Elizabeth Sliver's quilt is among the most sophisticated of the "classic" style Baltimore album quilts. Extraordinary design ability as well as great technical skill is shown in the enlarged central medallion with its gracefully flaring wire basket appliquéd from narrow strips of Turkey red cotton and brimming with flowers formed of multiple layers of appliquéd petals. The bluebird hovering above with a Holy Bible in its beak is formed from one of the famous fondu or "rainbow" prints, cut and shaped to emphasize the bird's contours. Floral swags connected with triple looped bowknots surround the basket forming a wreath. Beyond these sit four remarkable double blocks, each featuring a unique floral or fruit bouquet expertly rendered in multiple layers of appliqué. All four corner squares feature cornucopias filled with flowers, while elaborate floral wreaths, trees, and exotic birds fill in other sections of the grid. The intricacy and overall uniformity of design evident in this album quilt suggest that it was not an assemblage of blocks individually designed and contributed by many persons. Rather, it was conceived as a whole by one talented artist-designer. Some documentary evidence exists to propose that this person was Mary Simon (née Maria Anna Hergenröther or Heidenröder), whose role in cutting and basting album blocks of a sophisticated style was alluded to in the diary of a young Baltimore woman Hannah Mary Trimble in 1850.* Mary Simon immigrated to Baltimore and married carpet weaver Philip Simon in 1844. Her early years in Baltimore coincided with the growing rage for album quilts and the period when quilts of the highest quality appeared. However Simon's authorship of this particular quilt and other classic albums is not proven. The inked inscription beneath the central basket dedicates this quilt to Miss Elizabeth Sliver (1829-1893) who received it as a present from her parents, apparently in honor of her marriage to William T. Atkinson (1824-1888) of Philadelphia on May 24, 1849. The heart-shaped wreath enclosing a rose at the center bottom and the circular wreath formed around a pair of love birds at the lower right would have been appropriate symbols to adorn a quilt commissioned in honor of such an event. Elizabeth Sliver's quilt passed down to her son William R.B. Atkinson, whose widow married a diplomat following Atkinson's death. This couple travelled throughout Europe with the quilt, finally settling in Sweden, where Sliver's granddaughter inherited it in the early 1930s. Upon her death, the quilt passed to Sliver's great-granddaughter, who lived in Switzerland. There former Consultant Curator of Textiles, the late Dena Katzenberg, found it and arranged for its return to Baltimore and purchase by the Friends of the American Wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art. *Jennifer Faulds Goldsborough, Lavish Legacies: Baltimore Album and Related Quilts in the Collection of the Maryland Historical Society (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1994), 16-17.