ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
Alaskan Frontier Comes Alive in Quilts
by Heather
Skelly
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| “Soldiers Quilt” made by Civil War veteran Jewett Washington Curtis. The quilt is made from 1-inch diamonds of jewel-colored wool believed to have come from old army uniforms, and is on loan from the Smithsonian Institutution. |
Quilts not only warm bodies or adorn walls, they tell stories — they can speak of times when pioneers made their way across unknown lands and mothers grieved the loss of fallen sons. In Juneau, Alaska, through Sept. 29, quilts such as these can be seen on display at the Alaska State Museum.
“Quilts of Alaska: A Textile Album of the Last Frontier” features quilts that were chosen for the meaningful stories they told, not necessarily the craftsmanship. For example, a quilt from Nome, Alaska, exhibits a common piecing pattern called “A Grandmother’s Flower Garden.”
“The simple quilt might not have attracted attention,” says June Hall, guest curator, “except for its history.” According to the museum, the quilt was pieced by the mother of Wiley Post — the first person to fly solo around the world — after he died in a 1935 plane crash with humorist Will Rogers in Point Barrow, Alaska. Post’s grieving mother made the quilt for Stanley Morgan, a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps stationed at Point Barrow who helped retrieve the bodies from the wreckage. Post’s widow hand-carried the quilt, along with other gifts for the Morgan family, on a trip north. Stanley Morgan’s son, Barrow Morgan, now lives in Nome and loaned the family heirloom for the exhibition. “I just about fell over when that quilt turned up,” Hall says. “We had not suspected that the quilts would hold such tightly wrapped family histories.”
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| To find out more about the exhibition or to purchase
a copy of the accompanying catalog, contact: Alaska State Museum 395 Whittier St. Juneau, AK 99801 (907) 465-2901 www.museums.state.ak.us |
Produced by the Alaska State Museum and the Gastineau Channel Historical Society, the exhibition is the result of a project launched by the society in 1992 to survey quilts in Alaska. On specified days, residents brought their family quilts or quilted items to a designated site where the quilts were documented for their historical value. Of the 1,500 quilts seen, 45 were picked for the exhibition. All but two were made before 1959, most before WWII.
The exhibition also includes a rare “soldiers quilt” on loan from the Smithsonian Institution made by Civil War veteran Jewett Washington Curtis. The quilt is made from 1-inch diamonds of jewel-colored wool believed to have come from old army uniforms. A $20,000 grant from the Museum Loan Network paid for transporting the quilt to Alaska, building a display case and financing a quilting workshop for children and a lecture by a quilt historian.
Heather Skelly is The Crafts Report’s
associate editor.