: Colorful Baltimore album quilts, assembled from intricately
appliquéd blocks with distinctive motifs, are among the most
creative and well-designed quilts made in the Nineteenth Century.
Although album quilts made up of signed blocks contributed by
many hands are known from other cities, the finished product
reached the level of a true art form only in Baltimore and only
during a brief time span, roughly 1845-1855.
A new exhibition at The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), "Baltimore
Album Quilts: Appliquéd Artistry" on view through May 9, 2004,
attempts to provide answers to the mystery of why these brilliant
needlework masterpieces were produced in a single city at this
particular time.
Anita Jones, BMA associate curator of decorative arts for
textiles and the show's organizer, says, "Album quilts were made
other places, but Baltimore became known for them because they
became so sophisticated here during a brief period of history --
about ten years in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Most of the
examples in the exhibition are documented as having been made in
Baltimore or Maryland; sometimes they're signed and dated, but
many times they aren't. But we generally know through family
records who made them or who they were given to in the area."
