Quilts in America
Charm Quilt, Ruthie Stubbs, circa 1880 (Gift of Fleur and Charles Bresler)
The touring exhibition American Quilt Classics 1800-1980 finally returns to its Mint Museum of Craft and Design home for one last showing (25 July – 6 February)
The exhibition showcases the 37 American quilts given to the museum by collectors Fleur and Charles Bresler. The collection was built up over 20 years by the two and was designed, as Fleur Bresler explains, to be ‘a small, representative group of quilts with historical significance’. It includes nearly every known quilting style used in American quilt-making and most of the items have full provenance details making the collection a valuable archive for historians as well as a great source of inspiration for contemporary makers. The collection reads as a visual potted history of American quilting, starting from the early post-colonial quilts made with imported Indian chintzes and running right through to contemporary quilts made as part of the revival of interest in American quilting after the ground-breaking 1971 show at the Whitney, Abstract Design in American Quilts.
Highlights include the Amish star quilt made in 1925 with typically striking contrasting colours – purple and sea-green in this case – and geometric patterns, as well as a group of rare crib quilts. Look out also for the early 19th-century quilts, which don’t normally survive intact as they are often re-cycled to form more contemporary patterns.
www.mintmuseum.org
