William R.
Dunton
(1868-1966)
Quilt Collector, Author, Psychiatrist
by Karen B.
Alexander
It’s hard to realize just how many
years have passed since I saw my first exhibit of Baltimore Album Quilts at the
Baltimore Museum of Art in the early 80s. I was new to quilting at the time but
loved appliqué and was stunned by these beauties and intrigued by their
history. I would soon learn that
the first person to research and document this particular style of quilt was
male and among the first 5 people inducted into
The Quilters Hall of Fame in 1979 – Dr. William Rush Dunton of Baltimore.
1997.007.0319, International Quilt Study Center, UNL,
www.quiltstudy.org. To access more traditional Baltimore Album quilts in the IQSC collection, see end of
article.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1868, Dr.
William R. Dunton was psychiatrist at Sheppard-Pratt Asylum in Baltimore for
many years in the early part of the 20th century, had a long
association with Johns Hopkins University as an instructor in psychiatry and
was a founding member of three professional societies within his field.
Bunnie
Jordan’s chapter on Dunton in the book “The Quilters Hall of Fame” goes into
interesting detail about his professional career as a psychiatrist as well as
an occupational therapist. In fact, he wrote the first complete textbook on
occupational therapy and is often called the “father of occupational therapy”. How
very appropriate that the “father” of occupational therapy would include quilting
from the very beginning of his exploration of the benefits of occupational
therapy! Today many millions of women (and men) know of quilting’s many
emotionally satisfying benefits.
Dunton is said to have been
influenced by his mother’s love of needlework for in 1877, the year of its
founding, she was an early pupil at the Philadelphia School of Art Needlework. However,
he acknowledges in the introduction to his book “Old Quilts” that he can recall
no quilts in his home as a boy and speculates “their making was too
unfashionable in large cities to interest many during the 1870s.” However, much
later in life when he came across a long forgotten box in his own closet, he
wrote, “a tea box of diamonds of
colored silks in which I recognize some of my childhood neckties….and I believe
I assisted in cutting these.”
Dunton credits TQHF Honoree Marie
Webster’s 1915 book “Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them” with awakening
his interests in documenting and recording early quilts and their history,
although he writes, “it seems that I must have had an interest before that time or I should not have
wanted to read the book.” He also quickly realized that the process of
selecting color and pattern, as well as the social interaction that quilts
traditionally engendered, would be of great benefit to his “nervous” patients. As
a psychiatrist, he thought his female patients could benefit from the quiet
calming influence of needlework as well as the sense of accomplishment it
brought.
Copake Annual Textile
Auction - ca. 1850 MD Album Quilt - sold June 30, 2007
Although Dunton did not focus exclusively
on needlework as a fitting form of occupational therapy for his patients,
quilts took on a special meaning for him personally. Or, more specifically, the
documentation and collecting of quilts
took on new meaning for him and quickly became one of his many personal interests
after he fell under their spell and began a correspondence with Marie Webster,
soon after her book was published in 1915. Eventually he would correspond with
a small cadre of quilt scholars who undoubtedly encouraged him to publish his
own book.
Unable to find a publisher willing to take on his book, Dunton
self-published 2,000 copies. Every book is hand-numbered and today copies
command a hefty price in the market place, if you can even find one.
From our perspective today, we find
it rather amazing that any male, but perhaps especially a psychiatrist, would
be planning and executing a quilt exhibit in 1916. But on September 5, 1916,
when Dunton held his first quilt exhibit for his patients, he would in fact exhibit
50 quilts — quilts borrowed from the families of patients and friends, as well
as three loaned by Marie Webster herself.
Dunton would go on to curate three quilt exhibits for the Baltimore
Museum of Art as well, with the 1944 exhibit featuring the quilts that had come
to intrigue him the most —Baltimore Album quilts.
*Members of the Baltimore
Appliqué Society made tracings of the original Mary Mannakee quilt that resides
in the collection of the Daughters of the American Revolution and then made a
reproduction quilt which was raffled to raise money for the DAR. Marylou McDonald,
Past President of the BAS, and her stitch group, called Friends from the Heart,
also decided to exchange blocks made from these tracings. Marylou made one
block (top row, far right) and the borders. In early 2002, the finished quilt
top was sent to a quilter in Kentucky to hand quilt.
Dunton is responsible more than any other early quilt historian for documenting quilts that had a special
affiliation with the Baltimore area. His groundwork research on this style
helped later quilt historians trace the influence of the Baltimore-style as it
evolved and made its way into other regions. Plus, Dunton's research covered much more than just this one style.
Dunton was a meticulous record
keeper and archivist. In late 50s to early 60s his extensive collection of research
materials and photographs was donated to the
Baltimore Museum of Art.
The
Baltimore Applique Society,
founded in 1993, raised $5,600 in 1997 towards stabilizing the Dunton papers so
that they could be made available to researchers. This passionate group of
appliqué-lovers and quilt historians continues to support the preservation of the
Dunton archival material as well as the Baltimore Album quilts in more than one
museum collection.
