ARTISANS : Album Quilts Detail Baltimore’s History

BALTIMORE —  As the Industrial Revolution made the city hum, the women of Baltimore were doing something extraordinary with their needles--creating lush fabric murals of elaborate design and intricate detail.

Baltimore album quilts have become what the Rolls-Royce is to cars and Tiffany is to stained glass.

A Baltimore album quilt made in the mid-19th Century can generally fetch $25,000, provided an owner is willing to part with one, said Joel Kopp, a New York City antiques dealer.

“They don’t get into the market that much,” he said.

A record price for a Baltimore album quilt came in 1987 when a buyer paid $176,000 for an 1840 quilt at Sotheby’s auction house in New York.

“Baltimore album quilts have become as valuable as a master painting,” said Jennifer Goldsborough, chief curator at the Maryland Historical Society.

Sixteen of the quilts, all made during album quilting’s mid-19th Century heyday, are part of an exhibit through Nov. 27, “Lavish Legacies: Baltimore Album Quilts,” at the historical society’s museum--which was founded just about the time album quilting established itself in this port city.

Album quilts were inspired by autograph albums popular among young ladies during the 1840s, filled with drawings, inscriptions, watercolors or poems.

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The album quilt consists of squares resembling pages of a scrapbook. Each square is “appliqued,” with a different design of cloth pieces sewn on. The squares are pieced together, framed with an intricate appliqued border, and quilted onto a backing. They become elaborate “albums” of flowers, birds, people, rich in patriotic, religious and fraternal symbols.

Album quilting was largely a middle-class pastime, as women sought an acceptable form of expression.

“These were made to show off what women could do with their needles,” Goldsborough said. “They were never made to keep anybody warm.”

Album quilt-making in Baltimore reached its zenith from 1844 to 1854, then waned--perhaps due to the arrival of the sewing machine, Goldsborough said. Quilting also is a time-consuming task. Modern quilters estimate a single hand-sewn quilt requires 3,000 to 12,000 hours of work.

“People are fascinated with the style,” said Eleanor Sienkiewicz, a Washington quilt-maker, historian and author. “When I ask people why, one thing they say is the recognition of excellence in the appliques, and the finest ones show excellent design.

“They also have said they like the feelings expressed by the albums. Many of them express, in a simple umbrella word, beneficence. They’re full of warm and friendly thoughts and also a great deal of history.”

Quilts in the museum’s display contain blocks of festive flowers, geometric designs, baskets of fruit, Baltimore landmarks, animals, cornucopias, even historical figures of the day. One tiny figure has a waistcoat complete with attached lapels.

The intricate patterns are all the more impressive because there were no magazines, no pattern books on which to base design, Goldsborough said. Ideas came from china patterns, butter molds, cookie cutters and the folk art of German immigrants, among other sources.

It was no coincidence that the album style reached its pinnacle in Baltimore, a major port at the time.

“One reason album quilts happened there, the quilt-maker had the fabric there, coming directly from France and England,” said Nancy Tuckhorn, textile curator at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington.

“There also were many craftsmen here, for silver and for furniture, so it fits in with the rest of decorative arts in Baltimore at this time,” she said.

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The historical society has a collection of more than 200 quilts, about 32 of which are considered album quilts. The number is not exact, because some quilts are not purely in the album style, Goldsborough said.

The museum exhibited one set of quilts until July 10 and then replaced them with 16 others to protect aging fabrics from exposure.

“I saw the first half, and I thought the others can’t be as good as these,” said Tuckhorn, “but they are, they are.”