walking in Philadelphia: 2

(William Birch, Views of Philadelphia, 1800).

This is an account of a walk covering eight miles over one day in Philadelphia. Warning! This post is long, and chock-full of personal nostalgia and eighteenth-century references!

I started by strolling up Broad Street, past City Hall, and turned East on Arch, where I stopped at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, which I had not previously visited. In their ‘New American Voices’ exhibition, I was singularly underwhelmed by the work of Robert Chambers (large egg, swirling ribbons, John Deere Tractor) but enjoyed Bill Smith’s pieces a little more — felt that he evidently had a scientist’s feel for the aesthetic, and thought that his work had a sort of internal mobility to it which rendered its interactive bells and whistles a bit superfluous — not to mention potentially self-destructive (while I was there, one of his “metamorphic complex interaction models” threatened to set fire to itself.) In the museum shop, I bought myself one of these brooches, left, and continued along Arch Street.

Further along Arch, I was completely baffled to see the focus of the new exhibition at the National Constitution Centre: Diana, A Celebration. Di’s giant, winsome phizog smiled down from every lampost on a three block radius. The irony of celebrating an icon of British aristocratic privilege in the birthplace of American democracy had clearly been lost on the show’s curators. I did not go inside.

I went to visit some old friends in Christ Church burial ground. The worn grave of Francis Hopkinson is deeply moving. Those of Deborah Reed and Ben Franklin are close to the churchyard entrance, and the street. Passers-by throw coins through the churchyard railings at Franklin’s grave, in the manner of a wishing well.

This act of coin-throwing (for luck?) seems to me symptomatic of the almost universal warmth with which Franklin is popularly regarded. It is noticeable that, while the plaques one sees about Philadelphia of Franklin’s face are worn smooth and shiny by the weight of many children’s hands, those of William Penn are not.

In an eighteenth-century mood, I continued to the Friends meeting house at Fourth and Arch . This is the home of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and the largest Quaker meeting house in the world. It is an early nineteenth-century building, and Charles Brockden Brown is buried in its grounds. Now, I am a person of no faith at all, but the space which once held the separate women’s meeting draws from me profound affection and respect. Among these bare boards and benches, with the good smell of wood and the sunlight flickering in through the windows, sat many wonderful Quaker women writers, intellectuals, philanthropists.

I like the graffiti, too.

While I was sitting there having my moment, a woman came in looking for Franklin’s pew. The mild octogenarian at the entrance reminded her of Ben’s religious affiliations. Discovering that she had mistakenly wandered into a Quaker meeting house, the woman started up a rabid harangue about the death penalty, that “turn the other cheek crap” and how America had “gone too soft.” I rose to leave and, on my way out, couldn’t resist saying that I found her comments rather disrespectful, “I can say what I like where I like,” she shouted after me, “this is America. We’re free here . . unlike other countries.”

A Union Jack flew proudly from one of the houses on Elfreth’s Alley. This amused me, but not as much as the lone coat hanger I found swinging from a holly bush. Had someone hung something there to air? In the past, I’ve found Elfreth’s Alley a discomfiting kind of place — a tiny, tourist-packed thoroughfare sandwiched stoically between the Delaware Expressway and several parking garages — but today it seemed a haven. There was no one about but me, and I spent a happy half hour examining the brickwork and the fire-insurance marks.

On Second Street, I stopped at a picket line to chat to some carpenters who were protesting about their contracts which had been summarily cancelled. Then, with some excitement, I turned onto Market Street, and walked West for a block: to the location of Hannah Griffitts’ apocalyptic dream (which formed the focus of my lecture at PSU). Appropriately, at the intersection, I found a man in eighteenth-century costume. He seemed a little lost.

But he could count himself lucky he wasn’t a figure in Hannah Griffitt’s subconscious on 18th April, 1775. “There appear’d a most extraordinary phenomenon—a ball of fire in ye air, ye houses all ready to take fire in flames, & ye people fainting & dying in ye streets. . . ” No fireball today, thankfully. In fact, the only thing vaguely apocalyptic about the intersection of Third and Market was SUIT CORNER at its South and East.

(compare the south / east corner of third and market to William Birch’s depiction of 1800, at the top left of this post).

Thinking about Hannah Griffitts, I continued down Second to the place where her small house had once stood. It was Norris Alley then. Now it is Sansom Street. Her house was located where the blue car is parked.

