Baltimore Album Quilt Top

Various artists

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This quilt is comprised of 32 full blocks and 16 half blocks, each in different patterns popular with 1840s Baltimore quiltmakers and set on the diagonal with red cotton sashing between the blocks. Most of the blocks are signed in ink by their makers. Several of the signatures on this quilt can also be found on another Baltimore quilt in the Met’s collection (1988.134). The two quilts also share some of the same block patterns, pointing to sharing and reuse of paper patterns among members of the Baltimore community of quilters. The center block of the quilt shows an animated red and brown rooster, the emblem of the Democratic Party (founded in 1828). The symbol, which had its’ origins in the 1840 election, had probably become familiar by the 1844 election, when Democrat James Polk defeated Whig Henry Clay. Polk was the sitting President when this quilt was made.

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