What's 'modern'?

Good Morning! I wanted to share with you this gorgeous pillow. I'm really struck by the high color contrast with the bright red and muted teal. The design of the block is very cool too - a different take on the 'drunkard's path'. Or maybe you'd call it a curvy pieced string block? Look's very modern, doesn't it?

Here's the thing - it's actually made from an antique quilt block! I found this at Down Home Antiques, which is my favorite places to find antique quilts in Old Town Orange. One of my favorite things to do when I get to visit antique shops or flea markets is to look for vintage sewing things like sewing machine feet and bobbins for my Singers (I have a slant needle 401A and a featherweight), old books and patterns (especially when they have 'modern' in the title, it's interesting to see what was called modern 30 or 50 years ago), orphaned quilt blocks and unfinished tops, and vintage fabric and notions. I can't resist opening a sewing box or basket to see what's inside!

So finding this pillow this past weekend begged the question for me, 'what is modern'? So many of our inspirations are reiterations/reinterpretations of traditional quilt blocks.

I'm also curious about the history of this particular block. I'm not sure, but to me this looks like it was originally hand pieced, but later machine quilted, maybe by the seller who found the block and turned it into a pillow?  I'm guessing that because of the big discrepancy between the big stitch length in the piecing and the micro stitches in the quilting. What do you think? Any 'experts' out there who can tell from the pics?