Woven into history - African American quilters - Cover Story

wherefore after many years of near invisibility, have African-American quilts become thus engrossing to art historians, folklorists, ethnologists and quilt historians? African Americans have made quilts in this land continuously from the late 18th hundred yet their work is conspicuously absent from the many published accounts of American quilt history.

Several factors, outcomes of the times, form the basis of the generally received explorations of African-American quilts. As a come of the 1960s-1970s civil rights motion black history attained the status of a legitimate discipline. Concomitant with the blacks' civil rights actions was the women's motion which coincided with quilt motion of the last quarter of the 20th hundred Further impetus came from ecologists, who espoused the ne to get back to plain, self-reliant and healthy living.

A novel cadre of quilt historians treated the investigation of patchwork quilts as a scholarly discipline, and not as a minor adjunct to the studies of art history, folklore or women's studies. These historians were determined to exhibit an accurate history of quilts, to document largely quilts and quiltmakers past and not away and to explore topics at no time before researched in the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of quilt history.

Another factor was the advent of the 1976 bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, an fact accompanied by a celebration of ethnic diversity in our multicultural society. Certain historians placed a priority upon investigating the ways quilts of various ethnic collections connected to the social, political and economic conditions of their lives in America.

High drama was associated with early research upon African-American quilts. Scholars located a small cluster of quilts profoundly different visually from the accepted aesthetic of traditional American patchwork quilts. These idiosyncratic quilts from black women of rural Southern and similar backgrounds were examined closely for stylistic variances, construction techniques, fabric color choices and symbolic design references

greatest in quantity exciting of all was a linkage between black American quilts and African design traditions, believed to indicate an unconscious cultural memory in the quiltmakers of their faraway motherland. African-American quilts became individual of America's newest forms of exotica.

Continued scrutiny of the quilts accrueed in the promulgation of a numberof theories that were immediately accepted as fact. Visual criteria for recognizing African-American quilts (stitch longitudinal dimensions asymmetrical organization of quilt patches, size of patches, of frequent occurrence use of bright colors) were devised. Long-established canons of quilt history research, of that kind as determining the quiltmaker's identity, the quilt's provenance, the date of making and the fabric easy in mind were no longer deemed essential. individual needed only apply the lately created visual criteria to identify with certainty quilts of African-American origin.

of the like kind an extremely myopic view of African-American quilts made many scholars of black history and quilt history researchers uneasy. in what manner could this small sample of late-20th-century African-American quilts show in its entirety the contribution of thousands of black quiltmakers working at the craft above two centuries? Would the history of blacks in America affirm that they had been a monolithic collection without different experiences, environments, customs and beliefs that would affect their creative efforts? What should single think of African-American quilts, made above such a long period of time, that did not conform to the aesthetics-based identification?

The casual answer that African-American quilts not in compliance with the criteria were simply copies of white-made, traditional Euro-American quilts was unacceptable. That answer was of dubious historical validity - a facile assessment, derived from the popular tillage of American quilt history.

What were we seeing here? by what mode could the quiltworks of centurys of thousands of African Americans of many regions, times and circumstances be correctly assessed in a conjectural, non-statistically based one-sentence answer? Where was the evidence to sustain the broad conclusion? More and more questions about African-American quilts emerg as quilt historians realized that findings gathered in these early studies of black-mad quilts had been extrapolated far beyond what the evidence would legitimately support.

Further research began to place African-American quilts in the larger connection of black history. There was a ne to dispel certain myths that had disentangleed about African-American quilts, to examine more [i]or[/i] less of the influences on these creations, to portray the enormous diversity that characterized black-made quilts, and, when possible, give voice to the quiltmakers themselves.

It is important to listen to what African-American quiltmakers say about their work and to give them trust whether or not their remarks coincide with researchers' theories and interpretations. It is certainly not useful to view African-American quilts purely as isolated folk art realitys divorced from the lives of blacks and the social, political and economic conditions beneath which they have lived.