Quilt (Wholecloth quilt with border)

Description

This wholecloth quilt features a center field thought to be mashru, a textile originating in sixteenth-century India under the Mughal Dynasty. From the Arabic word for "permitted," mashru's weave has a silk warp and a hidden cotton weft which gives the appearance of pure silk, allowing Muslim men to circumvent laws prohibiting dressing in entirely silk fabrics. The mashru on this quilt was likely imported from India to France, where the teal green border is thought to be made. The boarder contains many motifs that frequently appear on quilts from the Provence region, including sunflowers, marguerites, feathered hearts, and pomegranates. The left, right, and bottom borders all feature roughly identical symmetrical designs, with the center as a sunflower and other long-stemmed flowers emerging from a basket designed with cross-hatch or diamond lattice quilting. A quilted animal faces each of these central baskets on both sides, possibly meant to evoke the fantastical coquecigrue, a nonsensical hybrid animal from French folklore and literature sometimes depicted on quilts from the Provençal region. The quilt back is made from an early English block print, suggesting that the top and back may have been joined at a later date. More research is needed on the context of this unusual quilt's origin.