When Christopher Moziakk went to a garage sale, he was merely looking for a frame. In disassembling the frame, a card fell out that identified the fabric in the frame as an English toile print from the Seymour collection, circa 1760. He sent a photo, explaining that the frame had been sitting out in the rain, and thus, there is water damage to the fabric. He wrote to ask if I think the fabric is authentic.
Piece of old toile cloth found in a frame
Now, I know that some of you love the mysteries I present here often. I have a few books about toile – okay, I’ll come clean, I have as many in-print books as I could find about toile when I was writing an article for The Quilter magazine a couple of years ago. If you have other earlier print sources and happen to find proof of this particular fabric print in one of those books, before I do, please let me know!
This will be fun to try to hunt down!
10/4/10: I have looked through four books on toile, one of which has many English prints, and I have not found a duplicate fabric. If this piece of toile is, indeed, from 1760, it would be a very early one. Francis Nixon invented copperplate printing in 1752 and did not share his technique of printing fabric with copper plates with England until 1755. Of course, “circa” can mean a date within 10 years on either side of a specific date. At any rate, it is a guess. A fellow quilt historian mentioned that one of the hats looks more like a 1780 style to her. Anything is possible. What a find!
Update on 10/21/2010: This particular toile has been identified as an 1820 English toile that is sometimes falsely attributed to a Massachusetts resident who lived between 1733 and 1788. Scholars believe that it is a copperplate print, not a wood block print. Copperplate printing machines were large and heavy and were not generally used in the production of home printed fabrics. The images on the cloth itself, namely a woman fortune teller and quasi-military scenes, suggest a date of post 1800. This information was shared by Stephanie Hatch, quilt historian, who states that a piece of this cloth is owned by the Peabody Essex Museum and other museum sites.
Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications, a website that features a lengthy article about toile
