QSOS Interview with Janneken Smucker

AP: Welcome my name is Andrew Politsky I am student of history here at West Chester University. We are at Francis Harvey Green Library and with Dr. Janneken Smucker. Dr. Smucker is an assistant professor of history at West Chester University, president of the Quilt Alliance, a published author and co-curator of The World Quilts the American story which is a project of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska. Her book featured right there Amish quilts an American icon provides an in-depth history of our schools and their growing business practices today. Without further ado Dr. Smucker how are you feeling?

Dr. Smucker: Very well thank you so much for having me today.

AP: You staying warm?

JS: I'm trying my best.

AP: Alright first question, when did you become interested in quilting

JS: I grew up with quilts around my house my grandmother had made quite a few quilts on my mother's side of the family. And her mother have made even more 00:01:00quilts and there were also quilts that my dad's side of the family there a common thing and in my home I grew up in Northern Indiana in a Mennonite family this is the kind of modern Mennonite family that we drove cars and we had electricity and dress like everybody else. But we were part of the long greater Anabaptist tradition of Mennonites and Amish and many of my ancestors had come to North America as Amish in the 18th century but by the late 19th century had become part of the Amish Mennonite Church. Eventually just part of the Mennonite church, so it was sort of ingrained in my own cultural Heritage's quiltmaking tradition Mennonites didn't bring quilts with them from Europe but they learned in the 19th century. So I was used to always having quilts around me. As a child I slept under them there on the couches so forth. I learned just so when I was 00:02:00pretty young but it wasn't until I think I was around 16 one summer vacation kind of kid who always wanted a project to work on during summer. And I decided I was going to make a quilt. I pulled a book off my mom's shelf that was called How to make a Sampler Quilt. She had made I think one quilt already at that point in her life and a sampler is a kind of quilt where each of the blocks is a different pattern and so I took off this book and began to look at all the pattern options chose on my favorites and had so much fun going to fabric store picking out the fabrics I wanted to use and I knew how to sew so it was something I could easily figure out. And I had a lot of help from my mom and my grandmother when I ran into stumbling blocks. And after that first quilt I was really hooked I finished that quilt around the time I went to college and continue making quilts while i was in college even setting up a quilt frame in 00:03:00my college house when i lived off campus. And invite friends over to help quilt on the big frame was my great-grandmother's frame actually that I had my college house and but then after my friends would leave it usually take out there putting stitches because they were really bad developed that the person acuteness of a real persnikityness.

AP: So quilting is definitely been a part of your immediate family do you see it as a family tradition do you want to continue that tradition, are you begin make sure your daughter's interesting cool thing is she interested in?

JS: Sure I do see a real strong connection to my family heritage and I think that's where a big part of the initial appeal was that I was doing something that women in my family had done I didn't even know at that point until I started studying quilt a little more seriously in my talking to my grandmother a lot more of we know that I'm at least a fifth-generation quiltmaker and could go 00:04:00back further than that and my daughter has expressed a lot of interest in quilt and quiltmaking she really loves color and she loves pattern and design and she's helped I've had squares that were already cut and she you know it likes to arrange them into Patrick pattern and she's also help me with some sewing craft projects using a sewing machine my sewing machine has one of those foot pedals and social press on the foot pedal and i will they start and stop and that sort of thing and she's really interested in the last baby quilt I was working on we're late we laid out the pieces on the floor to try to figure out which block should go where and my daughter was really intuitive about you know figuring out how to space the different colors out how to make it look very nice and balanced and I think she maybe the gene has been passed on to her as well.

AP: Well how how big is your quilt collection and can you tell us a little bit about the one behind

JS: Well I wouldn't hesitate to even say that I have a quilt collection i have some the quilts that I've made myself for about 20 years I slept under the quilt my first quilt that sampler quilt that I made when I was a teenager and then I have I think about two other full-size quilt that I made are also around my house I've given quilts away Ive also sold quilts there was a phase-in my life where I thought maybe I would become a professional filmmaker and I did some quilts on commission also own my grandmother's first quilts well as a quilt made by my great-great-grandmother also we have a few other quilts that are 00:06:00still at my parents house in Indiana that they say will go to me which includes the mid-nineteenth century crib quilt i'm lucky enough to receive quilts as gifts as well when my daughter was born I think there were three separate and baby quilts that were made for her which was great since I kept intending to make one for her myself but never got around to it so thankfully some other people beat me to it so I definitely live with quilts I dont really have the sort of collectors mentality that some quick collectors really have where they require a lot of quilts I also is part of my own scholarship and research have studied quick collecting and so I there's a certain amount of distance I think i have from that that realm i know a lot about the quilt market for antique quilts and just how over inflated it was particularly in the eighties and nineties and quilts for been far more expensive 00:07:00than i could own that market is deflated to some degree now but theyre still antique quilts are quite expensive even the materials that go into contemporary quilts contemporary quilts are also quite expensive if you consider the materials and the labor as well.

