Midweek: estate sale encore and a flimsy + quilt history books

 Barb M's estate sale began in September, 2023.  Paula and her friends were off in July and this September but were back this month.  And there will be more!   They've raised nearly $25,000 for different charities.  

  Average price $2.20 per yard this time.  You can see why my homespun stash has not diminished.

Not that I am not trying.  Here's the nine/four patch flimsy. 

I have another homespun project underway -- photos to come.

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(Last week I mentioned that a local quilt shop sells gently-used quilt books for $2.00 with the proceeds going to charity.  Reading one of those led to rereading another.) 

Jonathan Holstein wrote Abstract Design in American Quilts: a Biography of an Exhibition in 1991 in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the landmark Whitney Museum exhibit of 60 quilts from his collection.  That was the first time an art museum displayed quilts hung like paintings.  Critics were awed.   

Holstein was born in 1936, grew up in Syracuse, and went to Harvard. In the 1960's he discovered old quilts at antiques shops, farm houses, and other out-of-the-way places in New England, upstate New York, and Pennsylvania.  He and his partner Gail van der Hoof filled their Manhattan apartment with quilts. They were entranced by the way 19th and early 20th century quilt makers perceived and used colors and shapes.     

The Whitney exhibit opened July 2, 1971, and closed September 12.  From there it went to Paris and Japan. The Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) used some of the Whitney quilts and others from the Holstein collection for a 21-city tour in 1973-74.   

My observation is that some of the quilts are terrific and some are ho-hum.  So many more quilts have been discovered, documented, and shown since then, many of them magnificent.  It is interesting to read quilt analysis from the art history/critic point of view rather than that of a quilt maker.  

My copy of The Pieced Quilt: An American Design Tradition is a reprint (Galahad Books) of the 1973 publication.   It is not a catalog of the Whitney exhibit but is a follow-up companion.  Holstein elaborates on American quilting development, again with the emphasis on design.  

 In 2003 Holstein donated his collection of quilts and documents to the International Quilt Museum.   The 400 quilts include the 62 from the Whitney exhibition.  Images are in the Quilt Index here.  (It was valued at $2.2 million, quite an increase considering that Holstein and van der Hoof set a budget of $36 per quilt on their buying trips.)   In 2021 IQM  remounted the exhibit for its fiftieth anniversary.   

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Linking up with  Midweek Makers  Wednesday Wait Loss

P. S.  Thanks for the shout out, Jennifer!