Crazy quilt, unknown maker from the United States

Exhibition Label:
"Quilts: Flora Botanica," Jun-2008, Barbara Brackman and Susan Earle
Quilters working after 1880 grew weary of conventionalized florals in red and green as changes in technology and taste created new needlework fads. Commercial patterns replaced folk art traditions and hand-to-hand pattern sharing. Inexpensive silks and renewed interest in embroidery inspired needlewomen to lavish time on the purely decorative Crazy Quilt.

Floral vignettes in paint and stitches reflect a
new fascination with Japanese design in the cattails and fans. We see traces of European arts and crafts principles in the sunflower image and the naturalistic goldenrod. Painted flowers were popular on Crazy Quilts for reasons given by a reader who wrote to the Ohio Farmer in 1884: “I painted flowers on some of the blocks. They are much prettier than embroidery and not so
much work.”

Archive Label 2003:
Crazy quilts, first known as “Japanese” quilts, came into vogue in the 1880s in the United States. During the Centennial International Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876, Americans had the opportunity to see a wide variety of Japanese arts and crafts. Fan, stork and cattail motifs were borrowed from the objects seen at the Exhibition and incorporated into embroidery patterns published in women’s magazines of the day. Spiders, owls and moths, creatures often associated with the night, also decorated many crazy quilts. Along with many of the pictorial elements mentioned above, this quilt includes a picture of the Statue of Liberty printed on silk, commemorating the recent centennial anniversary of this American icon. While the creator of the quilt is unknown, the piece is thought to have been made by a Kansas artist.