Mystery of an On-Point Beauty

Crown of Thorns / Rocky Mountain Road, c. 1910

"It's not Mountain Mist. It's earlier," I thought, looking at the quilt fresh out of the box from an eBay seller in St. Louis. The mystery quilt has four full blocks set on point, surrounded by half blocks around the edges, but there are more points than the Mountain Mist pattern - and the points are longer and thinner. "Hmmmmm," I thought. "This must be a clue."

Mountain Mist New York Beauty, c. 1930

The Mountain Mist pattern included a suggestion to use burnt orange and yellow on white. For a more traditional looking quilt, the pattern offered a red, white, and blue combination as an alternative. Even though the Mountain Mist quilt was made in red, white and blue, there are a few things about this quilt that don't conform to the Mountain Mist quilt and pattern. 

The mystery quilt has red quarter circles with 15 points, blue sashing with 20 points on each side, and single-colored 15-pointed stars as cornerstones, each within a circle in a square. The Mountain Mist quilt pictured above, which seems to be a slight variation on the original published pattern, has two-colored quarter circles with 15 points, sashing with 14 points on each side, and two-colored, eight-pointed stars constructed of diamonds as the cornerstones. The intersecting blocks form circles. In my mystery quilt, that form is more in the shape of a rounded square. 

"Hmmmmm...."

My curiosity led me to the Quilt Index, where I saw similar quilts that were documented as pattern #1077 in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. All roads seem to lead back to this brilliant resource. Recently, I started to learn more about published pattern sources referenced by Brackman, and it's been a revelation in the study of the pattern most widely known as New York Beauty. As I match published patterns with the quilts I've collected, it has helped me begin to piece together the history of the New York Beauty. Now, when I see quilts with shared characteristics, I think published pattern.

The illustration of pattern #1077 looks like the Mountain Mist quilt, but there are two other sources listed: Crown of Thorns and Rocky Mountain Road by Hall. "Hall?" I asked myself. Still relatively a noob when it comes to scholarly quilt study, I'd seen references to Hall in Brackman's book, but I hadn't ever asked myself what, or who Hall was. I felt a little stupid, but also full of delight. Would the Hall patterns be the missing link between the late 19th century quilts and the 1930 Mountain Mist quilts?

Hall, as it turns out, is Carrie Hall, who published hundreds of quilt patterns in the early 20th century. I found a book by Bettina Havig, called "Carrie Hall Blocks: Over 800 Historical Patterns from the College of the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas." Of course, I ordered a copy! Can't wait for it to arrive, but until it does I'm wondering if the Hall patterns will verify my ideas about the mystery quilt. I think it may be Hall, and I can't wait to find out if it's really true. 

For me, the discovery of Carrie Hall represents a potential link between the old-school Rocky Mountain Road / Crown of Thorn quilts and the 1930 Mountain Mist New York Beauty. It's a link I'd been missing, but the mystery of an on-point beauty led me there. Was Hall a source for Mountain Mist? What was Hall's source? Will one of the Hall Patterns have the same number of points, same dimensions and same characteristics as this mystery on-point beauty? We'll soon find out!