Crazy Quilt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Crazy quilts, a fad in the last decades of the nineteenth century, were most commonly pieced from irregularly shaped bits of velvet and silk. This exuberant quilt is far more unusual, since its unknown maker chose to craft it from brightly patterned cottons. The cottons create an album of fashionable, though inexpensive, fabrics of the 1880s, including Egyptian Revival and Japanesque designs, children’s handkerchiefs, and pieces of “cheater” cloth—fabric that was printed to imitate patchwork. One of the handkerchiefs, printed with playing cards, is inscribed “ORIENTAL PRINT WORKS, APPONAUG, RI.” It is possible that this mill produced many of the fabrics found in the quilt.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art