Monday, March 7, 2011

suzanna's mystery quilt


This quilt belongs to my friend Suzanna Bryan who asked me to put a sleeve on its back so she can hang it on the wall in her beautiful Virginia farm house. Well it is not a quilt per se. It has no batting, and no backing. It is machine pieced together, but the rest of the work is done entirely by hand. Every person, creature, shape, and line is hand appliqued and embroidered.



It may not even be that old, but I adore it. I love the color, the texture, and the story it is trying to tell. Something important is being created at the center of the piece, involving lots of man power, stately animals, and guardians. Neither Suzanna nor I know the quilts origin. She bought it from an antique dealer in Charlottesville, several years ago.

It is intriguing and while we were looking at it together our imagination was running wild. Afghani possibly? Is the larger than life figure near the building site a friend or a foe? Is that women hiding under the cloaks while traveling by donkey?


Do you know what this could be?

16 comments:

  1. what a treasure. there's something about it that looks egyptian to me. just a guess.

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  2. Wow. Is there a single woman on the entire piece, I wonder? Camels and elephants and men. Very interesting and I agree, beautiful!

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  3. My guess would be India or some where near. Lovely.

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  4. Wow, what an incredible piece! The detail is amazing and I too love the way it is trying to tell a story x

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  5. I love puzzles. My guess is Bihari khatwa (applique), because I know it was used to make big decorative cloths like this one. Maybe search a textile museum online collection?

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  6. How intriguing - hope you are able to solve the mystery. It is quite beautiful and especially for all the hand work involved.

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  7. I hope that a lot of the secrets remain, even if the origin of the piece would be solved.
    It's so amazing to make up stories around the unknown.
    It's a wonderful piece...like a whole book of stories!

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  8. Lovely...really beautiful earth colours...and where it come from? Imposible to guess...

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  9. I have a small quilt from Egypt that is quite like this.... even the elephants. I must find it and confirm that, it really is from Egypt... that's my memory, though. Beautiful!

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  10. would love to see that little quilt Valerianna.

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  11. Probably commemorating some event?
    It speaks volumes, thought.

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  12. Pretty sure it's going to be from India rather than a Moslem-mainly country, as the Koran forbids the depiction of people and animals as sacreligious, hence the predominance of geometric patterns and (Koranic) texts. So it would be from a Hindi area, most likely. The outlining couching is also very Indian, stylistically.
    This is a modern, commercial example of this kind of work, I think: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://174.123.135.195/uploads05/79/0/m-2518238809.jpg&imgrefurl=http://textiles.indiabizclub.com/products/quilts&usg=__O6mtLYpRbNLzNdud5FSQ_bWSowk=&h=200&w=300&sz=13&hl=en&start=31&sig2=4Q4EGT9PB0mgxWg5_REXCA&zoom=1&tb

    I will see if I can research some more, the books I have are not immediately to hand but I did research Indian embroidery techniques during C&G studies/

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  13. Sorry, I cut off some of that very long link. I've tinied it thus:
    http://tinyurl.com/6z6o2kx
    Hope it helps.

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