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NEQM Marks Milestone
with 50 Best
The New England Quilt Museum turned 20 this year, and to invite the quilting community to celebrate the event, it is putting up the 50 best antique quilts from its permanent collection.
Thirty-five full-size quilts and 15 doll- and crib-size quilts comprise "Expressions of Beauty, Objects of Utility," on display at the Lowell, Massachusetts, museum through November 11.
Ordinarily, only 14 of NEQM's more than 250 quilts are exhibited at any given time. "This exhibition will afford visitors a rare opportunity to appreciate the depth and range of the museum's collection, which spans the history of quilting from the early nineteenth century through the 1940s," explains now-retired NEQM curator Anita Loscalzo, who has returned to the museum to head this event.
The Princess Charlotte Commemorative quilt, the central medallion of which commemorates the marriage of Princess Charlotte of Wales to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha on May 2, 1816, will be one of the special pieces included in the exhibit, as will Lone Star Broderie Perse (above), an example of the chintz applique popular in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
Of particular interest is a LeMoyne Star quilt, which was found in the Cook Borden house in Fall River, Massachusetts. Cook Borden, a wealthy lumber merchant in the 1800s, was the great uncle of Lizzie Borden, who was acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother in a sensational 1893 trial. nequiltmuseum.org
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Lone Star, Broderie Perse, 104" x 104", circa 1825, possibly made by Margaret Young Stansbery of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Photo courtesy New England Quilt Museum
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