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Front Matter, Foreword, Contents: Pieced By Mother: Symposium Papers; 1988

1986
Union County Historical Society
Union County, Pennsylvania, United States
The Union County Historical Society's Oral Traditions Project organized a three day symposium where papers were presented in conjunction with the exhibit In the Heart of Pennsylvania/19th & 20th Century Quiltmaking Traditions, held in the Center Gallery, Bucknell University from April 28-June 10, 1985.
Foreward

Bucknell University afforded historians, curators, quilt enthusiasts, and makers a marvelous opportunity for learning when they agreed to fund a three-day symposium scheduled to coincide with their exhibition, In the Heart of Pennsylvania/19th & 20th Century Quiltmaking Traditions, which was held in the Center Gallery from April 28-June 10, 1985. The speakers chosen were representative of the most current scholarship in the field. Some were very well-known to a large public audience, others less so-some not having spoken to such a group previously. All presented indepth papers that dealt with issues which are interrelated to the study of quiltmaking traditions - issues of technological innovation, economic concerns, women's history, social and political concerns of the times, folk traditions, myth and reality as well as aesthetics, oral history techniques, and care and conservation.

This is a burgeoning field with numerous periodicals and journals, let alone books, devoted to the subject. It is a world of scholarship in flux where issues of transmittal, retention, and change are addressed; where it is generally conceded that no longer can these beautiful utilitarian objects be viewd solely from one perspective: as quaint objects from our past, as examples for textile study, as purely aesthetic statements, or as isolated folk phenomenon for example. Rather, they are all these things and more as revealed by these papers.

It is the pleasure of the Union County Historical Society's Oral Traditions Project, which organized the symposium, to bring these papers to a larger audience than that which came to the event. What is missing here however is the informal session where three traditional quiltmakers were interviewed: Margaret Seebold, Elizabeth Kackenmeister, and Eva Rearick, and the two Sunday morning sessions: one on quilt documentation led by Ricky Clark and Jonathan Holstein, and the other on interviewing quiltmakers led by Jeannette Lasansky and Eve Wheatcroft Granick. Also, the quilting bee dinner complete with oyster stew, pot pie, glazed ham, broasted chicken, bread and rolls, scalloped and sweet potatoes, peas and onions as well as apple and shoo fly pie can only be remembered by those in attendance as an event not often repeated and imagined by those not there.

What is presented here, minus the excitement generated by the audience in each paper's question and answer session, are the important thoughts brought to this project by each speaker. We thank them for sharing their ideas again and we look forward to future symposia at Bucknell University on folk culture be it mirrored in music, dance, furniture, painting, fraktur, ceramics, or needlework.

I would like to thank Joseph Jacobs, the director of the Center Gallery who secured the necessary funding for the symposium and to Cindy Peltier, assistant to the director, and Elsbeth Steffensen, both of whom worked beyond the call of duty and without whose efforts it would not have been possible let alone flawless. William Lasansky and Sue Taylor gave invaluable time and advice both in the hanging of the accompanying exhibition and during the symposium.

Jeannette Lasansky
May 1986

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