Musings on Zarafa
While working on my “Zarafa” quilt, I became quite taken with the story of the original Zarafa and how she took the city of Paris by storm in the early 1800s.
Just like the French in the 1820s, we still love giraffes today. The conservation community coined a term “charismatic megafauna”. Charismatic megafauna are large animals that have widespread appeal. These are your pandas, elephants, great apes, and of course, the giraffe. People travel to the plains of East Africa to photograph them in their native settings, and you can find these oddly charming creatures in zoos around the globe.
Photo by janicklh33, photosforclass.com
Now, on to Zarafa, the true subject of this post. The real Zarafa was an African female giraffe that was gifted to King Charles X of France by Pasha Mohammed Ali of Egypt to curry diplomatic favor. I guess the Egyptians were giraffe crazy too.
Zarafa arrived in Paris in 1827 and touched off a giraffe inspired fashion craze. Home decor, clothing, even hair fashions were styled á la giraffe. As part of this decorating craze, a cotton decorating fabric was created that was used for home decor, and of course, quilts. The giraffe craze died down by 1830 and our poor Zarafa died in 1845.
Some of these quilts survive today. One quilt is owned by the Maryland Center for History and Culture and is featured in A Maryland Album by Nancy Gibson Tuckhorn.
You can view it online in the Center’s digital archive here.
There is also this strippy quilt that was sold by Tennant’s Auctions in 2018.
A sample of the original block print fabric is held in the collection of the Musee de l’Impression sur Etoffes, Mulhouse, France.
My reproduction zarafa quilt is my own design (and still not finished). I plan to make a strippy quilt alternating the zarafa print with ohio star blocks set on point. This reproduction fabric is by Christopher Wilson Tate for Moda and as of today is still widely available at online retailers. To learn more about my quilt in progress. Check out this post.
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