsylvania-German heritage in the 1840's.(1) The English appliqued chintz tradition and the German red-and-green block style merged in Baltimore, where the population at mid-century was almost evenly divided between those of British and Germanic backgrounds. The fourth ingredient was the bustling port itself, where quantities of delicious new fabrics were shipped in almost daily. Baltimore women could feast their senses on a wider variety of fine fabrics than could be found almost anywhere else on this side of the Atlantic. Maryland's own rapidly developing textile mills also encouraged the exploitation of fabrics. It is perhaps also important that many traditional handicrafts seem to have experienced something of an efflorescence just before mechanization: sewing machines were first widely advertised for sale in Baltimore in 1855 and evidently helped end the craze for Baltimore album quilts.

One of the most tantalizing features of Baltimore album quilts is the names inscribed on them, sometimes accompanied by poetry, songs, or verses from the Bible. It would be nice to think that each name represents the woman who designed and sewed the square on which her name is found. However, in the few cases where a name appears on more than one square, the squares differ from each other in both taste and workmanship. Some names are those of men, while others represent children who were probably too young to have produced the squares. Moreover, perhaps as many as eighty percent of the inscribed names were exquisitely penned by the same hand. Thus little can be concluded about the hundreds, if not thousands, of names that appear on these quilts, except that they do not universally refer to the person who worked the square. By contrast, the very few names or initials worked in cross stitch on the quilts probably represent the needlewoman who sewed the square.

Research into the lives of the people named on Baltimore album quilts reveals that in general they represent a cross-section of Baltimore's middle class: they were neither the very old nor the very young, the very rich nor the very poor. Many were still unmarried, while others had substantial responsibilities towards children, husbands, and homes. Some were illiterate, some had fine educations.

A strong connection between Baltimore album quilts and the early Methodist movement in Baltimore was detailed by Katzenberg more than a decade ago.(2) Many of the quilts she studied are inscribed with the names of women who were associated with each other through early Methodist Sunday schools, and many of the quilts are known to have been given to Methodist ministers as farewell presents or tokens of esteem (see Pl. V). With more examples to study, we have come to realize that Baltimore album quilts may also be associated with other denominations, especially the German Reformed Church. There are a very few with Roman Catholic affiliations, while the single quilt that has been published as including Jewish motifs actually depicts Masonic or temperance symbols.(3) Quilts made by women in the Episcopal Church, which evolved from the established colonial Anglican Church, and from the Presbyterian Church founded by Baltimore's early Scots-Irish merchant princes, are notable for their absence, probably due to the high social and economic status of these congregations rather than to any religious scruples about quilting. Unquestionably, church groups, which were one of the few acceptable opportunities for women to gather regularly in the mid-nineteenth century, played a role in the creation of many quilts.