We’ve assembled a stand-out crowd of lecturers for this summer and fall! Textile experts Diane Fagan Affleck, formerly of the American Textile History Museum, Lynne Bassett, author of Northern Comfort: New England’s Early Quilts 1780-1850 and co-author of Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts & Context in the Civil War, Jennifer Swope, Assistant Curator at the MFA’s David and Roberta Logie Department of Textile and Fashion Arts, and our own Gerald W. R. Ward, Portsmouth Historical Society’s curator.
An Evening with Contemporary Quilters
Thursday, October 29, 7:30 pm, via zoom
FREE for member/donors $15 for non-members
Upstairs in the Academy building at Portsmouth Historical Society is the contemporary portion of our “Threads” exhibition. Several of the quilters whose work is on display, from the Seacoast and beyond, will join us for a few presentations about quilts and the quilting community. Please join us for what should be a very interesting evening!
Quilts and coverlets, in addition to being examples of outstanding needlework and beautiful works of art, have symbolic value and functional purposes. They hold many meanings for people and have played a central functional role in the domestic interior for centuries. In his talk, Ward will examine some of the symbolic meanings of quilts, and also look at them in the context of the bed chamber, examining them as one element in a constellation of related objects and examining changing patterns and rhythms of life over and under the covers.
Family Treasures: 175 Years of Collecting Art and Furniture at the New England Historic Genealogical Society is Ward’s most recent publication.
Gerald W.R. Ward is the consulting curator of the Portsmouth Historical Society, where he serves in addition as the editor of the Portsmouth Marine Society Press. He is also the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Emeritus at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He is an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he teaches early American art and is also serving his fourth term as a New Hampshire State Representative, representing Rockingham District 28 (Portsmouth Ward 4). Gerry has been married since 1972 to Barbara McLean Ward, director-curator of the Moffatt-Ladd House & Garden in Portsmouth and a noted scholar of American silver and material culture. The Wards have lived in Portsmouth since 1988.
“Coverlets and Counterpanes: Bedcovers for a New Nation”
August 27, 7:30 pm, via Zoom
Free for member/donors $15 for non-members
Jennifer Swope will explore white coverlets and counterpanes of the late 18th and early 19th century and their special status in the early decades of the nation. She will discuss two examples in the Portsmouth Historical Society’s collection, each with ties to Portsmouth and two of the port city’s most significant guests—President George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. Swope will conclude with coverlets woven by Hannah Wilson of Stafford County in the second quarter of the 19th century, whose exceptional work represents a regional response to the global cotton trade.
Jennifer Swope is Assistant Curator in the David and Roberta Logie Department of Textiles and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A recipient of a Lois F. McNeil Fellowship, she attended the Winterthur Program in American Culture, receiving a Master’s Degree in American Material Culture from the University of Delaware. Co-author and curator of Quilts and Color, the Pilgrim/Roy Collection, a catalog and exhibition that opened at the MFA in 2014, her most recent work has been co-curating the upcoming catalog and exhibition Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories that will open at the MFA in 2021.
“Early New England Quilts & the Labor of Quilting”
July 23, 2020 at 7:30 pm, via Zoom
Free for Member/Donors $15 for non-members
Join expert Lynne Zacek Bassett for a look at the long tradition of quilt-making in New England.
The styles of quilts preferred in New England changed from whole-cloth wool and silk to pieced cotton with the advent of the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 19th century. This lecture examines the materials and techniques of these early quilts, and also the practices of early quilters—the seasonality of their work and the tradition of cooperative quilting.
Lynne Zacek Bassett is an independent scholar specializing in historic costume and textiles. Among her projects are award-winning exhibitions and catalogues, including Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts & Context in the Civil War (co-authored with Madelyn Shaw and published in 2012 by the American Textile History Museum), which won a bronze medal in history from the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Ms. Bassett was also primary author and editor of Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Wealth, published by the University Press of New England in 2009. In 2019, she was guest curator of the exhibition, “Pieces of American History: Connecticut Quilts” at the Connecticut Historical Society, which will soon be available for viewing online.
