Content area
Full text
ABSTRACT
Folklorists typically study quilts by interviewing living makers, asking questions about the patterns and processes, the most visible aspects. But quilts exist in multiple contexts and hold numerous meanings for the makers, recipients, and viewers. Instead of asking for answers, a more useful question would be "What can you tell me about this quilt?" KEYWORDS: quilts, women, method, history, research
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
Years ago, while waiting in line at an AFS meeting, I had a conversation with Jan Brunvand. He told me, "I don't let my students write their papers on quilts anymore." I didn't need to ask why, and I didn't argue. Folklorists typically conduct research on traditional crafts by interviewing and observing living practitioners. However, there is a tendency for interviews with quilters to focus on the quilt as an object, without addressing the aspects of quiltmaking that are meaningful to the maker. Typically, a student prepares for an interview with a quilter by making a list of questions: What's your favorite pattern? How long does it take to make a quilt? How much does a quilt cost? What's the oldest quilt in the world? The student asks the questions, makes notes, writes up the experi - ence, and hands in the paper. So much more is possible.
The dimension that is most often missing when folklorists look at quilts is an awareness of the contexts in which the expressive forms, processes, and behaviors of quiltmakers have changed over the centuries, influenced by political events, technological innovations, and the everchanging fashions in fabric and clothing. A folklorist studying pottery understands the need to know about historic pots, sites, materials, and processes. With a few notable exceptions, folklorists have not acknowledged nor taken advantage of the research by scholars in other fields. Since 1980, the American Quilt Study Group has published 45 annual volumes of scholarly articles on a wide range of perspectives and disciplines, including only a few by folklorists.
As Dr. Michael Owen Jones has observed:
Many objects made by hand in the past perplex us. Who created these things and why, we wonder. How and when were they constructed? For what purposes, and for whom, were they produced? What values do they embody, and what meanings were...