Annual Delaware Antiques Show 2019

Reuniting the Unfinished: The 1857 Harrison Album Quilt By Emily Whitted Henry Francis du Pont, an avid collector of American decorative arts, kept a daybook of every antiques purchase he ever made, many of which later passed into the Winterthur collection. As brought to light here, investigating a museum object’s history can lead to fruitful discoveries, and, in the case of five appliqué quilt squares with no prior provenance, a happy reunion. On October 20, 1925, New York antiques dealer Mary Lent wrote to Henry Francis du Pont to offer him “an unusual single aplique quilt.” Upon its arrival, du Pont discovered that the package contained not only a complete thirty-block quilt but also an additional nineteen individual unquilted blocks that had been acquired together by the dealer. Focusing less on keeping these objects together and more on the decorative potential of the individual blocks, du Pont retained only five. He purchased the quilt and its “5 assorted aplique blocks to match” for $225 and likely took them to Chestertown, his home on Long Island. Winterthur Museum added many of the objects from Chestertown to its collection, but the connection between these quilt squares and the completed quilt was only recently rediscovered when the squares became the focus of a student project and details of the purchase were found in du Pont’s daybook. Close analysis of the quilt squares in relation to the finished quilt reveals that they were once intended to be together (fig. 1) . The completed appliqué album quilt, entirely handsewn, was made by at least fourteen identifiable women; it contains thirty unique block patterns and fourteen signatures as well as the date 1857 and the location, Harrison, New York. Shared fabric types, styles, and color schemes strengthen the link between the finished quilt and the unfinished squares: primarily red and green cotton fabrics in Fig. 1. Appliqué quilt with additional squares, 1857, Harrison, New York. Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont 1969.0585 — 108 —