Cigar Wrapper Quilt from the collection of San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles

Cigar Wrapper Quilt, c. 1900

Silk

87 x 66.5 in (220.98 x 168.91 cm)

Inv: 2016.492

This stunning, graphically-designed quilt is composed of silk ribbons, each of which tied together a bundle of 25 to 50 cigars. The silk cigar ribbons were mostly collected by and traded amongst women. Often times the collector would display their stashes by sewing the ribbons into a pillow, tablecloth, or even more rarely (and as in this case, a queen-sized) quilt. This piece memorializes a predominantly male pastime in a medium whose artworks were created predominantly by females.

Painstakingly sewn together using a crazy-quilt-like embroidery stitch, the blocks in this piece alternate between the log cabin pattern and the square-in-a-square pattern. The inside squares of the aforementioned blocks echo the squares in the quilt’s corners, drawing the eye to the corner and back again to the main pattern. The repetition of brand names on the quilt’s border increases dramatic impact. The black embroidery emphasizes the printed brand names of the cigars.

Who smoked all of the cigars which were tied up with these ribbons? What was the occasion for smoking these cigars? What was talked about as the cigars were smoked or were they smoked in solitary? If those silk cigar ribbons could talk, oh the stories they would tell, oh the stories they would tell.

Techniques: Hand embroidery
Culture: American
Geographic Location: North America, California
Credit Line: Gift of Susan and Richard Horn

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From San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles

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Additional Details

Additional Artworks

Family Life, 2014

Woman with Two Gents, 2001

The Spirit of the Dream (Is the Unity of Humankind), 1999

Practice, 1999

Harriet Powers Story Quilt (Reproduction), 1994

Savannah Cloth, 1994

African Women Quilt, 1986

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