New Pathways into Quilt History written by Kimberly Wulfert, www.antiquequiltdating.com

Lynne Bassett
Textile & Costume Historian

The text is provided by each interviewee and is unabridged and unedited.

Contact information lzbassett@comcast.net

1) How do you prefer to be described as within the field of textile history?

“I prefer "textile and costume historian." I consider quilts and all other "flat” textiles to fall under the term “textile.” I don’t consider myself to be more or less of a quilt historian than a costume historian.”

2) When and where did you begin your serious interest in the history of quilts, textiles or garments?

“It goes back so far, I hardly know when it began. My first opportunity to study historic textiles came in 1983, when I was a summer fellow at Historic Deerfield. I did a research paper on 18th-century crewelwork. I was totally hooked after that experience, but looking back I realize that I was well on my way but just hadn’t recognized it yet.”

3) What “known” individual or group influenced you most and why?

“Jane Nylander has been a career role model for me ever since I first became familiar with her publications when I was an undergraduate student. I admire her work greatly. She held what I considered to be my “dream job”—being curator of textiles at Old Sturbridge Village, and I set it as my goal to do the same. As a friend in the profession, Jane has been very generous and encouraging to me.”

4) Who became your personal mentor as you began your learning?

“Nancy Rexford, a costume historian here in Massachusetts (and author of the book, Women’s Shoes in America), first recognized my affinity for historic costume. She encouraged me to join the Costume Society of America and to focus my career on costume. In 1990, I stepped into her former position as curator of the Northampton Historical Society, where I learned a tremendous amount from the records and extremely well organized costume collection she left behind.

“I also feel that I should mention my mother, who bought me my first sewing machine when I was six and taught me to sew and embroider. She recognized before I did that I was going to end up doing something with textiles in my career.”

5) What aspect of study were you most passionate about at first? How has this changed over time and why?

“When I had an opportunity to do my first exhibit in 1990, I chose to do quilts. I started collecting quilting books before I bought my first costume book, and the first items I ever tried to sew, besides doll clothes, were quilt blocks. I am still passionate about quilts, but have become equally passionate about historic clothing because of my work with clothing collections in museums. I love how a garment comes to life when it’s properly dressed on a mannequin! At first I concentrated on learning how to date a textile or garment according to its construction and surface design. What I find most interesting now is relating quilts and clothing to the decorative arts and social history of a particular period—they’re all related, and it is so much more rewarding to have a real understanding of WHY a particular quilt or costume looks like it does.”

6) What is your current “pet project”?

“I always have several projects going at a time. It is both a blessing and a curse. Right now I am the ‘shepherd’ (as we call it—though my official title is ‘editor’) of the Massachusetts Quilt Documentation Project’s book, which is to be published by the University Press of New England in 2009. I am very excited about this project—we are using the quilts to explore the history of Massachusetts, particularly to get the women’s point of view. We can see all sorts of local and family history, economic and industrial history, and political history in these quilts. And it’s a chance for me to write about my favorite type of quilt, the early wool whole-cloth quilts! My other pet project is to author a book on American costume history in the antebellum period (1820-1860) for Greenwood Publishing Group, which is due out in 2008. I am actually editor of the whole American costume history series from 1600-1900, and the thing that I think will make this series particularly interesting and valuable to researchers is that the focus is to put the clothing in the context of history—so it’s not just a guide to dating clothing styles, but a real history of what clothing looked like, who made it and how, and who wore what when, and why.”

7) What aspect of your research or contribution to textile studies has satisfied you the most?

“Last year (2005) I won the Costume Society of America’s Richard Martin Award for Excellence in the Exhibition of Costume for my exhibit and catalogue, ‘Modesty Died When Clothes Were Born’: Costume in the Life and Literature of Mark Twain, produced at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The project looked at how Twain’s literature, Victorian culture, and the appearance of late Victorian costume were all intertwined. It was a very fun and rewarding project. I greatly enjoyed rediscovering Twain’s literature, which I had not read since college.
My articles in the 1999 Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife: “Design Influences of the Foote Bed Rug and New England’s Wool Whole-Cloth Quilts,” and “‘A Dull Business Alone’: Cooperative Quilting in New England, 1750-1850” also give me great satisfaction. It was an incredible thrill to be asked to present a paper alongside Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Pulitzer-prize-winning author of A Midwife’s Tale, as part of the keynote presentation at the 1999 Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife. I feel that my main paper in the Proceedings, “A Dull Business Alone,” which is the result of a couple of years’ worth of diary research, makes a significant contribution to the study of early quilting. It debunks many myths about quilting and at the same time suggests why those myths were created.”

8) Within this arena, what would you like to do, but haven’t done yet?

“I want to finish the books I’m working on! And I want to produce an exhibit and write a book on New England’s early whole-cloth wool quilts, which I’ve been researching for about eight years now. Little by little, it’s getting done by publishing or lecturing on one aspect here, another there. I am very grateful for the support I have received for this project in the form of research grants from the American Quilt Study Group, the Dallas Quilters’ Guild, the Early American Industries Association, the Winterthur Museum & Library, and the American Antiquarian Society.
I also want to get into as many museum and historical society collections as possible and get their costume and textile collections properly housed and organized, and make them intellectually accessible through accurate cataloguing. There are such treasures in every collection, large and small! Through exhibitions and programs, I want to make the communities which support these museums appreciate their costume and textile collections, which are so often neglected and misunderstood.”

