A theme runs like a well placed basting thread though “Calico & Chintz: Early American Quilts from the Smithsonian American Art Museum” on view at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland until June 6 – the 22 quilts in the exhibit embody not only the artistry of making quilts but the history of the textiles used in the quilts.

The textiles, calico and chintz, which date from 1810 to 1850 and were imported from England and France, are bold in design, rich in color and exuberant in pattern. The fabrics are colored with vegetable and mineral dyes.

The word ‘calico’ comes from Calicut, a port in India where Europeans in the 17th century bought colorful cotton textiles, which had a great impact on Western taste. Calico is unglazed fabric printed with repeat patterns of small floral or abstract motifs.

Chintz is a Western version of a Hindi word meaning variegated. Chintz is glazed cotton printed with bird and flower motifs, often of majestic size.

The quilts in the exhibit beckon with irresistible charisma – beckon and beckon until viewers lean over the barriers for a closer look at the precise, nearly invisible stitching, the rich red and indigo blue dyestuffs of Ann Dagge’s center medallion appliqued quilt, made in 1818 in Rochester, N.Y.

In Dagge’s quilt, birds circle a centrally-placed vase of flowers. More birds roost in bouquets placed in the swags of the border. The quilt’s background is made of white linen – perhaps hand-woven; the motifs are cut from block printed cottons, each color applied by using a carved wooden block, a technique known in the West since 1676, when William Sherwin of London received a patent for the process.

Other quilts in the exhibit utilize textiles that have been printed by copperplate or roller printing techniques. Prints from copperplates produced fine details. Roller printing made it possible to manufacture larger quantities of fabric at higher speeds and lower cost.

Annie Righton Smith’s center medallion quilt, believed to have been made on one of her family’s plantations in Georgia or South Carolina in 1840, uses the broderie perse – French for Persian embroidery – technique. Borders and other motifs were cut from chintz and appliqued to the background fabric. Family tradition says that the bedcover’s dense, fine hand quilting was done by the family’s slaves. The quilt’s incredible beauty is in sharp contrast to the harsh system of labor that produced it.

The exhibit also includes pieced quilts in the flying geese, Ohio star, nine patch, honeycomb and other patterns, and one by 8-year-old Caroline Miller of Huntington, Pa., who pieced the crib size quilt in the pinwheel pattern in 1840. A handwritten note once attached to the quilt states that it contains 1,056 pieces.

The quilts in the exhibit are from a collection donated to the Smithsonian by Patricia Melton Smith, a Washington, D.C., poet, playwright, photographer and quilt historian. The collection is considered the benchmark collection for calico and chintz quilts made before 1850.

Call the Portland Museum of Art at 775-6148 for more information about the quilt exhibits. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, and from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays.

To learn more about Maine Fiberarts and its yearlong series of statewide events celebrating the state of fiber in Maine, call 721-0678.

Ardeana Hamlin can be reached at 990-8153 and ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.

“Another Layer: Selected Maine Art Quilts”

Shown concurrently with “Calico & Chintz” is a second exhibit, “Another Layer: Selected Maine Art Quilts.” Artists Kimberly Becker, Elizabeth Busch, Mary Ellen Chaisson, Jo Diggs, Natasha Kempers-Cullen, Stephanie Green Levy, Phyllis Harper Loney, Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade use techniques that range from traditional piecing to digital imagery to create not only the quilts, but in some instances, the fabrics from which they are made. These quilts, unlike those in the “Calico & Chintz,” are not intended to be bedcovers. The fabric in the quilts, and its enhancement by painting, airbrushing or other means of manipulation, is the medium with which the artist interprets a personal idea of what quilting is.

“Maine,” said Portland Museum of Art curator Jessica Routhier, who curated the show, “has a significant interest in fiber arts.” Artists come to Maine and fall in love with how it looks, she said, and see Maine as a place to retreat where they can practice art.

Natasha Kempers-Cullen’s piece, “Journey Past, 2000,” consists of five panels constructed of hand painted cotton, linen and silk held together not by an infinite number of stitches, but by an encasement of bridal veiling. The quilt’s surface is lavishly beaded by hand.

Also on exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art are several album quilts made by the second- and third-grade pupils of Portland’s Riverton School under the supervision of teachers Susan Salisbury, Marcia Salem and Jane Jameson.

The three exhibits comprise the glorious past, the adventuresome present and certain future of quilting.

The exhibits are part of “Maine Fiberarts: The State of Fiber 2004” sponsored by Maine Fiberarts of Topsham.

Writer and art critic Polly Ullrich of Chicago will deliver a keynote address at a public reception 7-9 p.m. Friday, April 23, at the museum.

Quilt historian Betsey Telford of York will talk about the quilts in her collection at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 24, at the museum. Tickets are $8 for museum members, $12 for others.