Museum accessions

Magazine Antiques, June, 1995 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

Transitional also in materials and design, the cover shows seventeenth-century influence in its use of crewel wools to embroider designs of flowering plants. It anticipates later silk embroidery in its use of silk to quilt the tiny diamond-grid pattern on the plain-weave cotton foundation, the small stitches, and the delicate rendering of the trunks and stems of many of the flowering plants. The motifs themselves display the rich combination of international design sources available in England by the second quarter of the eighteenth century.

The large medallion is the central element of the bed-cover. Dominated by an exotic tree with flowers and leaves that, botanically speaking, could never grow on the same plant, it depicts a landscape of rolling hills that culminates in a view of a city in the distance. Plants and animals fill the landscape in a manner that suggests that several sources might have been used to create the pattern. For example, the bird's feet seem to be awkwardly placed on the ground, indicating that it was probably copied from a source that did not include the free and the deer. The cityscape, conceivably representing Jerusalem, recalls the buildings often found in the upper corners of seventeenth-century English stump-work pictures.

The coloring of the hills is skillfully handled to give a sense of perspective. The tightly wrought stitches are worked in a regular repetition of colors, from brown through several blues and greens to yellow. The same series of colors is used for the earth in other elements of the cover, helping to unify the over-all design. The central motif is also tied to the one at the bottom of the cover (see below left) by the long-legged birds, which resemble those on Oriental ceramics and textiles, as well as by such small details as the coiled snake with its bright red tongue. The rabbit pursued by a small dog in the bottom vignette carries on the long tradition of hunt scenes in English art.

Another element unifying the disparate motifs of the bed-cover is the elegant flowering plant at the right in the photograph below, which appears (with slight variations in the coloring) in all four comers of the cover. With its exposed root system growing from a small hillock, the plant reflects a tradition that probably reaches as far back as ancient Persia. Its backward curving leaves are derived from Indian chintz while the frontal presentation of the flowers with layered petals is Chinese in origin.

Tigerware jugs made in the lower Rhine River region of Germany in the sixteenth century were commonly exported to England, where they were often fitted with silver bases, neck rims, and lids. The Chrysler Museum has acquired the particularly fine example illustrated here, which has rare silver-gilt mounts. The engraving on the neck band is exceptional, and very few objects with comparable engraving are known. Beneath the frieze, the band bears London hallmarks, the date mark for 1580, and "IWC" for the unidentified silversmith. The initials pricked and engraved on the hinge are presumably those of former owners.

Historic Deerfield's extensive collection of ceramic punch bowls has been augmented by the addition of the small, so-called one-quart, delftware bowl shown here. The exterior is decorated in cobalt-blue and manganese enamels with a scene that is known on at least a dozen similar bowls, and like most of those, the interior bears a band of bianco-sopra-bianco ornament and an inscription. John C. Austin has observed that this is one of at least four such bowls with inscriptions commemorating Britain's participation in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), including a virtually identical example in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, in Williamsburg, Virginia (see British Delft at Williamsburg [Colonial Williamsburg, 1994], Nos. 51-53).