Her experience in the field of historic costume and textiles has been recognized by the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Historic New England, and the International Quilt Study Center, which have all elected her to membership in their honorary or advisory societies.
“Textiles from Near and Far”
June 25, 2020 at 7:30 pm, via Zoom
Diane Fagan Affleck, formerly of the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts, will present “Textiles from Near and Far,” a colorful tour through textiles found in the Portsmouth Historical Society’s quilts, focusing on how they were made and how they came to be here. Both textile novices and nerds are invited to attend, via Zoom, for this fascinating peek into how textiles are woven into the culture and history of our region.
Diane Fagan Affleck is a retired museum professional who worked as a registrar, researcher, curator, and director of exhibitions. She held positions at the DAR Museum, Washington, DC; the American Textile History Museum, Lowell, MA; and she was a fellow at the Warner House in Portsmouth. Her research interests focused on nineteenth-century printed textiles and American handweaving. She is the author of Just New from the Mills: Printed Cotton in America, and the co-author of Celebration and Remembrance: Commemorative Textiles in America, 1790-1990 with Paul Hudon, and Textiles for Victorian and Edwardian Clothing, 1880-1920 with Karen J. Herbaugh. Fagan Affleck is a graduate of St. Lawrence University (Canton, NY) and holds an MA from The George Washington University (Washington, DC).
Portsmouth Historical Society Launches “Threads” Community Quilt & Exhibition
Contribute your own creative quilt square from home
PORTSMOUTH, NH—In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Portsmouth Historical Society proudly announces “Threads: A Community Quilt for 2020.” The highlight of this special exhibition—opening in early July—will be a large quilt to be stitched together from individual squares created by area residents during self-isolation. The quilt will commemorate this unique time in world history and will celebrate the threads that connect the members of the Seacoast community. Although the Society’s facilities are currently closed to visitors, it remains an active public resource.
“Even while we remain physically apart, the ‘Threads’ project will connect us with a tangible emblem of our community,” says Brian LeMay, the Society’s executive director. “We encourage Seacoast residents of every age, skill level, and gender to join in and contribute a square.”
Details of how to make a quilt square can be found at the Portsmouth Historical Society’s website, www.PortsmouthHistory.org/threads/. The resulting quilt, to be assembled from the pieces contributed, will form the centerpiece of an exhibition that will open, provisionally, in early July. The completed quilt will hang in the Society’s galleries, adjacent to the Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center. The complex of restored historic brick buildings at Middle and Islington Streets has served in the past as an arts academy, as the city’s main public library, and today is among the city’s best-loved public buildings.
The “welcome back” exhibition will also include colorful quilts from the Society’s collection, plus others from around the region, both contemporary and historical. Because of their large size and sensitivity to light, the Society’s important quilts are rarely placed on view. “Threads” will offer visitors a chance to see a number of these remarkable objects for the first time in many years.
“During times of crisis people tend to reflect on what they feel is truly important,” LeMay says. “In a way, it’s appropriate that a project like this, marking a major historic event, should be organized by a Portsmouth institution that’s so close to people’s hearts and lives. Historical societies like ours not only connect people with physical materials from the past, but they help make sense of the historic events, the cultural milestones, and the great art that define who we fundamentally all are. These things give insights you can’t get from TV, the internet, or really anyplace else.”
Quilts are particularly appropriate for a community-wide exhibition, according to Gerald W. R. Ward, the exhibition curator of “Threads.” “Even though an individual quilt’s patterns may represent just one person’s vision,” he says, “they often follow wider cultural traditions that form… well, the fabric of a community.” Ward observes that “quilts are often seen just as useful objects, providing a home with color, comfort, and warmth, but they can also be exceptional artistic works, as worthy of display in museum galleries as canvases covered with paint.” Quilts are now in every great art museum, and Ward reminds us that, in the past, their abstract compositions have strongly influenced some of the great masters of modern art.
Many of the greatest quilts, like so many household treasures, were created and preserved by women. They have often been passed down through the matrilineal lines of families, forming what Ward calls “icons of continuity.” In this 100th anniversary year of women’s suffrage, they continue to be a fertile medium for creative craft and design by countless quilt-makers of all gender identities.
