Name/Title
Placemat: Quilts 126, Tobacco BrownDescription
This is a Country Prints production sample retained as a print record.
A placemat set silkscreened in one color on off-white linen.
Placemat: inspired by Pennsylvania “Dutch” applique quilt work, twelve quilt blocks are portrayed in line drawings with pattern names on a 3x4 grid across the center of the mat. Swags at left and right are typically found as borders on appliqué quilts.
Napkin: five fields depicting Wert’s interpretation of calico prints and a poem referring to names of quilt block patterns:
“Hearts and gizzards - buggy wheel -
Turkey tracks and orange peel and
Blazing star and Kansas troubled -
Free trade block and X’s doubled
Lincoln’s platform - honey bee
Strawberry - tea leaf - tall pine tree
Friendship - union - shoo fly shoo
Charter oak and old Tippecanoe”
This set is described in a c.1955 Country Prints price list, “Showing 12 identified accurate traditional appliqué patterns — Calico swatches on Napkins. On White Linen in Indigo, Turkey Red or Tobacco Brown.”
It also appears in the art education journal Design in 1956.
Edges are straight stitched and fringed.Made/Created
Artist Information
Artist
Robert Darr WertRole
ArtistManufacturer
Country PrintsDate made
circa 1953Time Period
20th CenturyPlace
Location
Gill MA.Continent
North AmericaNotes
Date determined in part by appearance in the journal Design, Volume 57, 1956, Issue 3; see images.Inscription/Signature/Marks
Placemat: “RDW” within heart, lower right corner, and “BY HAND”, lower left corner on swag.
Napkin: “w” within heart after the word “Tippecanoe”, and “by hand”, lower left corner.Dimensions
Width
17-1/2 inDepth
11-1/2 inMaterial
Bleached Linen, Textile Ink
