Material culture and the rise of quilt indexing

Abstract

The interest in quilting that we see today has its origins in the turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s, a time when many involved with the counterculture and feminist movements began to take up handcrafts. It was also during this period that the perception of quilts in the art world began to change, with them being viewed for the first time as ‘art’. Concurrent with these developments was an increasing shift by humanities scholars towards the greater use of primary sources. Material culture – objects which through their creation and use are able to define the culture of a society – gained importance, and quilts were recognized as prime examples. The exponential growth in quilt scholarship that followed has led to an extraordinary amount of quilt documentation activity and the establishment of national quilt indexes in Britain, Australia and the United States. Information about quilts continues to grow and with ongoing advances in digital technology is more accessible than ever before.

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