This exhibition is made possible, in part, by the generous support of private donors, and these corporate sponsors: Hoefle, Phoenix, Gormley & Roberts, PLLC and Performance Business Solutions, with additional support from Charles Schwab/Charles B Riopel, Piscataqua Savings Bank, and DTC Lawyers.
About Portsmouth Historical Society
Founded in 1917, the Portsmouth Historical Society is a nonprofit devoted to the history, arts, and culture of the Portsmouth region, through acquisitions, preservation, museum exhibitions, programs, and publications. It operates the Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center and the 1758 John Paul Jones Historic House Museum and Garden, a national historic landmark. The Society also serves as the home of the Portsmouth Advocates for Historic Preservation, and the Portsmouth Marine Society Press. To contribute to the Society’s work during this challenging moment in history, and to learn more about how to create a square for the 2020 Community Quilt, visit its website: www.PortsmouthHistory.org
Threads sponsors: This exhibition is made possible, in part, by the generous support of private donors, and these corporate sponsors: Hoefle, Phoenix, Gormley & Roberts, PLLC and Performance Business Solutions, with additional support from Charles Schwab/Charles B Riopel, Piscataqua Savings Bank, and DTC Lawyers. https://portsmouthhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/threads-sponsor-block.png
Quilting photo: The Portsmouth Historical Society announces “Threads: A Community Quilt for 2020,” a collaborative project that will bring together and celebrate the resilience of the Seacoast population. Residents are being invited to contribute hand-made fabric squares to be assembled into a giant “community quilt” that will be the centerpiece of an exhibition of historical and contemporary quilts in the Historical Society’s galleries when it reopens after the current pandemic. Photo courtesy Portsmouth Historical Society. https://portsmouthhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/20200417_145314-detail.jpg
Quilt on display: Silk patchwork and embroidered quilt, as seen at Portsmouth Historical Society as the star of the “New Hampshire Folk Art: By the People, For the People” in 2019. Photo courtesy of Raya on Assignment.
Mrs. George Dana (Rhoda Jane Fogg) Brown (1837–1919), Quilt, Portsmouth, ca. 1860. Silk, satin; H. 65 in., W. 64 in. Portsmouth Historical Society; Given in memory of Mrs. Andrew (Bessie Brown) Dorian and Mrs. James S. (Josephine) Brown Manuel Jr., granddaughters of Rhode Jane Brown.
Make your own square to show what you love about your community and mail it to the Portsmouth Historical Society by June 15th!
DEADLINE EXTENDED! Please get your squares in the mail by
JULY 13!
Download the guidelines PDF for full details!
While nothing like the current pandemic has happened in living memory, it is not completely unprecedented. The 1918 influenza epidemic also quarantined Seacoast residents for extended periods indoors, as have many New England snowstorms during long winters on isolated homesteads. While sheltering in place, we have found solace with our families and with our community, thanks to the benefits of the internet.
Quilts have always been creative works of art and skill that tell stories and bring people together, reminding us of those who made them and used them. In previous dark times, community quilts have been created to bring people together in spirit, even while they have been physically separated.
This community’s Portsmouth Historical Society believes that now is a time when we again need to come together, to create symbolic expressions of the spirit that connect us, and to affirm a community spirit that will endure long into the future. Let’s all make a square to tell our story, why we love this part of the world, our families, friends, and neighbors, so that we may come together and celebrate our community once the crisis has passed.
We are separated, but all in this together. Like individual, unique squares of a quilt, we each have our own story, but together we make a beautiful blanket to offer comfort to all.
Not crafty? Not a problem!
Keep an eye on our website and social media accounts for no-sew ideas and pointers. Look for #ThreadsQuilt2020
This exhibition is made possible, in part, by the generous support of private donors, and these corporate sponsors: Hoefle, Phoenix, Gormley & Roberts, PLLC and Performance Business Solutions, with additional support from Charles Schwab/Charles B Riopel, Piscataqua Savings Bank, and DTC Lawyers.
