Hospital Sketches Block #2: Virginia Cockscomb

Cockscomb from the collection of Lynn Evans Miller

Mid-19th century

Bettina Havig's version of Hospital Sketches #2

Virginia Cockscomb

The Cockscomb is Block #2 in the Hospital Sketches BOM of fashionable mid-19th-century designs. See a post with a pattern at Civil War Quilts:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/02/hospital-sketches-2-robertson-hospital.html

Late-19th century

The popularity of this rather eccentric design is surprising.

Attributed to Berks County, Pennsylvania

How the pattern was handed around and any regional preferences are hard to figure out. You see it a lot in Virginia, but you also see it a lot in Indiana.

The design wasn't published until 1900 or so,

decades after quilters began using it.

 "When Patchwork Becomes an Art"

by Rebecca Mosenfelder Simon

Ladies' Home Journal, 1908.

Simon called it The Olive Branch, a symbol of peace.

This quilt, quite mid-19th-century, looks a lot like her example.

The Ladies' Art Company also called it The Olive Branch.

You could buy a finished block for 85 cents from them.

I'll take 9.

Collection of the Belchertown Historical Society

From the Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index.

It's also surprising to see how often it was used in samplers

and friendship quilts.

Here's an antique from Judy Roche's collection and her

smaller copy.

Dillow Collection in the International Quilt Study Center & Museum,

dated 1861, attributed to Fulton County, Pennsylvania

From Julie Silber's inventory

Most of these are from the mid-19th century when the pattern appeared.

Even though I can't tell you much about its history I have a lot of photos. Since we like to look at quilts here are some pictures of the cockscomb and its variations:

Four way symmetry dated 1859 from a Bonham's Auction

Two way symmetry from Jeffrey Evans Auction

in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia (I think.)

Various parts re-assembled

From the collection of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum

20th century

Another 20th-century version

With the Vessel, Vine & Floral border, by Frances

Shaw of Hagerstown, Maryland. West Virginia project

and the Quilt Index.

From Molly at Fourth Corner Antiques

A Different flower at the base

Jean Stanclift owns an antique that she copied for our Sunflower

Pattern Cooperative book Cranberry Collection.

Jean's pattern is very much like one below from the Carlson Collection

of Four-Block Quilts at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum.

IQSCM #2009.044.0007 

As a border from a Pook & Pook Auction

Addition....

Several quilt historians asked where the bird was. This one

from Bill Volckening.

See more about the bird:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/07/i-forgot-something-bird.html

Subtraction Below

By Emily Johnson, North Carolina Project & the Quilt Index

Links:

Posts on the pattern
https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-gawky-eagle-and-coxcomb.html

Buy our Cranberry Collection book with Jean Stanclift's pattern:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/504012298/cranberry-collection-quilts-for