By now I was thirsty and a little overwrought, so I popped into the famous revolutionary drinking hole on Second — the city tavern. There were no radicals there now, however: indeed in the tavern foyer, I spotted a framed copy of the Princess Diana commemorative issue of Hello! magazine. Had Di somehow taken possession of the soul of Philadelphia?

Against my better judgment (and certainly my eighteenth-century political inclinations) I tried a glass of Alexander Hamilton’s federalist ale. The chap in breeches behind the bar insisted that I also have a small taste of the George Washington Porter (very good) and Ben Franklin’s Spruce Ale (not so good. I like my hops). I didn’t realise quite how strong these ales were (over 8%, apparently), and confess that they left me feeling a little worse for wear. I departed swiftly when a bloke of Irish extraction joined me at the bar, and, upon hearing my accent, seemed desperate to establish some sort of connection with the old country. As I left, I may have also stolen a beer mat bearing the (to me) appealing slogan: “Ales of the Revolution.” On leaving the tavern, I had a sudden desire to see the face of Elbridge Gerry (perhaps as a corrective to the federalist ale) so I popped up to the Second Bank of the United States to say hello.

This impressive building now houses some great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century portraits. But like Susan Stabile, when I see the Bank, I think of the childhood home of Deborah Norris Logan that once stood here. South, on Walnut Street, there is a small “eighteenth-century garden”. I am fond of box, but confess my my taste in eighteenth-century gardening is a little wilder than this.

I bought a bottle of water, walked past Washington Square, and turned South on Ninth Street, West on South Street, then North on eleventh, and loitered around Spruce and Pine. This was my old neighborhood.

I recalled a lovely evening, eating supper with a friend in the garden room at Effies, with the snow falling quietly outside. By now I was hungry. I walked up Quince, turned West on Locust, North on Broad, and West again on Walnut Street. I popped into a bakery off Rittenhouse square to buy myself a couple of snacks. Then I walked past Anthropologie, and up Nineteenth Street (no, I did not enter the hallowed mammon-temple of Anthropologie. Rather, I muttered darkly as I passed its open door, holding my breath to avoid the migraine-inducing fug of scented candles. That’s right, ladies: I do not like Anthropologie. One day I may elaborate further . . . ).

Moving at my top walking pace, I strode up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (bah), heading for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. By this point I was on a personal pilgrimage: to see Cy Twombly’s Fifty Days at Iliam. The first time I stood before the Achilles canvases, I felt faint and had to sit down. It is a work I often think about. I wanted to see it again.

I sat with the Fifty Days for a while, and then some ten year olds appeared in the antechamber, in which is displayed the Shield of Achilles (which prefaces the nine giant canvases of the Fifty Days). I listened in on their class discussion and they were truly brilliant — not only did they seem to know an awful lot about the Trojan War, but they got the rage, energy, intellect, and emotion of Twombly right away. I left them to it. Outside, it was Autumn.

. . . and it was time to go home.

mead magic

Last summer, when we were walking on Jura, we buried some home-brewed mead above the gulf of corryvreckan. Yesterday we retraced our steps, and returned to find it.

I heart Jura.

Seven miles and a very enjoyable walk later, we climbed up a cliffside on the remote and empty north-west of the island and wondered if we would be able to find our bottle. Last August, we had dug a hole near the heather line, covered up the mead, and placed a large stone to mark the spot. Since then, the heather appeared to have receded, and other visitors had added other stones to ours.

The site now resembled a small burial cairn — which I suppose is exactly what it was. Underneath the stones was a bare patch of ground, and what seemed to be solid peat. Tom began to dig. Was the mead still there?

Of course it was!

It is hard to convey just how excited we were to see this bottle again. It had spent three seasons in the ground of Carraig Mhór, above the swirling, whirling, myth-infused waters of Corryvreckan. Our mead had lain there, quietly wintering with with Cailleach Bheur above the whirlpool in which Orwell had almost drowned. As a friend of ours said after a few in the bar of the Jura hotel on Saturday night, “that bottle is bigger than both of you.”

It tasted damn fine, anyway.

I can also confirm that the returning foot miles seemed to pass by rather quickly in a sort of warm, meady fug. Which was good, since we were walking into a headwind. Slainte!

unpicking

When thinking about process, there is nothing more instructive than unpicking someone else’s stitches.

