Silk Quilt in the Late Renaissance Style

• Sarah Davies of Monmouth

The general layout of the imagery was based on the surviving silk quilts, with the foliate patterns taken from two silk quilts of the late 16th century from the same atelier; one was found in Cornwall during a quilt heritage search, while its twin was purchased by Henry Francis ouroboros for the Winterthur Museum in Delaware in the 1950s and unearthed by Maggie Lidz in the late 1990s. The actual motifs were taken from early 17th century alchemical works such as Atalanta Fugiens.

As Maggie Lidz has pointed out in her landmark article, much of the imagery of the surviving silk quilts appears to be inspired by the Battle of Lepanto (1571), when the Catholic League under the command of Don John of Austria defeated the Ottomans under Ali Pasha. Many of the quilts featured double headed Hapsburg eagles, European-style ships, "Mohammedans" in the borders, and so on. This would seem to indicate that the quilts were made specifically for the Catholic countries of Europe, where Lepanto was seen as a great Catholic victory rather than merely a Christian triumph.

At the same time, silk quilts were popular in Protestant countries (Henry VIII a generation earlier had owned several dozen). I decided to extrapolate from the certainty that Catholic imagery was used in early silk quilts to create a quilt in period style with Protestant imagery, such as might have been used at one of the German Protestant courts in the late 16th/early 17th centuries. Germany was the hotbed of the so-called "Rosicrucian Enlightenment" of the early 17th century, when traditional alchemy, the Christian Cabala of Italian scholars such as Giordano Bruno and Marsilio Ficino, and resistance to the Counter-Reformation fused into a political movement led by Frederick, Elector Palatine and son-in-law of James I of England.

Alchemical works such as The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz and Atalanta Fugiens were as much propaganda for the enlightened court of Frederick as they were mystical works, and it seemed logical that a Protestant equivalent to the Lepanto silk quilts might use alchemical imagery to symbolize the Protestant cause.

Materials

Top and back: 100% silk satin. I used satin rather than a broadcloth due to close examination of slides of a 17th century reversible silk quilt in Palazzo Visconti, Milan, and personal observation of a 1755 silk cradle quilt in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Batting: 100% organic cotton.

Thread: 100% silk. The gauge of the thread is again based on observation of the cradle quilt from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I made several attempts to see a 16th century silk quilt in the collection of the Gardner Museum in Boston but was turned down. The backgrounds in the medallions were worked with finer silk thread to emphasize the main images.

Dyestuffs: Top was mordanted with alum and dyed first with madder, then with cochineal. The second dyeing was performed after a laundry accident bleached some of the madder. The back was dyed with indigo reduced with Spectralite.

Technique

Stitch: Contemporary examples were primarily quilted in the running stitch, although there are examples quilted in the backstitch. I used the running stitch mostly for accuracy, but partly because I made a backstitched linen quilt several years and wanted to try something different.

Quilting: the silk quilts were almost all flat quilted rather than trapunto or stuffed work. Most surviving examples were reversible, so it made more sense to use the running stitch rather than the backstitch, which is not reversible. Some of the surviving quilts appear to have been worked in double running rather than running stitch, but the running stitch is easier, faster, and more forgiving. The quilt was worked in a frame rather than in the hand due to the slippery satin backing.

Images

The central medallion shows the wedding of the Alchemical King and Queen, symbolized by the sun and moon. The ovoid at their feet is the Philosopher's Stone, born of their union, while the spheres rising between them are the stages of the alchemical transmutation. The King and Queen are the same pose as Protestant propaganda depicting Frederick of the Palatine and his wife Elizabeth on their wedding day. The four animals in the smaller medallions symbolize the Four Elements and Four Directions (peacock: air/east; phoenix: fire/south; dolphin: water/west; snake: earth/north).

The four corners depict great alchemists of the past: Miriam the Jewess, sister of Moses and inventor of the double boiler; Albertus Magnus with the symbol for the rebis, or alchemical androgyne; Hermes Trismegistus, purported author of the Corpus Hermetica and "prisca theologica" (pure theologian) of the Rosicrucian movement; and Thomas Aquinas, author of a commentary on alchemy.

The borders are based on the hunting scene borders of the Chios silk quilts, with the imagery tweaked slightly to bring it in line with the alchemical theme of the quilt. The overall scene shows the hunter (alchemist) leaving behind the decay and rot of life (the rat) to seek alchemical truth. He hunts with both wolf (greed, in this case greed for knowledge) and dog (fidelity, in this case a diligent and tempered search for truth) while overseen by the owl (wisdom). He hunts four animals in turn: the lion (alchemical transmutation, also a solar symbol); the worm ouroboros (eternity, also an earth symbol); the unicorn (chastity, also a symbol of sulfur); and the stag (sacrifice, also a symbol of mercury).

The quotation in the central medallion and in the sashing between the borders and the medallion is adapted from the Emerald Tablet, an early alchemical work attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. The translation is as follows:

About the central medallion, referring to the Philosopher's Stone: Pater eius est Sol. Mater eius est Luna. Portavit illud Ventus in Ventre suo (The sun is its father. The moon is its mother. The wind has carried it in his belly).

In the sashing, referring to the alchemical process: Verum, sine Mendacio, certum et verissimum: Quod est Inferius est Superius, et quod est Superius est sicut quod est Inferius.sic Omnes Res natae ab hac una Re, adaptatione (Truly, without falsehood, this is certain: what is above is like what is below, and what is below is like what is above.all things were born from one adaptation).

Bibliography

____________. Quilt Treasures of Great Britain. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1995.

Colby, Averil. Quilting. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971.

De Rola, Stanislas Klossowski. The Golden Game: Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth Century. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997.

Eaton, Linda, "Bringing It All Together: Collecting Quilts in the Early 20th Century," lecture at "In Search of Origins" symposium at Historic Deerfield, 9/14/03.

Lidz, Maggie, "Imperialism and Seduction in a Quilted Silk Bedcover," lecture at "In Search of Origins" symposium at Historic Deerfield, 9/13/03.

Lidz, Margaret Renner, "The Mystery of 17th Century Quilts," in Antiques Magazine, December 1998.

Werner, Gerlind. Ripa's Iconologie. Utrecht: Haentgens Dekker & Gumbert, 1977.

Yates, Frances A.. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabeth Age. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.

Yates, Frances A.. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.

Era: late renaissance

Seen at:

• quilting
• dyeing

• (photo) Overview, no photo enhancement., not color balanced
  
• (photo) Overview, with histogram equalization. This work is quite difficult to photograph, so this form of photo enhancement allows you to see int he photo what your eyes would pick out in person.
  
• (photo) Detail, unenhanced (not color balanced)
  
• (photo) Detail, enhanced with histogram equalization
  
• (photo) Detaion - Central medallion (not color balanced)
  
• (photo) Detail from the front (color balanced. This is the real color of the front.)
  
• (photo) Detail from the back (color balanced. This is the real color of the back.)