American Quilts and Coverlets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2nd ed AmeliaPeck with Cynthia V. A.Schaffner. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and MQ Publications, 2007.

Abstract

American Quilts and Coverlets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2nd ed Amelia Peck with Cynthia V. A. Schaffner. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and MQ Publications, 2007.Nineteenth-century bedcovers were made to be functional and beautiful, but they are also intriguingly complicated historical objects. Amelia Peck's second edition of American Quilts and Coverlets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art uncovers that complexity through an in-depth analysis of the highlights of the Metropolitan collection, ninety stunning examples accompanied by superb illustrations. The visual form of these objects is predictably spectacular, but equally fascinating are the accounts of production and original use, the genealogies of the forms, and the biographies of those who made them, valued them, and preserved them.There are two historical narratives that wind their way through the individual examples: American social history on the one hand and the stylistic history on the other. Organized in sections on quilts (pieced, applique'd, and wholecloth) and coverlets (woven and embroidered), the text is comprised of essays providing factual and contextual information on each of the ninety bedcovers.The objects evoke many interesting aspects of nineteenth-century social history. There is abundant information about individuals, such as family connections among quilt-makers and collectors, and regional traditions among coverlet weavers. For anyone accustomed to thinking of modern artists as eccentric and romantic figures, this biographical material reminds us that the production of great beauty is just as likely to occur within a very ordinary life as in an unconventional one. The objects themselves are also laden with historical significance, especially in terms of textiles, which have been comprehensively researched. We learn, for example, that pieced quilts were not made from leftover old clothes and linens but rather from commercially marketed fabric. This means that by virtue of their production of bedcovers, women at once conformed to familiar gender roles (too delicate and passive to have professions or hold positions of authority in public life and so confined to domesticity), but also as consumers played an active role in the economy. Moreover, cutting, piecing, and stitching lent themselves to team work, and so quilt-making, unlike more solitary domestic tasks, justified visiting with other women and thereby enabled the cultivation of private female society. …