I found a beautiful hand-embroidered cloth on ebay. I have plans for it. The plans involve deconstructing and transforming it into something else. I began by undoing the slip stitches of its heavy, worn cord edging.

Then I started to unpick the tiny stitches which attach the embroidered front to the cloth’s very fine silk back. The silk is faded but luminous, alive with copper and green.

The secrets written in the cloth began to reveal themselves. Neatly folded hems. Pale green silk thread that moved through the cloth like clockwork. An outer layer of heavy cotton satteen. An inner layer of lining satteen, fresh and bright because unseen for decades. Embroidery worked through both layers. Each thread end carefully woven and hidden. The back of the work faultless in its steady execution.

. . .and just as mesmerising as the front.

It was then that my fascination with the little mysteries of this cloth changed into a something else. I felt a sense of privilege and respect — in unpicking the stitches I was re-living the work of their making, admiring the skill of a talented needlewoman. But my act was also one of trespass: me and my snipping embroidery scissors were destroying a once-whole thing. And as I, blithe, curious, surgeon-like, began to examine the cloth’s insides, I uncovered the truth of its age: the satteen was of a certain kind, and a little older than I’d imagined. I was an historical vandal, cutting through the threads of time.

In cutting someone else’s threads, as in wearing someone else’s clothes, there is the frisson of encounter. We don’t know and will never know the person who made or wore the thing, but they are speaking to us nonethless, in the movement of their hand through the stitches, or in the the shape of their body left in the garment. There is something deeply uncanny in the silence of cloth and clothes: the trace of an unknown and never-to-be-known physical presence. (One does not buy second hand shoes, because one shies away from the ghost of the foot inside.) As I unpicked the stitches, then, a simple encounter between me and the cloth changed into a more complex one between me and its maker. Because I was un-making a made thing my act seemed an intimate one, but it was an empty intimacy, an intimacy with no content. The embroidered cloth was both speaking and not speaking: of a someone living in those stitches and of the silence of the grave.

Wallace Stevens’ brilliant poem, The Emperor of Ice Cream, (1922) has much to say about the dumb intimacy of embroidery — and of death. Stevens describes the covering of a woman’s corpse with a cloth she embroidered when alive.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam
(lines 9 – 15)

Here the corpse is, like the cloth she embroidered, an everyday material object. She reminds us of death’s easy finality. Yet she also suggests the mute compassion of the world of things. We feel the weight of her hands on the lost knobs of the well-worn dresser; her fingers quick movement through the stitches of the cloth that decorates her dead countenance. She does not speak, all we can know is her corpse and her cloth. And it is in the relationship between these two material objects that the essence of the poem (perhaps another object in itself) lies. Gaudy embroidered fantails will never cover death, but each small act of making is an end in itself, capturing the (perhaps pointless) vitality of the human. Now get back in the kitchen (says Stevens) and enjoy your ice-cream.

Having unpicked my thoughts I will get on with the uncanny work of unpicking.

seeing the light in a station bar*

(Newcastle Central)

Tom and I were talking about station bars the other day and discovered that as teenagers, living many miles apart in Stretford and Rochdale, we both liked to hang around the one at Manchester Victoria. This had, before it fell victim to nailed-down chairs and the homogenising effects of Travellers Fayre (shudder), a marvellous, atmospheric and (to our teenage selves) immensely exotic interior: all stucco, coloured glass, and plush upholstery. (I’ve not been there for quite some time, so have no idea of its more recent fate). Anyway, our conversation turned on how station bars form a particular genre of British pub: how they are purportedly spaces of transition, of waiting, and therefore never a destination in themselves. But then we changed our minds and decided, that precisely because of their liminal status (being the place you go to before you get to where you were going; neither one place or another) station bars really are distinct destinations: in-between spaces, half-way places, purgatories of refreshment.

(Halfway hoose)

It then occurred to me that, largely because of my own transitional existence between two cities, I am a regular in two great examples of the genre: The Centurion in Newcastle Central and The Halfway House, just a stone’s throw from Edinburgh Waverley. Both serve a good range of ales (always a bonus); both are superlative station bars, and they both celebrate their particular in-between-ness in very different ways. The Centurion does so in a manner entirely in keeping with its surroundings in the grand Victorian sweep of John Dobson’s Newcastle Central station.

