Thursday, September 21, 2006

handmade...

the post office has a new set of stamps featuring the quilts of gee's bend. in a word, they're stunning.

have you heard of the women of gee's bend? if not, here's an introduction from their website:

Gee’s Bend is a small rural community nestled into a curve in the Alabama River southwest of Selma, Alabama. Founded in antebellum times, it was the site of cotton plantations, primarily the lands of Joseph Gee and his relative Mark Pettway, who bought the Gee estate in 1850. After the Civil War, the freed slaves took the name Pettway, became tenant farmers for the Pettway family, and founded an all-black community nearly isolated from the surrounding world. During the Great Depression, the federal government stepped in to purchase land and homes for the community, bringing strange renown — as an "Alabama Africa" — to this sleepy hamlet.

The town’s women developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. The women of Gee’s Bend passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present. In 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in partnership with the nonprofit Tinwood Alliance, of Atlanta, presented an exhibition of seventy quilt masterpieces from the Bend.


tania and i saw the second exhibition of the quilts of gee's bend this summer at the museum of fine arts, houston. these works of art emerged by the hands of women who were simply working to keep their family warm by cutting up old work clothes and sewing them in to quilts. they are a living history - a testimony to the tenacity and determination of these women, raising their families in the post civil war south. and generations later, the women of gee's bend are still quilting.

never would they have imagined that their work would wind up on a stamp...

as always, NPR delivers in spectacular fashion. the women of gee's bend are profiled on this episode of all things considered...

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