Pop Culture Still Influences Quilt Makers

Pop Culture Still Influences Quilt Makers

There were several other outline designs for embroidery published in The Art Amateur in 1881 – all presenting in the same format.  They all were offering ladies the opportunity to incorporate popular culture themes in their needlework. 

 

In the February issue both the “Pirates of Penzance” and “When George the Third was King” appeared.  Later that same year, the “Aesthetes” came out.   The 1880 program for the Gilbert and Sullivan opera “HMS Pinafore” also has some nice images that could be used for outline embroidery. 

 

The following is a brief timeline:

1876 Richard D'Oyly Carte formed the Comedy Opera Company to produce works by Gilbert and Sullivan.

1878 “H.M.S. Pinafore” by Gilbert and Sullivan

1879 “The Pirates of Penzance” by Gilbert and Sullivan

1879 “When George the Third was King” The Leisure Hour, monthly magazine of stories - Volume 28, 1879 (7 chapters)

1881 “Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride” by Gilbert and Sullivan,  satirizing the aesthetic movement. First performance was in April 1881.

1881 Oscar Wilde was asked by his booking agent, the same Richard D’Oyly Carte, to tour America – dressed in knee breeches – similar to the style worn in the opera to promote the aesthetes satire “Patience” in America and the comic opera was then forever associated with Oscar Wilde.

 

Marketing pop culture to women was around then and still is today.  Kate Greenaway designs from her 1879 book “Under the Window” exploded onto the scene around the same frame as outline embroidery and crazy quilts did.  Her designs were everywhere – buttons, fabric, ribbons, clothing styles, you name it.  Her designs were offered in the popular ladies magazines of the day:  Godey’s, Peterson’s, Harper’s Bazar; along with Needlework Manuals and Catalogues: Jenny June, Brigg’s Patent, Ingall’s, etc.

 

Similarly, in the early 1900s Eulalie Osgood Grover/Bertha Corbett/Bernhardt Wall’s Sunbonnet Babies (aka Bonnet Babies, Sun Bonnet Sue) and Rose O’Neil’s Kewpie Doll ended up on quilts, most notably through William Pinch’s Rainbow Quilt Block Company and The Ladies Art Company of St. Louis.  Jessie Wilcox Smith's nursery rhyme designs were also sold as embroidery patterns via Butterick and the Victoria  Block Company, Mr. Pinch’s company prior to Rainbow.

 

Kaumagraph (Vogart, McCall) – offered embroidery designs throughout the 1930s and 40s.  Even today, if you go to any fabric shop in the country – pop culture influences are all over the place – Disney, Marvel Comics, Dr. Who, Dr. Seuss, Harry Potter, Nickelodeon, and I could go on.  This is nothing new – just the motifs change to represent what’s currently in style – and we still put them in quilts.