Hospital Sketches Block #4: Cockscombs & Currants

Hospital Sketches Block #4: Cockscombs & Currants by Marty Webster

This month's free pattern for the Hospital Sketches BOM on my Civil War Quilts blog is Cockscombs and Currants.

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/04/hospital-sketches-4-cockscombs-currants.html

1853 Elizabeth Stark,

Kansas Museum of History

Last month's classic was the Love Apple, a pattern with many variations.

Love Apple from the Virginia project book

The Cockscombs and Currants block, however, seems more cut to a pattern. The center features a circle with 8 radiating leaves or petals (usually red). A bud that fills the corners grows from four green leaves. Four curving stems grow from the circle between the leaves. Currants grow along the stems. The greatest variety is in the number of currants. In sorting through these pictures (I've got many) I see the fabrics are red and green (no pink, no chrome orange) and they are usually solids.

Watercolor of a quilt from the Works Progress Administration

project in the 1930s.

I'm surprised by how consistent the central arrangement is

with that stem fitting between the red leaves.

From the West Virginia project & the Quilt Index

It makes more design sense to me to arrange the stems like

this, growing out of a petal instead of between them.

But this format is the exception.

Block #1 & Block #4, a nice balance

I indexed quite a few in my Encyclopedia of Applique with names like Poinsettia, Oak Leaf, Grapes and Oak Leaf, and Cockscombs and Currants. Comfort magazine published the design as Chestnut Berry and Flowering Almond in the 1920s. In 1860 Elizabeth Nessly Myer described a  "Flowering Almond" quilt in a letter and left a quilt to her descendants much like the pattern here.

Flowering Almond bush

Dated 1852 from the Dixon family.

Indiana project and the Quilt Index

Dated 1853 from Ohio, online auction.

These tend to be from the years 1850-1870 with the earliest date-inscribed example in my files 1852 and two dated 1853.

An exception to the red and green rule

Well I could go on---I have dozens of photos of 19th-century examples...and a few 20th century.

From Cindy's Antique Quilts inventory

Karla Menaugh's interpretation of a 19th century arrangement.

Abiding Joy is in our Cranberry Collection book.

Abiding Joy by Karla Menaugh

90" x 90" Quilted by Lori Kukuk

Hospital Sketches #7: Rose of Sharon or Tennessee Rose

Our 7th applique block in the Hospital Sketches block of the month

is Tennessee Rose.

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/07/hospital-sketches-7tennessee-rose.html

Block #7 Peggy Sandfort

Central floral---here with 4 diagonal arms but only three of them repeat.

This asymmetrical pattern is generally called Rose of Sharon as in #31.52 in my Encyclopedia of Applique. The variation on the left below is much like the July pattern with 7 rotating motifs. These roses are asymmetrical with several repeating buds or leaves but a single stem off to one corner.

Marie Webster called this one Rose of Sharon in her 1915 book.

As did Ruby Short McKim about 1930

The pattern, unlike some of the others we are doing this year in the Hospital Sketches BOM, has a variety of forms. They are all numbered  #31 in the Encyclopedia.

Here are a few:

Dated 1852, Mary Ann Poindexter

Collection of the D.A.R. Museum

From an album sampler dated 1860

From an Augusta Auction

Ruth Finley owned a similar quilt and called it

an "Early Rose of Sharon" in her 1929 book.

I subtracted a few things from the pattern for my

Hospital Sketches block.

Collection of the Historical Society of Plainfield.

New Jersey project & the Quilt Index.

This sampler dated 1857 has wreaths, 2 coxcomb & currants blocks,  2 triple tulips and a Whig rose/Rose of Sharon among the designs--several very popular designs and then some odd ones. (See center and upper corners.) 

Although most examples are situated on the diagonal some

seamstresses oriented the block north and south.

As you can see there was much personalization of the design.

No hints that a specific pattern was somehow passed around.

The block on the north/south may be a weak clue to a later

19th-century date.

East Tennessee quilt from Case Antiques

Same block in both quilts. Pattern passed around in east Tennessee?.

As far as names....

The name Rose of Sharon was in use as a pattern name. I've found two references about 1870 but with no pictures.

An 1869 Ohio fair awarded 25 cents to Isabel Hunter for a

"Bed quilt, rose of sharon" and an 1878 work of fiction mentioned a Rose of Sharon, adding some quilting color to a humorous about country people.

Marie Webster showed a second old quilt (below) with the single diagonal stem

and called it Virginia Rose

Carrie Hall's Virginia Rose in the collection of the Spencer Museum of

Art at the University of Kansas, block from the 1930s

Woman's World magazine sold a pattern about the same time,

calling it Tennessee Rose.

From the West Virginia project and the Quilt Index.

Winner of the contest for the most outrageous example.

Second prize