Crazy Fads Come and Go But This One Lingers On

 

QUESTION: I have a crazy quilt that once belonged to my great grandmother. It’s been lovingly cared for by her daughter and then her daughter’s daughter, my mother, who’s now getting up in years. When she downsized to move to a retirement home, she gave the crazy quilt to me. I love the intricate designs, but, otherwise, I don’t know much about it. Can you tell me more and perhaps tell me how I can take care of it? It’s in good condition, but I can see that it’s somewhat delicate.

ANSWER: Your crazy quilt is the result a fad that began in the United States nearly a century and a half ago, roughly from 1875 to 1900. As with many country quilts, it became a way for women to use up their extra scraps of cloth or fabric from worn-out clothes. But crazy quilts were also a form of self-expression, much like samplers were a century before. 

Victorian women created crazy quilts like giant jigsaw puzzles, made of irregular pieces of silk, satin, velvet, or plush fabric sewn onto a solid backing of a lighter material, then decorated with embroidery stitches. Many became sentimental diaries stitched with names and legends while others took on the look of nostalgic stitched scrapbooks filled with memorabilia commemorating events, story book characters, garden flowers, even family pets. Women often made them as gifts to a bride or to someone recovering from a severe illness. Others made them in memory of a loved one who had recently passed.

Scraps for these elaborate quilts often came from ball gowns, opera capes, or the parlor curtains. But women could also buy packages of scraps from the Montgomery Ward or Sears Roebuck catalogs. The Singer Sewing Machine Company used crazy quilts as a symbol on their trade cards. Women's magazines of the day offered directions for making crazy quilts as table covers along with patterns for decorating them. Silk manufacturers promoted the use of their scrap waste in making crazy quilts. Magazine publishers also offered booklets on making crazy quilts as premiums in exchange for subscriptions to their periodicals. 

The word crazy in this case actually means irregular, odd, bizarre, strange, or unusual, and perfectly describes these quilts. Some look like a haphazard collection of odd bits of cloth and memorabilia while others are more like abstract works of silk art in shimmering colors reflecting light.

Since crazy quilts are more often tufted rather than quilted, they should be called "throws." Victorian housewives often threw them over parlor tables and pianos, as well as sofas or beds. They were the perfect complement to the ornately carved overstuffed furniture and bric-a-brac of every sort adorning  table tops, etageres, and mantels in the Victorian parlor.

Some historians believe the Victorian crazy quilt may have originated as a result of the popularity of Japanese prints or screens after the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876. Others wonder if their fractured designs may have been taken from the pattern of an uneven pavement or cracked ice, a popular decorative border used from the late 1870s through the 1880s.

Likewise, women often copied the patterns painted and embroidered on crazy quilts from Japanese ones. Many crazy quilts display a cranes standing in pools of water, owls and peacocks perched on gnarled tree branches, kimono clad figures, butterflies and cherry blossoms, hanging lanterns and spider webs. 

And since not every woman was artistically talented, makers of crazy quilts could purchase pre-stamped patches or would trace designs from magazines. The Ladies Home Journal offered as a premium to readers bringing in 16 new subscribers a “Crazy Patchwork Outfit,” consisting of 12 pre-stamped pieces of silk, one box of stamping powder, twelve skeins of embroidery silk, and a glittering array of two dozen spangles and two yards of tinsel cord.

Women's magazines also offered how-to instructions for the three basic embroidery stitches---the outline, Kensington, and plush. The outline stitch, also known as the stem stitch, formed a thread line as in a drawing. The Kensington stitch enabled crazy quilt makers to fill in their outlines using various colors. And the plush stitch produced areas of cut silk thread like a pile carpet. 

Quilt makers used embroidery stitches not only along the edges of patches to decorate them and at the same time hold the edges under and in place but also to make designs. Those who lacked embroidery skills could purchase pre-embroidered appliques. Some crazy quilt makers further embellished their creations with painted designs on the fabric after they assembled their quilts. Sequins, beads, spangles, metallic braid, and ribbon were also popular forms of embellishment.

Crazy quilts aren’t as durable as regular quilts. They won’t survive daily folding and shouldn’t be used as throws where they’ll be handled a lot. But they can be mounted on a frame or encased in plexiglass and hung on a wall. Both dry cleaning and wet cleaning damages them, so the only safe way of cleaning them is to use a low power vacuum held well away from the fabric which has been covered with some sort of mesh screening—an old window screen will do—to prevent the fabric from being sucked up and damaged.

