The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum

This is a coverlet made between the beginning and the middle of the 19th century in Ireland by a lady called Jane Pizar. Its intricate design of circles within the patchwork squares recalls quilts of the late 18th and 19th centuries, but it also includes fabric made with synthetic dyes, dating it to after 1850. It may have been made over a long period of time, or to an old design. As with many museum collections, we don’t know their full history. The geometric shapes are very precise, and may have been made with paper patterns. It is often called a marriage cover because it has hearts, moons and birds – including one on a nest.

Cover made by Mrs Wood-Wright (detail of centre section).This quilt is also Irish, and is an applique quilt, made from cutting out figures, flowers etc. from printed fabrics and making a collage. It has also been quilted. It was made by Elizabeth Isabella Wood-Wright (c. 1786-1870), and according to the donor, her daughters and maids, in Golagh, Co. Monaghan in the early 1850s. It was a fashionable technique when Mrs Wood-Wright was a girl. It includes the Wood-Wright arms and motto, ‘Veritas Vincit’, Truth Conquers. One of the patterns on the fabric used is of the Thames Tunnel built by Brunel in 1843, and called the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’.

This style of patchwork, known as ‘crazy’, came into fashion from the late 1860s, probably inspired by fashionable Japanese designs. In 1882 Harper’s Bazaar says of the style, ‘Now we are very daring; we go boldly on without any apparent design at all and produce in the end a result which will in some cases challenge comparison with any richly stained glass.’ Rather than the earlier printed cottons, these quilts were made with silk and velvet pieces often in the bold synthetic colours of the day. This quilt has a bookmark for a masonic conclave in San Francisco in 1883. It is further embellished with elaborate embroidery. One corner has ‘Mother 63 Years 1887’ painted in an Aesthetic Movement Japanese style script.