(The bar at The Centurion)

The bar pumps, which happily dispense a swift half of Rivet Catcher or Old Kiln Ale to me after a long day’s teaching, nestle behind glorious late nineteenth-century columns decorated in this stately and very excessive manner. Some of the tiles are exuberantly suggestive of fin-de-siecle train travel along the East Coast mainline: of steam, sunrise, and the view crossing the Tweed near Berwick:

The Centurion sits in what was, in the 1890s, the station’s first-class lounge. But, by the 1960s, it was frequented not by well-heeled passengers but disgruntled prisoners, after it was transformed into holding cells for the British Transport Police. British Rail then apparently did their best to destroy the tiles with a bucketload of paint, before the interior was finally restored to its former glory in 2000. Now The Centurion’s fabulous interior and fine ales can once again be enjoyed by travellers through the station, as well as all the good folk of the toon, (including a well-known group of knitters).

(Dear man who also likes The Centurion’s interior: thankyou for being in my picture)

The Centurion’s real showpiece has to be this mural which displays for North-bound travellers their promised destination: all dappled braes and rocky shores, green and gold and . . . rhododendrons. After looking at it many times, I think the landscape must be meant to suggest a view across Loch Lomond from the East shore (which of course became a popular tourist destination in the 1800s, largely because of train travel). It’s such a luridly late-Victorian highland fantasy, and I absolutely love it.

The interior of The Halfway House (HWH) also celebrates trains and transition, but in a rather different way.

While The Centurion is the epitome of opulence, with its high ceilings, elaborate decor, and luxurious surroundings, the Halfway House is all about being snug. This is the smallest and cosiest pub in Edinburgh. Within seconds of your train arriving, you can step out of Waverley Station, walk a few steps up Fleshmarket Close, and be in the welcoming interior of the HWH, enjoying a very reasonably priced lunch of hot stovies or cullen skink, and (oh joy of joys) a well-kept pint of Bitter and Twisted.

(HWH bar)

The pub is stuffed with railway paraphernalia, chief among which are posters and postcards celebrating the destinations one might reach on the old LNER.

Though the HWH is meant to be a stop-off point, a waiting room, a resting place between places, I am most fond of it because for me it is my final destination (and not purgatorial at all). I frequently meet Tom in there for a pint at the end of the working week, and I look forward to that pint immensely. Cheers.

Where are your favourite station bars?

*apologies to Nick Drake

gaugain again

(Dean Cemetery)

Just to say that my Edinburgh walk “In the steps of Jane Gaugain”, is now live over at Twist Collective. Discover centuries of knitting heritage while you stomp about the city! There is a map linked to the walk, which you can download (for handy reference). It has arrows, and everything.

jubilee bees

Just a quick post. After reading Lara’s comment about the Halloween Bee, and her sister’s ‘bee night’ (amazing!) I hope you will excuse my showing you this. Here are myself and my sister dressed as Jubilee Bees in 1977 (the year of Queen E’s silver jubilee). I am the bee on the right. Clearly this picture was taken prior to the rabid anti-monarchical feeling I developed in later life.

I still think our bee costumes are fantastic, and perhaps their red-white-and-blue theme explains my fascination with the Whitworth bee. As kids, we were forever coming home with fancy dress prizes, and this was due to the winning combination of my Dad’s amazing design ideas and Ma’s sheer crafty brilliance. The year after this photograph was taken, I attended a school fancy dress competition dressed as Inflation (it was the 1970s, remember). I was wearing a spherical suit in which I could not sit down, and a sort of helmet to which several balloons were attached. We wore (or perhaps were forced to wear — damn that inflation suit!) several other costumes combining wit with social commentary — most notably The Tory Cabinet and (perhaps my Dad’s most inspired, but difficult to execute idea) The Shrinking Pound. I leave our appearance to your imagination. . .

PS: Hearty thanks to everyone who knit the owl sweater, and entered the Parliament. The pictures really are amazing! The winners will be announced on Saturday.

belle’s summer quilt

The quilt is finished!

To recap: The quilt-top is made out of twelve of Belle’s stripey t-shirts, cut up and pieced together; I used an old blue sheet for the quilt back and one layer of light cotton batting. I tried various methods of hand-quilting the top, but didn’t like the way the stitches interfered with the fabric. So I tied the quilt with opal sock yarn (left over from a pair of socks I made for Mr B) and the ties are fixed so that they show through on the back rather than the front. Finally, I cut 2″ strips from a pair of gingham trousers, sewed them together, and used them to bind the quilt.

