Crazy quilt, USA, 1890s (2019.2925).Textiles tell stories. Deeply human stories about belonging, or the longing to belong, about love and hope and everything in between.
No where is this more true than in the stories that quilts tell. I look at the TRC’s collection of American quilts in particular, and think about the lives of the women who created them, about what they wanted for their children and for their own lives.
Having lived in Minnesota, an American state in the mid-West, I think about the stories behind an amazing late-19th century crazy quilt that came from there. This quilt (TRC 2019.2925) includes silk, velvet and cotton pieces; ribbons from (probably very heated) Republican Party political conventions; and both hand embroidered and painted panels. The stories it could tell! (You can learn more about this quilt at a TRC blog of 21 April 2020).
A new exhibit of 35 quilts at the American Folk Art Museum (New York, New York) also tells stories. The exhibition has the evocative title of “What That Quilt Knows About Me”, and includes quilts made by two enslaved African-American sisters, and another by a British soldier recuperating from the Crimean War (compare the story of Private Thomas Walker, 1856).
Photo of Carl Klewisce’s quilt, American Folk Art Museum. USA, c. 1907.
One of the quilts in the exhibition reminds me of the TRC’s colourful Minnesota quilt. This quilt (acc. no. 2012.1.1) is colourful, too, and is also made from expensive materials like silk, faille, taffeta and satin. It features kites, doves and stars, and was made by a German immigrant named Carl Klewicke (1835-1913).
Carl was a tailor and lived in Corning, New York. It’s thought that he used scraps of his finest materials to make this quilt, which he presented to his daughter Laura on her wedding day around 1907. We know that it took him twenty years to make this quilt, and that it contained some 31,085 pieces, because there are several newspaper accounts about his wedding gift, which is described as “wonderful in many respects”.
But this particular quilt has yet another story to tell. When she about three months old, Laura had been found abandoned on the Klewicke’s family front steps. According to a newspaper account of the time (the March 18, 1879 edition of the Corning (NY) Journal), the baby was “well dressed, and an extra pair of shoes was in the bundle of clothing left with it. Mr. and Mrs. Klewicke, having no children, adopted the foundling and are already quite proud as well as happy…”. Decades later, Carl finished his quilt for his adopted daughter.
A textile story of love, indeed.
By Shelley Anderson, 26 August 2023
The American Folk Art Museum exhibition “What That Quilt Knows About Me” is on until 29 October 2023. For more on the exhibition, and on Carl Klewicke’s quilt, click here.
