California Rose quilt top, Elizabeth Kunkel

Exhibition Label:
"Quilts: Flora Botanica," Jun-2008, Barbara Brackman and Susan Earle
How does a Whig Rose differ from a Democrat Rose? Today’s quilt writers apply the names interchangeably to nineteenth-century rose patterns, but quilt historian Florence Peto, writing in the 1940s, discussed the differences. A Democrat Rose had cockscombs around the central flower. She speculated that the comb shape represented the Democratic rooster. We’re familiar with the Democratic donkey, but the rooster was the image party’s symbol in the mid-nineteenth century. A Whig Rose then would be a rose without the combs. One occasionally comes across a quilt with the Whig symbol-a raccoon.

This quilt top was made in Ohio by a member of the Gunckel family (also spelled Kunkel) who moved in 1885 to the German-American community in Eudora, Kansas. The corner blocks are a different green today because the maker used two differently dyed cottons. The corner greens were probably colored with natural dyes, blue overdyed with yellow. The others were probably dyed with a synthetic green, a new dye that became available about 1875. Cottons dyed with early synthetic dyes have a tendency to fade to a khaki shade.