Wednesday, October 28, 2020 – MIRACLES FROM HANDS WITH A NEEDLE AND THREAD

By admin

Wednesday, October 28, 2020 

OUR 194th ISSUE

OF 

FROM THE ARCHIVES

JOYOUS

QUILTS

from

THE SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART

MUSEUM

THE GLORIOUS WORKS
BY PROFESSIONALS
AND
SELF-TAUGHT
QUILTERS

Unidentified (American), Crazy Quilt, ca. 1901-1929, wool and mixed taffetas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Raymond Vlasin and family, with deepest appreciation for the many friends with whom Claire Vlasin quilted, 2017.24.35

Cynthia Nixon, Crash Quilt, 1994, painted, appliqued, pieced, and quilted cotton broadcloth, satin, metallic acetate, and polyester, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist and Randolph Hudson, 2001.77, © 1994, Cynthia Nixon

Clementine Hunter, Melrose Quilt, ca. 1960, fabric, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Barbara Coffey Quilt Endowment, 2014.5 Clementine Hunter was born on a Louisiana plantation where her grandparents had been slaves. When she was twelve, her family moved to Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches Parish to work as sharecroppers. Clementine worked as a field hand, cook, and housekeeper. The Henry family bought Melrose in 1884; they restored architectural structures on the property and moved historic log cabins from the area onto the property. When John Hampton Henry died, his wife Cammie made Melrose a retreat for visiting artists. Hunter’s exposure to artists and some leftover paints led her to own artistry. She painted quotidian stories she felt historians overlooked—primarily the activities of the black workers. She also made pictorial quilts. This one depicts several notable buildings at Melrose, including the Big House, Yucca House, and African House, in which Hunter painted a now-historic mural of plantation life in 1955.

Unidentified (American), Untitled (String Quilt with Diamond Pattern), 1950s, cotton, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Corrine Riley and museum purchase through the Barbara Coffey Quilt Endowment and the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2016.5.37 The themes of protection and shelter are central to many traditional African American forms, but are perhaps most powerful in the improvisational quilts made by African American women across the South. Quilts are inherently a folk form–most quilters learned from their mothers or grandmothers. Yet, when the patterns and color combinations must take their cues from what clothes are too worn to wear, the maker’s inventiveness takes center stage. Salvaged fabrics from family members were essentially scrapbooked into the quilts, and the astonishing result showed both the artistry of the maker and a larger, communal aesthetic. Mary Lee Bendolph, a quilter from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, explained, ​“A woman made utility quilts as fast as she could so her family wouldn’t freeze, and she made them as beautiful as she could so her heart wouldn’t break.”

Unidentified (American), Untitled (String Quilt), 1920s, wool, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Corrine Riley and museum purchase through the Barbara Coffey Quilt Endowment and the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2016.5.41

Top: Detail, The Holen Boys Ties Quilt, about 1935, silk, Lent by The Nebraska Prairie Museum of the Phelps County Historical Society, Holdrege, NE, with permission of the Holen Family. Bottom: The Holen family in front of the Renwick Gallery last December. When I was a young kid in grade school, I had to wear a gold tie and a pressed white shirt each Thursday for “assembly,” when all the students would gather in the auditorium for a special program, a spelling bee (when I was in third grade received did me in), or a concert. On those mornings my father would tie a tie for me around his own neck, then slip it off and place it on the handle of my bedroom door. All I had to do was take the nearly-finished tie, slip it over my head, then tighten it around my neck to fit. So much better than one of those clip-on numbers, or even something with an elastic back that could be snapped by a mischievous friend. Those are my first memories of having to wear a tie and I’ve been a reluctant tie-wearer ever since. When I heard there was a quilt on display at the Renwick made mostly of men’s ties from one family, I had to check it out for myself…if not for men-kind everywhere. I visited the tie quilt on no ordinary day in its own life or in the life of the Holen family. On that day in late December all ninety-two of the Holens, who planned their annual family reunion in D.C., to coincide with the exhibition of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century quilts, Going West! Quilts and Community. In 1935, their relative Ellen Holen of Nebraska decided to collect ties from the men in her family—her six sons and her husband—and make a quilt. Having eight children left Ellen with little time to work on the quilt except for late at night when all the children were asleep. Her only surviving child, her ninety-two year old daughter Rachael made the trip to D.C. and remembered that her mother always wanted to work on the quilt, “but never seemed to have time till late evening after she had taken care of the needs of the family: that always came first.” It turned out that Ellen never finished the quilt. Only after her death in the mid-1980s was the unfinished quilt found, damp and musty, in an old trunk in a basement.” According to Rachael, she and other relatives contacted the quilting ladies at the local senior center for advice on treatment for the quilt. They advised Rachael to roll the quilt in newspapers to take away the musty smell, and several days later—much to their surprise—the smell was gone. Then it was time to finish the quilt. On February 15, 1986, Rachael gathered nearly twenty relatives for “tieing day” including her brothers, Milford and Norris who “put up the quilting frames at my house. We made a full day of it with a pot-luck at noon. Mother would have been proud to know that her children finished what she didn’t quite have time to finish before she left us.” Then on a cold winter morning, one of the last days of 2007, two fully loaded buses pulled up near the Renwick and within minutes, more than ninety members of the Holen family, in identical red and white scarves, were heading up the street. They stopped to pose on the museum steps before entering. Click! They also posed for photos inside the gallery in front of The Holen Boys Ties Quilt which will be on display at the Renwick through January 21. Then it returns to its home at the Nebraska Prairie Museum of the Phelps County Historical Society, Holdrege. I hope you have a chance to see it. The circular shape of the ties forms a spoked pattern reminiscent of the wagon wheel motif that repeats itself in quilts throughout the exhibition. Every quilt tells a story: there’s only one tie quilt, however. And I, for one, though a reluctant wearer of ties, thank Ellen Holen for making me think twice about the patterns and fabric of my own family history.

WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

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TUESDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY

WOLFGANG’S STEAKHOUSE
33RD STREET AND PARK AVENUE
CELEBRATES IS WONDERFUL GUASTAVINO CEILINGS

EDITORIAL

Quilts bring a smile to my face, though not visible thru a mask.  
Thanks to the Smithsonian American Art Museum for their wonderful collection!!!

JUDITH BERDY

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Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
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