"Crazy quilt" (now 1878, was 1886) -- a tale of discovery and frustration

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Thu Sep 11 16:20:16 UTC 2008


I friend asked me about the origins of "crazy
quilt", and I am pleased to say it can be taken
back from the British.  (OED's earliest citation
is 1886, from "Pall Mall G." -- but its next
citation, 1888, is domestic, Boston Evening Jrnl.)

A.   I will relate my tale of woe first, so that
you will have to read it, or discourteously scroll down.

I started my Google Books search with
date:1800-1885; 132 hits.  (Unfortunately, I
thought of 19th C. newspapers only later; it has
1883.)  I plowed past the many serial
publications for which Google gives only the year
of first publication, finding a few  early
"books" with Full View in the first couple of
pages of results, downloading and printing from
them, moving my ending date forward
(unfortunately, only one year at a time for a
couple of times), until 1800--1882 yielded only
59 hits, of which only 4 or 5 were Full View and not journals.

Among these hits were:

"Fourteenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts
Charitable Mechanic Association", 1881 -- but
this was double-bound with the "Fifteenth", 1885,
where the hits actually were.  (However, both were somewhat useful; see below.)

"The Late Mrs. Null", dated by Google as
1836.  Wow!  I downloaded, printed the relevant
pages, looked at the copyright page, and the date
looked to me like 1836.  Google gives the author
as Frank Richard Stockton, as does the Harvard
library catalog -- but the latter has his dates
as 1834--1902.  So Google (and I) were mislead by a poorly printed 8.

Then there was "Samuel French's Basic Catalogue
of Plays", dated by Google to 1830.  Very
suspicious -- and Harvard has an edition published 1996.

And finally, "Symra", by Kristian Prestgard,
Johannes Benjamin Wist, with the quotation "Den
er et slags 'crazy quilt', hvor fremmedartede
elementer er lappet sammen, og hvad der hører
sammen er adskilt."  Dated by Google 1808.  Did
crazy quilts arise with early
Norwegian-Americans?  Nope -- after downloading,
I see that the copyright date is 1908.


B.   But there was some good news (and some disappointing).

B.1:  1878.

p. 407 [unnumbered; publisher's ad.]
"De Vere's / Wit, Humor, Pathos, and Parodies. / ... Crazy Quilt Architecture."
In Jenny June's American Cookery Book ...
Mrs. J. C. Croly (Jennie June)
N.Y.: Excelsior Publishing House
1878

Thus the earliest use I found is transferred from
sewing.  One might think a non-transferred use would be earlier.

Excelsior says of William De Vere's "Wit
[etc.]":  "Bound in Illustrated Cover, containing
140 pages.  Price 25 cents."  Disappointingly,
the earliest edition I saw in WorldCat, Library
of Congress, or Amer. Antiquarian Society is
1885.  (The same Excelsior ad appears in "The
Days of Daniel Boone: A Romance of 'The Dark and
Bloody Ground'", by Frank H. Norton, N.Y., The
American News Company, 1883, p. [415].)


B.2.  Alleged 1878.

Wikipedia ("Crazy Quilting") says "The Japanese
Exhibit in the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial
Exposition inspired the crazy quilt with its
asymmetrical art."  That article links to "The
History of Crazy Quilts, Part I"
(http://www.caron-net.com/featurefiles/featmay.html),
which claims "The first use of the word crazy, to
describe a random, asymmetrical pattern in
needlework was in the "'Cultivator and Country
Gentleman' in 1878."  It does not say whether the
actual phrase "crazy quilt" appeared there (see
the [1881] "crazy pattern" below).


B3.  1883.

"THE Atlanta Coustitution [sic in list of
citations] prints what looks like a crazy quilt, but it isn’t a crazy quilt"
The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC) Tuesday,
November 13, 1883; Issue 113; col B.
[19th C. U.S. Newspapers; many instances 1883--1885]


B.4.  [1881], 1884.

p. 179
"2016. Miss Annie Brooks ... Calico Quilt.---Crazy pattern."
Fourteenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association.
Boston; Alfred Mudge & Son
1881

p. 116 [other instances elsewhere]
"869. Miss E.L. Gardner ... Crazy quilt of six hundred pieces."
Fifteenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association.
Boston; Alfred Mudge & Son
1884

Thus it would seem that between 1881 and 1884
Boston at least decided that a quilt of a "crazy
pattern" could be called a "crazy quilt."  The
publications of the Mass. Charitable Mechanic
Assoc. apparently began in 1837; perhaps looking
at exhibit reports (1876 to 1878) might turn up an earlier "crazy quilt".


B.5.  "Crazy-work", 1885.

p. 286
"[title] National Crazy-Work
Exhibition.  [article begins] This Exhibition
opened in Masonic Hall, New York, on the 18th
inst., with a bewildering display of all kinds of needle-work."
Dorcas Magazine
New York
November, 1885.

"crazy-work" not in OED, but perhaps too
straight-forward a compound.  OED has "crazy patchwork" for 1885.

Joel

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