Until this year, I didn’t know much about quilts. But Maris Curran’s 14-minute video”As long as I still live” (2018) showed me the beauty I’ve been missing, painting a subtle and intimate portrait of the women living in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Much has been written about these asymmetrical abstract quilts that are unique for their notoriety like contemporary pieces of craft in the art world, but this was the first story I’ve come across where women speak and sing to themselves. They describe the sense of calm that washes over them as they do their painstaking, hand-stitched work and the connection they feel not only with each other, but also with God. But it is obvious that despite all their notoriety, many members of the community always struggling to make ends meet.
Patchwork, the art of sewing small pieces of fabric into a larger finished piece, has been relegated to obscurity because it is considered women’s work. It’s also a widely popular art form, which is colorfully celebrated in Catherine Legrand’s new book, Patchwork: a world tour (2023).
The pages are filled with brilliant photographs of spellbinding needlework. You can spend hours poring over the swirling patterns of mola blouses made by the Guna people of Panama and Colombia, or the maze of indigo samples in a rural Japanese futonji. I was delighted to find Hungarian sheepskin detailing clothes that would have been worn by some members of my own family in Transylvania. These are just a few of the many overlooked crafts featured in the book, which embarks on an ambitious journey of taking us around the world to shine a light on the art and artists of quilting.
The text of the book, however, does not capture all the vibrant magic of its images. Legrand has impressively detailed some of the intricate processes of many of these craft traditions, but his descriptions are both too technical for the layman and too simple for textile nerds. Although there are indeed references to some of the powerful symbols stitched into these works, such as the stunning bats that adorn some Miao baby carrier, long supposed to protect children, the flat tone of the language does not convey the deep meaning carried by many of these pieces. The descriptions could have benefited from quotes from the artisans themselves. Maybe if we heard more first-hand accounts, in the style of Margaret Courtney Clark Nbdele: The art of an African tribe (2002) or most recent In Bibi’s kitchen (2020) by Hawa Hassan, readers might better understand the spiritual, cultural, and even political significance of quiltwork.
Despite these blockages, I’m glad this book is on my shelf. Legrand introduced me and many others to dozens of hidden practices that I would not have known otherwise. This book is an important step in the direction of finally giving quilting the appreciation it deserves.
Patchwork: a world tour by Catherine Legrand (2023) is published by Thames & Hudson and is available online and in bookstores.