9) Any further comments are invited.

“Support your local historical society! American history, art, and material culture are terribly neglected in our schools and by our government. We are in serious danger of losing our heritage—and I mean every American’s heritage. We cannot replace museum collections or historic buildings, which represent our local and national history, if they are closed, sold off, or destroyed because of neglect or a lack of funding.”

Please describe (in a list) the contributions you have made via books, exhibits, presentations, contests, articles, fabric lines, research papers and the like.

Books

Editor and contributing author, Quilts: The Social Fabric of Massachusetts (tentative title). Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England for the Massachusetts Quilt Documentation Project, forthcoming 2009.

Series editor, Costume in American History, 1600-1900; and author American Clothing of the Antebellum Era, 1820-1860. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group, forthcoming 2008.

Exhibit Catalogues
For the Joy of It: Appliqué Quilts from the Judy Roche Collection. Chadds Ford, Penn.: Brandywine River Museum, 2006 (with Deborah Kraak).

Selected Articles:

• “Mark Twain, Horace Greeley, and an 1872 Calico Print.” Blanket    Statements. American Quilt Study Group. Summer 2005.

• "Inspired Fantasy: Design Sources for New England's Whole-Cloth Wool Quilts." The Magazine Antiques. September 2005.

• "Red Fezzes and Yellow Slippers: Mark Twain and Charlie Langdon in the Holy Land." PieceWork. July/August 2004.

• "Stenciled Bedcovers." The Magazine Antiques. February 2003.

• "Just a Housewife,” [roll-up sewing kits]. PieceWork. May/June 2003.

• "Sarah Halsey’s Mermaid Petticoat." PieceWork. January/February 2003.

• "Jerusha Pitkin’s Embroidered Coat of Arms." PieceWork. May/June 2002.

• “A Classical Turn: Fashion in the Time of President John Adams.” White House History. White House Historical Association, No. 7, Spring 2000.

• “A New England Whole Cloth Quilt.” Blanket Statements. American Quilt Study Group, Summer 2000.

• “Guard Thy Hours: Bead Watch Chains of the 1830s.” PieceWork. Interweave Press, May/June 2000.

• “Flowered and Feathered Fantasies: New England’s Early Wool Quilts.” PieceWork. Interweave Press, September/October 1999.

• “The Needlework of First Lady Grace Coolidge” PieceWork. Interweave Press, July/August 1999.

• “Of Patriotism and a Family Quilt.” PieceWork. Interweave Press, July/August 1999.

• “Virtuous Habits of Perseverance: Quilting and the Education of Girls in the Nineteenth Century.” PieceWork. Interweave Press, March/April 1999.

• “Loom-Woven Bead Chains of the 1830’s.” The Magazine Antiques. December 1995.

Symposium Proceedings:

• “‘..a dull business alone’: Cooperative Quilting in New England, 1750-1850” and “The Foote Bed Rug: Design Influences.” Textiles in New England II: Four Centuries of Material Life, The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings 1999. Boston University Press, 2001.

• “‘Spun me some worsted to quilt with’: New England’s Early Wool Quilts.” What’s New England About New England Quilts? Symposium Proceedings. Old Sturbridge Village, 1999.

• “The Great Leap: Youths’ Clothing in the Early Nineteenth Century.” Textiles in Early New England: The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings 1997. Boston University Press, 1999.
  

Selected Lectures:

• “A Social History of Victorian Costume,” Antiquarian & Landmarks Society, Hartford, Conn., 2006.

• "The Romantic Era: Understanding Friendship Quilts," Litchfield (Conn.) Historical Society, 2004.

• "American Fancy Bed Covers," Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., 2004.

• "The Quilt Collection of the Connecticut Historical Society," Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Conn., 2004.

• "Inspired Fantasy: Design Sources for New England's Whole-Cloth Wool Quilts," Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, Mass. 2003; Furniture Collectors of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio, 2004.

• "Documenting Regional Innovation in New England Whole-Cloth Wool Quilts, 1750-1850," Seminar in American Visual and Material Culture, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass., 2003.

• "Keeping Cozy: Connecticut Quilts and Embroidered Bed Covers," Antiquarian & Landmarks Society, Hartford, Conn., 2003.

• "The Romantic Era in Connecticut Costume, Art, and Literature," Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Conn., 2003.

• "The Sober People of Hadley: Clothing in a Seventeenth-Century Connecticut River Valley Town," University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Renaissance Center, 2003.

• "Sarah Snell Bryant, Federal-Era New England Quilter and Diarist," The Trustees of Reservations, Bryant Homestead, Cummington, Mass., 2002.

• “Stenciled Textiles in the New England Home,” Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, Mass., 2001.

• “Flowered and Feathered Fantasies: Wool Bed Covers in New England, 1700-1850,” and “Stitched and Stenciled, Pieced and Patchwork: Cotton Bed Covers in New England, 1775-1850,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Va., 2001.

Thank you very much for sharing your self with us and for the insights we have gained because of your efforts in this field. Continued success to you.