Mosaic #13

The Ladies Art Company was established in 1889 by Emma Mildred Zimmer Brockstedt, owner of a St. Louis dry goods store and her husband Henry, an experienced printer. Their catalog offered hundreds of quilt blocks and quilt patterns (10 cents apiece), templates, fabric and even quilt kits (no more than $6.00) that could be ordered by mail. At the height of its popularity, the Ladies Art Company had more than fifty employees, but at first the Brockstedt’s workers were their own children. Each block pattern would arrive with a 3” square card showing how the finished block should look. The cards were printed in black and white, and the Brockstedt children hand painted them with watercolors around the kitchen table after school. Most of the blocks came with names attached, but those that didn’t were simply numbered. This is one of the numbered blocks; a simple but elegant arrangement of sixteen half-square triangles.