Rich purple silk provides a brilliant foil for the scintillating crazy patchwork stars in this show quilt. The brilliant color is the result of aniline dyes, a synthetic coloring agent invented in the 1850s by English chemist William Henry Perkin as an incidental discovery in his search for artificial quinine. By this time there was beginning to be a burgeoning domestic silk industry. The affordability of this luxury textile and the new range of saturated permanent colors galvanized the textile industry and, by extension, the art of quiltmaking. Patterns that might have been made in cotton a few years previously were now explored in the jewel tones and glossy surfaces of fine silks.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Show Quilt with Contained Crazy Stars," exhibition label for Ooh, Shiny!. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2012. 

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