Unlike regular quilts, women who made crazy quilts usually signed them. Many have been passed down through generations in a family.

Prices for crazy quilts range from $50 for an average small one to as much as $1,000 for a large exceptionally stitched one. Because their prices are relatively low in comparison with fine 19th-century quilts, many most likely remain hidden away in attic trunks waiting to be discovered.

For more information on caring for old quilts, read “Caring for Antique Quilts” in #TheAntiquesAlmanac. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Sparkling World of Glass" in the 2021 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Fulfilling the Need for Warmth and Comfort

QUESTION: On a recent road trip through the Southwest, I stopped at a flea market in Arizona where I found an old Indian blanket in black and white on a red background which I purchased for my bed back home. It looked to be in good shape and the price was right. Can you tell me which tribe may have made it and perhaps how old it is?

ANSWER: While your blanket may look like it had been made by one of the Native American tribes in the area, it actually wasn’t. Contrary to what most people think, blankets like this—known as American Indian trade blankets—were commercially machine-woven for the Native American market. Prior to the production of these blankets, Native Americans provided  warmth for themselves using natural materials and traditional weaving techniques.

Native Americans had long engaged in intertribal trading for useful items, but it was the colorful European goods that caught their attention. Over time, traders upgraded their goods from beads, looking glasses, and fish hooks to more practical items such as metal axes and cookware, flintlock rifles, and blankets. To trade a beaver skin or two for a durable woolen European blanket seemed fair to 18th and 19th-century Native Americans. Making a robe from an elk, deer, or buffalo hide was a time consuming, labor intensive process.

It was the French traders who began trading blankets as a result of their insatiable need for beaver pelts in the early l7º-century in the St. Lawrence River area. By 1780, the British Hudson's Bay Company soon followed suit.

Blanket trading soon spread across America. The Hudson's Bay Company shipped hundreds of blankets to St. Louis, the last supply outpost for those venturing westward in the 1820s and 1830s. While those heading to the Rocky Mountains trapped their own beavers, those going north into the Upper Missouri region traded for beaver pelts with the Native Americans

The early Hudson's Bay Company trade blankets were a solid color with a wide darker band near each end. They sold their thick, striped blankets to trappers who, in turn, traded them to the Blackfeet and Northern Plains Indians.

Like any successful product, Hudson's Bay Company trade blankets attracted imitators. While some copied the Bay's blanket style, especially the bright multicolor pattern introduced around 1820, other companies duplicated geometric Indian designs.

By 1845 there were dozens of woolen manufacturers in America, but only 11 who made blankets, and just one, the Buffalo Manufacturing Company, which made Indian-style blankets.

The introduction of the Jacquard loom in the 1880s created a boon to the blanket business. It enabled blankets to have two sides and launched what historians and collectors call the 'Golden Age" of the American Indian trade blanket that lasted from 1880 to 1930.

Eventually, five major woolen mills began making Indian trade blankets in the United States during the latter part of the 19th century—J. Capps and Sons, Oregon City Woolen Mills, Buell Manufacturing Company, Racine Woolen Mills, and Pendleton Woolen Mills. Another, the Beacon Manufacturing Company of North Carolina, made Indian-style blankets for the American consumer.

Of the above makers, Pendleton is the most familiar label. It’s also the only one still in existence. The company credits its early success to marketing its blankets directly to Native American reservations through trading posts and producing colors and designs acceptable to specific tribes.

By the late 19th century, most Native Americans had settled on reservations. Trading posts became the distribution points for food, jewelry, clothes and, of course, blankets. Through the trading posts, the English and American woolen mills found a built-in market for their blankets, the quality and designs of which Native Americans appreciated. Eager to please their Native American customers, many mills sent designers to live among the Indians in order to learn what designs and colors would appeal to the different tribes and pueblos across the United States and Canada. From the beginning, Pendleton produced high-quality blankets that eventually became the favorite among Native Americans.

Unlike Europeans, many native people became bonded with their blankets day and night. The fact that they were made by someone else made no difference.

They gave blankets as gifts to celebrate births, marriages, and christenings. They also used blankets to pay off debts, to show gratitude, or to indicate status. And some used them to provide temporary shelter, as curtains or awnings, or for warmth and adornment. Native Americans cradled their babies in blankets, danced in blankets, and were often buried in blankets.

The name Pendleton became a universal and generic name for any of these distinctively patterned blankets, even those made by other mills. Today, collectors seek out pre-World War II blankets for their light weight and warmth.


