1840 - 1860 Paulding Family's "Tyger" Quilt
date: label: date made
content: 1840-1860
name: label: maker
content: unknown
notes: label: Description
content: “I have a quilt that has been in my husband’s family for generations . . . It is supposed to have been slept under by Martha Washington . . .” was the claim when it was offered in 1974. While the quilt was probably made in the mid-19th-century, the fabric that was used made the quilt exceptional. It is a copperplate-printed cotton produced in 1785 by Bromley Hall, England’s largest eighteenth-century textile printing firm.
label: Description
content: Copperplate-printing is a process, developed after 1760, by which a pattern is etched on a flat plate, color applied by brush with the excess removed by a scraper, and then the plate and fabric passed through a flat printing press. The pattern found on the fabric of this quilt is labeled “Tyger” in the Bromley Hall pattern book. It features a wide variety of classical and pastoral motifs such as two boys riding leopards, architectural ruins, a dancing shepherdess, peacocks, parrots, sunflowers, and dragonflies, among many others.
label: Description
content: Both the front and back of this quilt are composed of pieces of fabric copperplate-printed in brown. Each side has its own lining (one of cotton, one of linen), with a layer of cotton wadding between the two linings. A block-printed border is used for edging both layers and the two sides are whipstitched together. Most likely the "Tyger" fabric and block-printed trim were from an early set of bed furniture. The quilting consists of widely-spaced Vs, worked in crooked lines with uneven stitches, plus or minus four stitches per inch.
label: Description
content: The quilt was from the William Paulding family of New York . William Paulding Jr. (1770-1854) was a lawyer and active in politics. He served in the War of 1812, and as mayor of New York City 1824-1826. In 1838 Paulding, along with architect Alexander Jackson Davis, designed and built a country villa named “Knoll” (“Pauldings Folly” by his critics). The house is known today as “Lyndhurst” in Tarrytown, N. Y. A National Trust Historic Site, it remains one of the extravagant examples of 19th-century Gothic Revival mansions along the Hudson River.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: World
topic: label: Subject
content: Quilting
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Textiles
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content: Government, Politics, and Reform
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content: Textiles
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content: Domestic Furnishings
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content: Quilts
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: TE.T17289
label: accession number
content: 314087
label: catalog number
content: T17289
objectType: label: Object Name
content: quilt
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: fabric, cotton, linen (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: thread, cotton (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: filling, cotton (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 89 in x 73 in; 227 cm x 185 cm