North or South Carolina hand-pieced and hand-appliqued quilt in a 9-block design album layout, mariner's compass primary pattern with a chintz border around each block, and a rare central chintz panel with floral, stylized spider web or scalloped cartouche, and butterfly decoration including a trapunto butterfly to the center and floral bouquet sprays, all within a chintz border. Comprised of printed cotton chintz, printed cotton, and solid cotton fabrics including red, green, yellow and double pink on a white ground. Hand-quilted throughout with a cotton thread in various designs including by the piece, overlapping circles, and parallel lines in the borders. Initialed en verso in red chain stitch embroidery to one corner C.L.C. Additionally initialed and dated 1845 in black embroidery on the center panel, embroidery goes through the quilt and is visible en verso. With white backing, lightweight batting, and separately applied chintz binding. 79" x 80". Note: In a 2019 blog (http://chintzpanelquilt.blogspot.com/2019/09/), quilt historians Merikay Waldvogel and Barbara Brackman discuss American chintz panel quilts and their British counterparts, a follow-up to Waldvogel's 2013 AQSG paper "Printed Panels for Chintz Quilts" . They identify the center square as "Panel #19" and state "Panel #19 with butterflies is stylistically quite different from other panels and found only in American quilts (four of them.) A quilt with the same central applique can be found on the MESDA research database: https://mesda.org/item/collections/quilt/21457/. This quilt exemplifies a transitional style of quilting from traditional chintz applique quilting toward by-piece quilting, which gained popularity in the mid-19th century.

CONDITION: Top with some weakened fabrics, most notably to the binding, scattered minor spotting and losses to red printed material. Backing with scattered staining and spotting.