Inspiration behind the “Jeu de Miroir” Quilt Pattern

My inspiration for the “Jeu de Miroir” quilt pattern came from a perhaps unlikely source: a literary work from the 16th century called L’Heptaméron by Marguerite de Navarre.  (In fact, there are several sources of inspiration, but this is the first and foremost among them.)  This collection of tales is organized by day.  Each day ten narrators tell one story each, so there are ten stories per day.  This literary structure of having smaller segments regularly divided up and contained within the larger segments (the tales inside the day, and then the days inside the overall collection) immediately transformed itself in my mind into visual segments in a mise en abyme structure.

Front cover of the 2002 edition of Joseph Cornell: Master of Dreams by Diane Waldman.

You can see this represented visually in the quilt pattern in Piece A being flanked by the B pieces (which are the same size as Piece A) and then topped off with Piece E.  This small collection of “tales” B /A/B is then enclosed with Pieces C and F.  And finally, this structure is enclosed by Pieces D and G.  Because each story is of equal value, it is important that the initial mini collection of Pieces B and A all be the same size.  In addition, there are seven vertical pieces (D/C/B/A/B/C/D) just as there are seven days of storytelling.

As the narrators get more practice telling stories, I imagine, each day the stories get a little longer.  Thus, Pieces C are longer than B, and pieces D are longer than C.

This mise en abyme, repetitive structure also explains why I created and assembled the blocks the way that I have.  My goal with the pattern is not to have one big, long central block that repeats, but rather, to have smaller blocks that allow quilters to play with pattern placement by fussy cutting, for example.  This also explains the name of the pattern – “Jeu de Miroir” – because the big blocks are assembled in such a way that they can mirror one another along the vertical axis.

I’ve had a small obsession with Marguerite de Navarre’s L’Heptaméron for going on twenty years now.  I can’t remember if I first read it when I was an undergraduate, or just after, but this collection of tales continues to inspire me.  For this quilt pattern, in particular, I had in mind tale number 32.  This tale didn’t inspire me so much because of the plot, but rather because of its visual descriptions of objects being held by other objects.  The ambiguity of a case or box which is supposed to protect, but which also hides and imprisons the objects (because they are out of sight and out of reach), continually intrigues me.

The theme of a box which can simultaneously hide and display its objects leads me to another big inspiration for this quilt: the shadow boxes of the artist Joseph Cornell.  I can’t possibly do justice to his work with mere words, so the best would be to look at some pieces that are on display at various museums.  I was particularly inspired by these three works that are held by the Art Institute of Chicago: Nouveaux Contes de Fées, Untitled (Crystal Cage), and L’Egypte de Mlle. Chloé de Merode…. You can see more examples of his art at the Museum of Modern Art.

From the 2002 edition of Joseph Cornell: Master of Dreams by Diane Waldman.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about the inspiration behind the “Jeu de Miroir” quilt pattern and maybe it will give you some ideas for your own version.  In writing this blog and going back to my source material, I’ve got about a dozen new ideas brewing.  Now to find the time!!