To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about  the Industrial Age n the 2020 Winter Edition, "The Wonders of the Industrial Age," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Cottage Charm

QUESTION: I have a cabinet that seems to be handmade. One of its drawers has three compartments side by side and one in the back for silverware. The other drawer doesn’t have compartments but does have slots cut into it as if there were slats at one time. There are three shelves in the base of the cabinet. What I am curious about is the fact that the top slants to the back. At first I thought it was the way it was sitting, but after moving it several times I noticed that it’s made that way. The top narrows slightly at the sides from front to back. I have never come across anything like this and was wondering if there was a reason behind the slanting or if someone just had poor craftsmanship! I appreciate any information you can offer.

ANSWER: What you have is a Victorian sideboard. This style is known as Cottage Victorian. Sideboards had been around since the 16th century. They were made to serve food and hold table linens, serving pieces, and flatware. In smaller Victorian cottages, there wasn’t a lot of room. Many didn’t have a formal dining room, but just a dining area in the parlor. So that’s why your sideboard is smaller than normal. Usually, the makers of these pieces painted them in bright colors, often adding  colorful floral decorations. While your sideboard could have been homemade, I doubt it. It may have been altered, however, to stand straight on a slightly slanted floor, thus the slanted top. Unfortunately, the hardware on your sideboard isn’t original. Most of the time, Cottage Victorian furniture had simple wooden knobs and handles.

Cottage furniture became popular in the United States, particularly along the East Coast, after the Civil War. Pieces began appearing in workshops and then homes of the wealthy in places like Martha's Vineyard, Cape May, and the Berkshires. But the popularity of these items didn’t  remain exclusively with the upper class. As the middle class grew, equally elegant, but relatively reasonably priced versions began to appear in the homes of the nation’s growing work force, particularly in Pennsylvania and New England.

Homeowners purchased Victorian Cottage furniture in mostly bedroom "suites", sold as  coordinating groupings consisting of a double bed, a washstand, a dresser or vanity with an attached mirror, a small table, a straight chair and a rocker, and often a wardrobe. Cabinetmakers used pine or other inexpensive wood, then painted the entire piece with  several layers of paint. The finished sets were colorful and whimsical.

Cottage Victorian beds have high and lavishly decorated headboards. Finials and medallions constituted what little carving there was on most pieces. Most of the decoration took the form of painted flowers, fruit, and other plants, featuring a large painted bouquet-like medallion in a central panel on the headboard and a smaller, matching one on the foot-board. Local cabinetmakers, most of whom didn’t have any formal training, built these pieces from designs in pattern books. And since they had no formal art training, the decorative elements they applied to their pieces had a primitive, folk art feel to them. A few featured highly detailed and beautifully executed scenes of sailing ships or local wildlife. They painted all the pieces of a furniture suite with the same motif. The most popular base colors were tan, blues, greens, and pinks. A few rare ones use the varnished natural wood as the background onto which the cabinetmaker applied the decorative designs.

An artisan then painted it with a base of soft yellow, and highlighted this coat with green bordering, and rows of flowers, and spandrel fan designs in the corners, giving it vigor. Although such a piece was commonplace once, it’s rare and valuable today. One of the biggest misconceptions regarding antiques is that 19th-century homeowners loved the appearance of natural woods in their furnishings. That preference didn’t appear until the early 20th century. As a result, most painted furniture has been stripped and finished to the often not so beautiful bare wood by well-meaning dealers and collectors. Although cabinetmakers refrained from painting their costly mahogany and walnut pieces, those in small towns and villages paint-decorated nearly all their birch, maple, oak, pine, and poplar furnishings to brighten their customers’ dark, oil-lamp lit homes.

Cabinetmakers fitted drawers and cabinet doors with wooden knobs instead of metal hardware. Even the boldly colored paint, didn’t have the look of value to it. Those pieces of Victorian Cottage furniture that have survived intact usually have a crackled surface from age-shrinkage, with flakes in spots due from dryness. Also, look for signs of wear on edges, tops, and near the knobs.

To the untrained eye, Victorian Cottage furniture looks as if it should be sold as junk or stripped to the bare wood. Whatever you do, don't strip your sideboard. If possible, get an opinion from someone who knows painted furniture.

When purchasing painted Cottage Victorian furniture, look for a bone dry surface, subtle wear, and age crazing that has shrunk geometrically. Fortunately, those who fake antiques haven't figured out a way to create spider-web-like lines with chemicals. Good painted furniture has charm and an integrity that makes it one of today's best antique investments since painted pieces haven’t been reproduced. .