Harriet Powers
1837 ... 1910 · Clarke County, Georgia
Biography
Harriet Powers was born into slavery in Georgia in 1837. She told Bible stories in cotton.
Two of her quilts survive. The Bible Quilt is at the National Museum of American History in Washington. The Pictorial Quilt is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. That is the whole known body of work by one of the most important American artists of her century.
She showed the Bible Quilt at a fair in Athens, Georgia in 1886, where the artist Jennie Smith saw it and asked to buy it. Powers said no. Four years later money was tight and she sold it for five dollars.
How Harriet Powers Worked
Here is why this record matters more than a signature. When Powers handed the quilt over, she went through it block by block and said what each one showed. Jennie Smith wrote those explanations down. So the Bible Quilt arrives with the maker's own account of her intent attached to it, which almost no nineteenth century folk artwork has. The quilt is built from eleven panels joined by a mix of hand and machine stitching. The eyes, halos and suns were pieced and stitched by hand.
What Backs This Record
Two surviving quilts held by the National Museum of American History and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, a documented 1886 fair exhibition, and written descriptions of the quilt blocks taken down from Powers herself.
Powers died in 1910 and the quilts were made in the 1880s and 1890s, so the work is out of copyright. Museum photographs of the quilts have their own terms.