Beginning at
top: Dunton article from TQHF Honoree book, Katzenberg book, AQSG’s Uncoverings
1994, Dunton book bearing his signature.
Photo courtesy of Karen Alexander.
In 1980 Dena Katzenberg created an
exhibit of 50 Baltimore Album quilts and produced a thoroughly researched
catalogue. Out of print very quickly,
the catalogue continues to command a high price.
The point I am making
is that the exhibit traveled and created such a national awareness of Baltimore
Applique quilts at the time that prices soared, bringing more and more quilts
out of family closets. The end result — more and more of the old beauties began to be
documented.
Jennifer Goldsborough’s
presentation at the
1994 AQSG seminar in Birmingham, AL, shed additional new light on this genre of quilt and
is well worth studying. The Baltimore Album style continues to enjoy a strong
resurgence among quiltmakers today thanks to the many new teachers.
Elly
Sienkiewicz of Maryland, with her many books, is perhaps the most well known. Somewhere
in the depths of all my quilt history files, I have a photo of Elly from the
early 1980s in our guest room, cuddled under one of her spectacular appliqué
quilts that featured her daughter.
Speaking of early quilt historians,
Dunton mentions the work of five women — in addition to Marie Webster — who
furthered his own education about quilts and suggested these authors could do
the same for his readers: Florence Peto, focus of the first article in this
series; Ruth Finley, focus of the 2nd article in this series
article; plus Ruby McKim, Carrie Hall, and Rose Kretsinger, who will be covered
in future articles. Peto was in touch with Carrie Hall and Rose Kretsinger,
though I am unaware if Dunton ever had direct contact with these last two
Honorees.
Meanwhile, keep those needles
flying and spread the word about how quilts enrich your life and the life of
our communities!
Karen Alexander
Past President, The Quilters Hall of Fame
Member of
AQSG since 1981, Western Washington Rep.
Of Note:
Be sure to visit the
International Quilt Study Center’s Collections Database
to see more Baltimore Album quilts. There are several ways to query the
database and how one does it determines, of course, the results. If you enter
only "album" as pattern or key word, you will get ALL album quilts,
not just Baltimore. If you enter "Baltimore" in keyword you get only
the Baltimore Albums plus other quilts with Baltimore origins. The latter does
give you fewer, and does include the Baltimore Albums. The images retrieved by
the Collections Database are low resolution, not "zoomable".
The second way to see the IQSC
quilts is via
Quilt Explorer. Give it a few seconds to load. There are fewer quilts in this area; however, they are all high resolution,
therefore you may zoom in for great details. If you search by
"Style/Type" and select Baltimore Album, there are three gorgeous
quilts in high res. Note that when you start to zoom in on one of these images
you may drag the image around with your mouse to see all parts of the quilt
close-up, a dandy little feature.
The Quilt Index, sponsored
by the Alliance for American Quilts, is another great place to see Baltimore
Album quilts and their derivatives and you search it in a very similar way as
the IQSC’s data base.
UPDATE: April 2020 - Here is an
exhibit to watch for in May 2020 of Dunton's discovery of Baltimore album quilts.
Bibliography:
Debby Cooney,
“A Legacy Revised: New Access to Dr. Dunton’s Work” in Blanket Statements, Issue 55, Winter 1998/99, (Lincoln, NE: American
Quilt Study Group)
William Rush Dunton,
Jr., MD, Old Quilts (Baltimore:
Privately printed, 1946)
Jennifer F.
Goldsborough, “An Album of Baltimore Album Quilt Studies” in Uncoverings 1994, ed. Virginia Gunn (San
Francisco, CA: American Quilt Study Group)
Eileen (Bunnie)
Jordan, “William Rush Dunton,
Jr.”, The Quilters Hall of Fame, ed. Merikay
Waldvogel and Rosalind Webster Perry (Marion, IN - The Quilters Hall of Fame,
2004)
Eileen Jordan,
“Dunton Papers Available Soon”, in The
Quilters Hall of Fame Newsletter, No. 14, Fall 1998 (Marion, IN: The
Quilters Hall of Fame)
Dena S. Katzenberg,
Baltimore Album Quilts (Baltimore:
the Baltimore Museum of Art, 1981)
Elly
Sienkiewicz, Baltimore Beauties and
Beyond (C&T Publishing, 1989)
*The quilt made by the members of Friends From the Heart
owned my Mary Lou MacDonald 1st Row (l to r):
Inge Scheumann Ft.
Meade, MD
Kay Twit Cockeysville,
MD
Marylou McDonald Laurel,
MD
2nd Row
Jan Carlson Severna
Park, MD
Lucinda Mayan Hartley,
DE
Anna Holland Heathsville,
VA
3rd Row
Polly Mello Ellicott
City, MD
Chris Miller Columbia,
MD
Anita Askins Annapolis,
MD
4th Row
Barbara Brown Odenton,
MD
Darlene Christopherson China
Spring, Texas
Kathy Suita Cockeysville,
MD
