Unidentified (American)
Description
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 black women throughout 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."
Cotton And Cotton Flannel
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
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