Name/Title
Focus on African-American QuiltsEntry/Object ID
9999.BHF.328Scope and Content
Focus on African-American Quilts
Focus on African-American Quilts from the collection of Scott Heffley December 6, 1998-March 7, 1999 Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St. Joseph, Missouri. whenever more than one piece of fabric is sewn together to make a quilt, decision have to be made. In this booklet is the Madras Four Patch Variation Quilt, the Log Cabin Embroidered Quilt, Amoeba Applique Quilt, Flower Pot Quilt, School House, Flower Basket and Lone Star. Most of the quilts came to him as anonymous and were purchased from African-American dealers or dealers recalling African-American origins. He collects these quilts because he loves the exuberance and the bold aesthetic excitement.
Secret African signs are encoded in the quilts. Scholars are now beginning to unravel the numerous ways in which valuable African skills, values, and ways of organizing ideas, were and are encoded in many art forms. They are learning to read symbolic elements that have been passed on from one generation to the next, not through genetics, but through cultural memories.
African secret society signs and symbols are still hidden in decorative textile designs.
Examples of multiple patterning in Scott Hefflely's collection include the Cross Crazy Quilt, the Amish Bar Improvisation, and the Log Cabin Variation.
In the United States, various African and African-Latin American and Caribbean signs appear in historic and contemporary African-American quilts.
There are pictures of some of the quilts in the booklet.Collection
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Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Scott Heffley
