Artist/Maker
Minnie Sherman Fitch
(1851 - 1913)
Crazy quilt table runner
ca. 1885
Silk, cotton, paint
Overall: 68 3/8 × 13 7/8 in. (173.7 × 35.2 cm)
Gift of Beth Gutcheon Clements
2018.9.1
Maria Ewing Sherman Fitch’s crazy quilt table runner contains motifs laden with personal and historical meaning, and suggests the diplomatic ties between the United States and France.
As the daughter of Major General William T. Sherman (1820–1981), Fitch had a sophisticated upbringing and held sway in Washington society. She traveled to France in 1873, just before her marriage in to Lt. Thomas William Fitch. Apparently fascinated by Napoleon III and Eugénie, who had recently been deposed, she purchased a set of imperial china and a black ostrich fan resembling one owned by the empress. Among the runner’s motifs are the Eiffel tower, a fan (possibly a reference to Eugénie’s fan), an acorn, a reticule, a bird, a cornucopia of flowers, a sailboat flying a French flag, and the Montgolfier hot balloon with US and French flags flown from its basket. The 1883 centennial of the first public hot air balloon demonstration by the Montgolfier brothers may have inspired Fitch to stitch the latter.
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