American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection
Oct 09, 2010 – Jan 02, 2011NewMarket Gallery
One of the world’s finest collections of early American quilts will be on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the fall of 2010. The Winterthur Museum in Delaware is famed for its period room settings featuring the remarkable collection of furniture, fabrics, quilts, and decorative arts collected by Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969). For the first time ever a selection of more than 40 of the most stunning quilts are traveling for a strictly limited period, allowing a unique opportunity to view these incomparable works in detail.
In addition to showcasing the quilts' aesthetic qualities, the exhibition explores the lives of their makers, as well as the political, economic and technological developments that shaped production of the quilts. The exhibition will offer an absorbing insight into women’s political, social, and cultural lives in the formative period of the early American republic (1760–1850). "American Quilts" also includes several rare prototypes of bed coverings that were imported to this country as luxury goods from Europe and East India.
American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection is organized by Winterthur and curated by Linda Eaton, Senior Curator of Textiles at Winterthur.
This exhibition is generously supported by the Elisabeth Shelton Gottwald Fund and the Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Exhibition Endowment.
The Banner Exhibition Program at VMFA is made possible by theJulia Louise Reynolds Fund.
This appliqué album quilt was made by members of Old Otterbein Church in Baltimore in 1854
Photo courtesy Winterthur Museum
1854
Strip embroidered quilt
Maker unknown, Maine or massachusetts
1800-1830
Copyright 2010
Whitework quilt
Mary Remmington, Warwick, Rhode Island
1815
Copyright 2010
Pieced and stenciled quilt
Mary Ann Hoyt, Reading, New York
1834
Copyright 2010
Applique quilt center
Sarah Furman Warner Williams, New York, New York
1810-1830
Copyright 2010
Applique quilt
Eliza Ely Bready, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1840-1850
Copyright 2010
Mosaic quilt
Probably made by Catherine Brobst or Fanny S. B. Jungman, Probably Reading or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1825-1840
Copyright 2010