I am very pleased with the finished quilt. It was a difficult thing to make, but the process has been a thoughtful and a focused one.

Today we took the quilt out for a picnic in Edinburgh’s Botanic Gardens. Everything is flourishing.

We picked a nice spot. . .

ate a picnic. . .

and enjoyed the scenery. . .

Here’s me shaking the crumbs from the quilt when it was time to go

and folding it up

and here’s a final shot of the quilt out on the grass in the sun.

In 2002, just after we moved to Edinburgh, Belle came to stay with us, and we went with her to the Botanic Gardens. It was this time of year, and just this kind of summer weather too. We had a lovely day. Belle loved flowers and plants and had a beautiful garden. It felt right to be taking a quilt made from her things to a place she liked so much, full of the plants that she enjoyed. Here she is in the glasshouse in the Botanic Gardens six years ago.

sounding out

Me and the quilt have been sounding each other out for some weeks now.

I have been trying various things on the quilt top. Various threads. Various directions. None of them felt or looked quite right. Whatever feeling I followed, the stitch lines just seemed wrong. Stitching the quilt top seemed to work against the wonky lines of the panels, against the stripes of the t-shirts. I felt I was losing Belle’s clothes in the stitches.

But then I tried tying the corners of the panels with sock yarn, so that the tie-ends showed on the quilt back.

This looked right. Sort of sounded right too. Like gracenotes rather than interference.

So I’ve sounded this quilt out now. It is tied, and trimmed, and I have the binding ready. It will be finished this weekend. A celebratory picnic is planned.

till then . . .

from twelve t-shirts

You may be wondering what has happened to Belle’s quilts. Well, it is taking time. I have to choose the right moments to work on them. They feel and smell of Belle. Making them is not an easy thing. But there has been some progress recently.

For the first quilt I chose twelve of Belle’s many stripey t-shirts. I cut them up and pieced them. The cutting was emotionally rather difficult. Once I had the pieces, though, the process became more abstracted and easier to do. I was making something, not cutting up her clothes, and the t-shirts were becoming another thing.

So the block design I chose is (rather loosely) based on those used in ‘bedspread 31′ in this book:

(There are some really lovely designs for all sorts of things in here and, because the diagrams are so clear, you do not need to read Japanese.)

Piecing the T-shirts was quite tricky at times, because of the different mix of fabrics. Some are made of pure, and rather heavy cotton jersey, others are lighter, and contain different percentages of viscose, lycra, and elastene. Not only did the pieces (being made of essentially of knit stockinette) want to curl up, each separate piece behaved differently under the sewing machine because they were made of different fibres. And the fact that I wanted my stripes to go in different directions — often against the grain of the fabric — complicated matters even further. Aigh!

Here are the pieced blocks laid out:

you can see how they like to curl. I tamed those babies with pins and sewing machine . . .

. . . and then put them all together:

Hurrah! I have now finished piecing the quilt top, and this is as far as I’ve got.

This quilt is supposed to have a seaside aesthetic — deck chairs and beach huts — and I’m pleased that it seems to suggest this (well it does to me in any case). Because of the unruly nature of the fabric (and perhaps, too, my own ineptitude) there is nothing neat about the piecing, but:
1) I really want the quilt to look like it is made, for its origins to be suggested, if not entirely visible
2) wobbly is a good look. Oh yes. A look I like.

Though cotton jersey — in various percentages and weights of cotton — is certainly not ideal quilting material, the resulting top is satisfyingly soft, and very fluid. I rather like it so far. But rather than face the horror of feeding acres of jersey through my machine again, I am going to quilt it all by hand. This might prove interesting as I’ve never attempted this before. I’m actually looking forward to it, though, which, given the emotional and difficult nature of the project, is a good thing.

