Baltimore Album Quilt
Maker Unknown
Circa 1845-1855
Probably made in Baltimore, Maryland 
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, 1997.007.0320

A distinctive style of album quilt featuring elaborate appliqué designs flourished in Baltimore, Maryland between 1845 and 1854. A group of women linked by church membership sold designs and patterns as pre-cut and basted blocks for buyers to complete at home as quilt tops and completed quilts. Dates, places, inscriptions, and signatures could be added to each block in ink. Baltimore Album quilts were often created as gifts, and presented on momentous occasions such as a marriage or the birth of a child.

Feathered Star Quilt
Rebecca Ellen Slyh Richards (1830-1890)
Dated May 21, 1852 
Probably made in Franklin County, Ohio
Gift of Robert Hughes, 1997.009.0001

Rebecca Slyh was almost 22 years old when she signed and dated this floral-bordered quilt in tiny cross-stitch letters and numbers. She added an inscription that includes her own version of a well-known prayer. 

The quilt’s pattern incorporates three devices characteristic of the central Ohio region: pieced feathered stars (8-point stars accented by a border of right-angle triangles), floral appliqué borders, and stuffed quilting designs. Richards’s quilting measures a dense 14 to 16 stitches per inch.

Printed Whole Cloth Quilt
Maker Unknown
Circa 1790-1800
Made in the Eastern United States
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, 2006.050.0001

The knobby branches in the trees of this whole cloth chintz quilt are typical of the arborescent forms imported to the West via Indian palampore bedcovers in the 1600s. By the 1790s, such “exotic” Eastern influences were prevalent in British textile design, and these kinds of fabrics were mass-produced in the United Kingdom and widely exported to the United States.

Stenciled Bedcover
Probably made by Lucy Martin Vilas (1800-1838) 
Circa 1820-1838
Probably made in Randolph, Vermont
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, 2008.004.0001

Lucy Vilas is believed to have created this piece of American folk art featuring a stand of peach trees flanked by smaller bushes and a border of grapevines. Some elements of this summery design—the vines’ curling tendrils, some stems, and the ground or grass—were painted freehand, while the fruit and leaves were stenciled. Using a coarse brush, Vilas spread pigment to the edges of the space created by the stencil, or negative template. This stenciling technique was also used by itinerant male artists in the early nineteenth century to decorate walls, floors, and even ceilings. 
Stenciled grapevines similar to those found on this quilt appear as border designs in the “Stencil House,” originally located in Columbus, New York, and now at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, and in the Farmersville Tavern of Farmersville, New York. 

Indigo Resist Quilt
Maker Unknown
Circa 1825-1850
Probably made in the Hudson River Valley, New York
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, 2010.051.0001

Indigo print fabrics were made using special techniques, and two different methods were used to create the prints in this quilt. The fabric with the pineapple motif in the quilt’s center panel was made using a resist dye technique in which a paste applied to the cloth before dyeing resists the chemical reaction that turns the cloth blue. The areas with the paste remain white, or their original color. The fabric used in the quilt’s triangular “Flying Geese” border was made using a discharge process in which a substance (often bleach) removes pigment from a previously dyed fabric.

The quilt’s center panel was pieced from numerous small fragments that were likely recycled from bedhangings or other home furnishing textiles.

Day Dress
Maker Unknown
Circa 1835
Made in the United States
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, 2003.003.0426 

Soft colors and floral patterns were distinctive features of 1830s day dresses. The period’s fashionable silhouette included sloped shoulders, a rounded bust, a narrow waist shaped with boning, and a full, bell-shaped skirt. The chintz fabric imported and used to make the dress retains only a hint of the original violet color that created diffuse stripes.