Wednesday, January 30, 2019


HARRIET POWERS: COURIER THROUGH THE CENTURIES
 
I was late getting back to our Washington D.C. family tour bus in 1997.  With toddler age, wiggling grandchildren, my own children were not happy with Mimi holding up the bus.  But I had been held in total amazement by the Smithsonian Institution Quilt Collection Show, especially Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt.  

During her slave years and beyond, she had pursued and persisted in creatively designing a Bible Quilt with metaphor, alliteration and scraps.  As Jan Richardson in The Mysteries of Making, points out “Powers quilts are not the size of typical bed covers; they are significantly wider than they are long.  This fact, together with Power’s own words about her work, suggests that she created them as a form of proclamation.” (Richardson, p. 216)  Quilts were her platform for speaking her mind and displaying deep knowledge of the Bible.  

“The little we know about Harriet Power’s life reminds us of how the histories of so many women have disappeared. It reminds us too that mystery always attends the process of making. No matter how much we may know about an artist, what an artist creates can never be fully explained.  This is both a gift and a challenge of the creative process: there is a tension between what is revealed and what is concealed.”  (Richardson, p 216)

 The Bible Quilt was first displayed at the Cotton Fair, most likely the Northeast Georgia Fair, of 1886. It was seen by an art teacher, Jennie Smith who wanted to buy it. Powers said no but four years later contacted Smith and said it was for sale, “ownin ter de hardness of de times” (Smith essay, 1891 in Hicks, 28)

Smith continues in the essay, “After giving me a full description of each scene with great earnestness and deep piety, she departed, but has been back several time to visit the darling offspring of her brain. She was only in measure consoled for its loss when I promised to save her all my scraps.” (Hicks, 28)

It is through Powers’ scene descriptions to Smith, quilt viewers recognize just how artistically creative and symbolic she was. The square I copied for my Couriers’ quilt, “The Baptism of Christ” has a dove identified by Powers, as the Holy Spirit, descending on Jesus.   Mary E. Lyons in her book, Stitching Stars, says “Doves appear three times in Harriet’s quilts. The dove was also the most frequent bird in slave spirituals because it could easily fly away to freedom.” (Lyons, 15) When Jennie died the man who settled her estate gave the quilt to the Smithsonian. 

Powers designed an even more elaborate story quilt which “is like reading a book of the weather, and real events” (Evans, 25) but even in the Bible quilt on the Judas square,  Harriet describes, “the star that appeared in 1886 for the first time in three hundred years,”(Evans, 16)

The second story quilt went through a number of owners but eventually was donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1964.

Two incidents almost 100 years apart illustrate how misconceptions often infiltrate our American art scene.  In 1895 Jennie organized a display of her student’s art work at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia.  Smith also arranged for the Bible Quilt, which she now owned, to be displayed in the segregated Negro Building.  Clara R. Jemison reported on the fair for Tuscaloosa Times and was particularly taken by the Bible Quilt, “‘Have you seen the Biblical quilt? It was made long ago by a poor ignorant slave who could not read, and whose knowledge of the Bible was the stories told her by other more fortunate.’ Jemison provided no evidence why she wrote as fact that Harriet Powers was poor, uneducated and illiterate.” (Hicks, 30) Not only does Jemison believe Harriet had to have someone else relate and interpret the stories but she just assumes Powers is illiterate. 

Lorene Diver, from Iowa, also was amazed by the quilt at the fair and took pictures, writing descriptions on the back.  She tried to buy the quilt from Jennie but was not successful.  She did however learn Powers mailing address and contacted her. “Contrary to Clara R. Jemison’s published assessment of Powers status, intelligence and literary skills, Mrs. Powers wrote back.” (Hicks, 37) This letter was discovered in 2009 with Diver’s file was opened at the Lee County Historical Society.  In the letter Powers talks about her life, her quilts (more than the two known) and “reading the Bible more than ever.” She ends with “This I accomplish…”(Hicks, 38)

Another much later controversy  began in 1991.   “One of the largest and most important controversies in the recent history of the American quilt community took place when the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History granted a license for replication of several of their important historic nineteenth century quilts.” (Freeman, 101) The Smithsonian often did this for art artifacts but did not realize to the quilt community “quilts were much more than mere artifacts.” (Freeman, 101)

Reproduction was arranged to happen in China and would allow sales of 200 to 500 quilts which was at most one third their cost if handmade in US.  Harriet Carter, founder of Quilter’s Hall of Fame (1979) helped organize a grass roots and letter writing campaign with copies sent to the Washington Post.  (The Post had originally posted an article on the project.)  After meeting with Mrs. Carter the Post responded to these actions with a second article titled “The Quilts that Struck a Nerve,” with a sidebar to the article called “A Bible of Black History” with a picture of Harriet Powers and her quilt.

Protests (with women draped in quilts) and many meetings were held between the quilt community and the Smithsonian.  “Two issues dominated the controversy: the first was mass reproduction of the quilts; and the second was having the work done in China. However, the whole matter might have gone unnoticed if not for the inclusion of the Harriet Powers quilt…which seems to have been regarded as a kind of living treasure and therefore invested with a sacredness one doesn’t normally associate with conventional art objects.” (Freeman, 103)

As a result the quilt community was allowed more access to the Smithsonian Quilt Collection, a major show in 1997, and opportunity for seminars and research.
The “major show” was the one I was totally caught up in, making me late for the bus, but not too late for how a courier with conviction and courage works.

 

Sources

Freeman, Roland. A Communion of the Spirts: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1996.

Hicks, Kyra E. This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces. Black Threads Press, 2009.

 
Lyons, Mary E. Stitching Stars, The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993.

 
Richardson, Jan.  In the Sanctuary of Women. Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2010.

 

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