Caswell Carpet c. 1939

This quilt, or Caswell Carpet as it’s known, was made by Charlotte Winter. It’s a collection of painted squares, kind of like a sampler, only instead of testing stitches, Charlotte's testing images. Look at the surface, you can see the weave of the fabric, the paint sinking in, making these matte, almost chalky marks. Everything seems to nestle into the cloth. There’s a kind of charming uncertainty in the way the blocks meet. Nothing lines up too neatly. In one block, a man and a woman face us, offering strawberries. The colours are muted, the forms naive. It reminds me of the work of Forrest Bess. His paintings also have that incredible mix of a kind of knowing, and not knowing, that raw energy combined with total control of materials. Like, Charlotte knows exactly what she’s doing, but it’s like she’s painting with her eyes closed. Does that make sense? Anyway, it's a beautiful, weird, and kind of wonderful piece.