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Quilt Style: Mad About Madder

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Quilt in madder colors about 1860-1880
Last post was about Washington prints and they did madders too.

Bolt Label for Washington prints
"Full Madder Colors"


Madder is a vegetable dye that must be mordanted with metal salts. Different mordants produced different shades ranging from orange to brick red to dark, chocolate brown.

George Haworth's recipe for a madder-style printed plaid, late 1830s.
Connecticut Historical Society

Madder style prints were popular in the 19th century due to many factors.
  • It was an inexpensive (if complicated) dye process that produced a range of color.
  • The dyes were colorfast.
  • The colors were considered quite appropriate for women's clothing (as Turkey red or Chrome orange were not.)
  • Madder calicoes were a mid-19th-century fashion fad for clothing perhaps because these were the colors in the equally fashionable Kasmir (paisley) shawls of India





Ad from a dry goods store in Canandaigua, New York, 1859


When you see these madder style quilts think 1840-1890 for dates.


Pennsylvania auction




Read more about madder-style prints here:
https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/02/starsin-time-warp-7-madder-style-prints.html

Madder print that survived a ship wreck in the Missouri River
in the 1850s from the Steamship Arabia Museum in Kansas City.


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