1790 - 1810 Copp Family's Framed Center Pieced Quilt
date: label: date made
content: 1790-1810
name: label: maker
content: Copp Family
notes: label: Description
content: This pieced-work example is one of three late-eighteenth-and-early nineteenth-century quilts that were donated in the 1890s by John Brenton Copp of Stonington, Connecticut. All are a part of an extensive gift of household textiles, costume items, furniture and other objects that belonged to his family from 1750 to 1850. The Copp Collection continues to provide insights into New England family life of that period.
label: Description
content: The arrangement of the pattern of this quilt is one found frequently in eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century quilts, a succession of borders framing a center panel of pieced work. A view of the pieced center of this quilt seen from the right side, suggests the shape of a tree, and the printed fabrics repeat in mirror fashion in each row about ninety percent of the time. Perhaps the center was erroneously placed in this direction, or it was meant to be viewed from the bedside. The lining is pieced of much-mended linen and cotton fabrics that originally were probably sheets. On one piece, the initials “HV” are cross-stitched in tan silk thread. It is quilted in an overall herringbone pattern, 5 or 6 stitches per inch.
label: Description
content: The clothing and furnishing fabrics used in the quilt top span a period of about forty years. This, and the fact that the Copp family was in the dry goods business, may explain why the quilt includes more than one hundred and fifty different printed, woven-patterned, and plain fabrics of cotton, linen and silk. Although the array of fabrics is extravagant, economy is evident in the use of even the smallest scraps. Many blocks in the quilt pattern are composed of several smaller, irregularly shaped pieces. Two dresses, in the Copp Collection, one from about 1800 and the other from about 1815, are made of fabrics that appear in the quilt.
label: Description
content: An analysis of the household textile collection donated by John Brenton Copp can be found in the <I> Copp Family Textiles </I> by Grace Rogers Cooper (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971). In the book the author summarizes the family background. “The first Copp to reach America was William, a 26-year-old London shoemaker who in 1635 set out for the Massachusetts Colony on the good ship <I> Blessing.</I> He landed east of Boston and became the first owner of Copp’s Hill in north Boston . . . . William’s son Jonathan established the Connecticut branch of the family around Stonington later in the seventeenth century. Many of his male descendents gained comfortable prosperity as merchants and businessmen, while their wives and daughters led full lives as mothers of the large families in which education and refinement were encouraged . . . . The long succession of Jonathans, Samuels, Catherines, Esters, Marys, and Sarahs makes it rather difficult to set in order the generations and their contributions to the collection.” The exact maker of this quilt is unidentified, but it was probably made by one or more members of the Copp household.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Connecticut, Stonington
topic: label: Subject
content: Quilting
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Textiles
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content: Textiles
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content: Domestic Furnishings
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content: Quilts
publisher: label: Related Publication
content: Bowman, Doris M.. The Smithsonian Treasury of American Quilts
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of John Brenton Copp
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: TE.H006680
label: accession number
content: 28810
label: catalog number
content: H006680
objectType: label: Object Name
content: quilt
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: fabric, cotton, linen, cotton/linen, linen/silk (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: thread, linen, cotton (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: filling, cotton (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 84 in x 81in; 214 cm x 205 cm