Factory-Printed Chintz Appliqué Quilt

From 1816 to 1817, New Yorker Cornelia Ann Burling sewed these flowers, clipped from British factory-printed chintz, on the white ground of this large, carefully-made quilt. Called chintz appliqué or broderie perse, they were highly fashionable in the United States during the early 19th-century, surpassed in popularity by patchwork quilts only in the 1840s.

These quilts’ colorful flora and birds and contrasting light background recall Indian chintz furnishing textiles, particularly palampores, or large bedcovers or wall hangings, often with enclosed borders and flowering tree or central medallion motifs.