Speaking of cotton jersey, I’ve been reading Natalie Chanin’s Alabama Stitch Book. All her projects involve pieced jersey, and all of them are sewn by hand. No feeding lycra mixes through your machine for her! Chanin designs clothes and accessories rather than quilts, and she certainly has lots of interesting ideas for recycling and refashioning cotton — putting a notoriously high-impact commodity to good new use. Admiring the idea of the book immensely, I felt almost ashamed that there was nothing in it that I actually really liked or was inspired by. This is probably because I just don’t go for stencils or reverse applique, or something. However, it was certainly refreshing to read an introduction from a designer who clearly thinks about the meanings of fabric, is sensitive to different textile traditions and histories, and makes these things integral to her design process. But though I enjoyed the book’s introduction, and found Chanin thoughtful and intelligent as well as creative, I did think that the particular spin she put on the history of cotton in the South was weirdly obfuscatory at times. To put it bluntly, it all felt a bit white.

Anyway, more from the t-shirt quilt soon. Have a nice weekend.

same as it never was

I nipped out this lunchtime to visit the Edinburgh Quilt Show. I spent quite a bit of time with the themed exhibitions, among which I saw several quilts, all of them nice variations on the same sampler design, made by students of Mandy Shaw.

This is how these quilts were described:

I confess I was rather puzzled by this. For starters, 2007 did not mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, but rather the bicentennial of the British government’s abolition of the slave trade. Slavery itself persisted in the British colonies until 1833, and was not abolished by the United States until 1865. And there were other anomalies to puzzle over as well. Here were quilts, made by British quilters, commemorating the moment when the British government decided to stop exchanging human beings as commodities. Yet these quilts were not about Britain’s involvement in the slave trade at all, but apparently told the story of Harriet Tubman, an African-American woman rightly famous for her political activities and work with the ante-bellum underground railroad. So the quilts did not actually commemorate Britain’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807, but were rather about a moment and a culture four thousand miles and half a century away.

I noticed (and was disappointed by) a similar sort of historical mis-quilting, in the TAFF quilt exhibited in various venues last year:

This quilt is an amazing — and deeply moving — collaborative achievement. It carefully and beautifully documents the geography of the Atlantic Triangle and the conditions on board slave ships; explores several different ways of claiming and representing historical African identites, and accurately illustrates the activities of black and white British abolitionists. But while a block on the left meticuloulsly reproduces the text of the 1807 act to abolish the slave trade, an identificatory block on the right wrongly associates the quilt with the “200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery”

The TAFF quilt simply made one factual error — an error which I have noticed being corrected in depictions of the quilt in recent magazines. But the mis-quilting in the “Harriet Tubman” quilts I saw today was more worrying, and, I have to say, more pernicious as well. For it is not simply a case of a minor historical inacuracy — an inaccuracy that one might excuse as understandable given the (often confusing) ways that the bicentennial was ‘officially’ celebrated in Britain last year. Rather, associating Harriet Tubman with the abolition of the slave trade is incredibly misleading, and in fact performs a certain harm to the memory of both the important African-American woman and the long-overdue British parliamentary act. It is the same kind of wrongful harm that, in a recent edition, illustrates the narrative of Harriet Jacobs with the portrait of Phillis Wheatley — two completely different, completely unrelated, African-American women writers.

In illustrating the work of one woman with the portrait of another, this bizarre book cover has the effect of suggesting that black women writers are somehow interchangeable, that they all, in essence, tell the same story — the terrible story of Slavery with a capital S. But while they may both be women of colour, a hundred years, very different experiences of slavery, and a whole aesthetic world divides Wheatley from Jacobs, just as the Atlantic ocean and a completely different abolitionist culture divides Harriet Tubman from the British parliamentary act of 1807.

I don’t doubt the good intentions of Mandy Shaw and her students in making these quilts. But, particularly at this moment when the associations of quilts and slavery are so contested and so controversial**, one really has to ask oneself what political work these quilts are doing. It is simply not OK to remember one thing (the abolition of the slave trade) while actually remembering another (Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad). Rather than forming (as I’m sure they were intended to do) a thoughtful and powerful act of historical commemoration, these quilts are actually disguising history, falsely covering it over, neatly wrapping it up rather than bringing it to light. And in doing so, they add another quiet, but nonetheless significant act of falsificatory violence to slavery’s numerous, different, and particular violent histories. The textile practices of a specific cultural and historical moment are here wrongly appropriated in the service of the wrong story. At least the TAFF quilt was trying to tell it like it is. But these quilts — in a manner dangerously sentimental as well as historically misleading — do a disservice to contemporary quilting practice by telling it like it never was.

** For a careful and thorough account of the racial politics of contemporary quilt scholarship, see Shelly Zegart’s article “Myth and Methodology,” in Selvedge (January 2008).