Unidentified (American)
Description
Improvisational quilts, or those with free-form patterns, are an old and ongoing tradition in African American quilting. They represent a practical need for warmth, but, in the early and mid-twentieth century, they also provided a rare splash of color in drab dwellings. These quilts assert personal style and a need to express love through beauty, and reveal "home-making" as a defiant, political act by people whose lives beyond the home were marked by oppression. The maker's identity has often been lost, yet the material and aesthetic compositions depart radically from European American quilt patterns and color palettes. African American quilters improvised with available, worn, and patched-together materials to create great beauty from meager means.
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
Record Contributed By
Smithsonian American Art MuseumRecord Harvested From
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