AP: In your opinion do you think quilts leave lasting memories for you when you either make them or purchase one or have them brought down from previous generations they have lasting memories

JS: Absolutely i think that that's one of the really distinct things about quilts objects of material culture is that they they tie us so closely to memories sometimes that's in like a very tangible form when you use when you use a fabric and a quilt that was left over from another project for making clothes or sometimes it's the experiences you've had with a quilt over the years or in 00:08:00the case of like owning my grandmother's first quilt she made i always think about the time when she first showed it to me and I actually did the first oral history interview I'd ever did about quilts was with my grandmother and I interview her about when she was in her early twenties and made that first quilt and it was very common among young women in her community in eastern Ohio to all make quilts of that age and and I learned so much sort of about quit making it's kind of a convention of the of the young men tonight women in the nineteen twenties when she was growing up when you're when you make quilts worry where your ideas come from there are they from your emotions your from from your experiences to design them from like a place you've been what you're feeling at 00:09:00that time I would say the biggest inspiration for me in my quilt making is historic quilts I worked as the curatorial assistant at the International Quilt Study Center and museum when I was a graduate student and textiles at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and they are home to the lagest publicly held collection of quilts in the world largely in t quilts that they also collect contemporary art quilts and through that work I was exposed to literally thousands of historic quilts that I got to handle one of the regular activities I did was with our volunteers every morning we refolded quilts with a base toward quilts in acid-free cardboard boxes the state-of-the-art storage facility climate-controlled facility and a quilt should be aired out and fold along different lines so that they don't develop really harsh crease lines process so 00:10:00this was like an ongoing thing i would supervise our volunteers which were usually like retired women and we would unfold the quilt i would do an object report usually on them like get the measurements make notes about any damage notes about the fabrics that are being used in those sorts of things and then they would refold them making sure it was on new lines so they wouldn't develop harsh crease lines and so I looked at so many historic quilts that this is sort of like permeate my design sensibilities and and i can think of those designs when I'm making my own quilt and definitely drawn to a patchwork which is sewing and piecing where it's very geometric rectangles squares triangles and rather than applique quilt behind me has some applique as well as piece work on it but 00:11:00a lot of what i really was inspired by was the historic quilts and I am I like fairly simple patterns very geometric graphic designs but rather than for certain emotions into quilts I really I think I'm more of thinking graphically and really drawn to the the historic patchwork quilts joins me to my next question the court behind you what what what do you like about this quilt this quilt that what kind of styles and you like about it to be like these patterns and colors this one of the first like quilts i made as a intended as a wall-hanging sort of my first foray into kind of its sort of more of an art quilt and in that it's not a repeat block pattern patchwork quilt which is more that the historic quilts that i was inspired by usually are but i really liked 00:12:00the idea of kind of using this gradation of colors this sort of hasn't probably more symbolism the most folks that i would make and that we're going from the ground level to this sort of the earth the grass sure this guy fun saying so if anything this was kind of a study in color but colors drawn from nature and the quilting stitches that I used on this sort of

AP: Were these materials lying around the house?

JS: I would say probably a mixture of some leftover fabric from other projects that as I look at it now and remembering some of the other things i did with 00:13:00with these same fabric, which ties into the question you asked earlier about how a quilt can hold memory but some of these were a I think some of them were fabrics that i am not intentionally for this was probably maybe 17 years ago or so that I made this quilt.

AP: As an expert in handling historical quilts and curating the project you are on as president of the Quilt Alliance, when you work with these stories with people in their quilts was the biggest challenge and gathering these histories and curating them as hard to compile everything as managing the website difficult ones from the base difficulty ?

JS: Well as a as a board member and current president of Alliance Ive really 00:14:00been involved in our oral history projects became to document and preserve the stories of quilt-quilt makers and along with the documenting you know actually listening recording these stories where you become more and more determined to share them and make them accessible and that's simultaneously become easier with new technologies but also more challenging because of budgetary limitations access to the technologies so it's sort of this um at the challenge really isn't how do you have this mass of about 1,300 oral history interviews these are conducted largely with volunteers usually quilt makers themselves who are interviewing other quilt makers and just like we are sitting here with a quilt the interview would always bring a quilt with her or him and that would be sort of the touchstone of the interview so there's 1300 some interviews that are 00:15:00documenting a specific quilt maker yet these are fat largely untouched because it's hard to dive into an interview and know what's in them many times no one aside from the person who wrote the transcript has even or and the interview herself has read them perhaps or it's hard to even ay what kind of sticks we don't have good statistics on that and but there's new technologies that are making the words of an interview accessible as you all were working on some of using some of these technologies in class the oral history metadata synchronizer allows you to search the transcript as well as an index that's created to go along with an interview you can find an exact moment where the interview is talking about Amish quilts for example i think that is great getting to the point where you have a 1300 backlogs an interview to make them have that degree 00:16:00of accessibility is quite a challenge many of these interviews were recorded on analog cassette tapes so the first step for those is to get them digitized so that you have a digital audio file that can be synced up with the transcript and it's someone can create an index to go along with that it's a none of these things are have a terribly high learning curve but when you're talking about that kind of quantity it's a building up a bet you're really dealing with this large archive and moving towards greater access I think we can achieve it but it certainly is challenging

AP: Sounds like the advancement of Technology are definitely helping distribute these histories and make it make it accessible for everyone with the ohms and texting and no other multimedia things that can help.

JS: The technology absolutely helps and one of the obstacles as he is that we don't anticipate what the new technologies are going to be when we're creating these projects so the filters SOS save our stories oral history project was begun in 1999 and presumed at that time to be fairly cutting-edge digitally in that we publish the full transcripts of each of the interviews on our website yet we didn't really we archived the cassette tapes but didn't really think about a future for those of how those could be accessible and delivered to potential audiences digitally through the world-wide-web it just wasn't part of our thinking in 1989 I say our I was not involved in the organization then but um technology advances and so you kind of have to play this catch up well how 00:18:00can we take what we've already done and sort of upgrade it and convert it to the new technologies and we're doing that now playing catch-up but we don't even know what's going to be available in five years or ten years for example speech recognition software is improving rapidly right now it's not a place where if we have to transcribe an oral history interview with speech recognition software you can get a rough maybe eighty percent accurate transcript but you still have to have a human go back in and edit everything we don't really and can't know for sure what what technology with the technology technological landscape in another 10years

AP: Is there anything unique in regards to the history of there is a lot of fascinating things about the history of quilt-making

JS: I think culture are really wonderful window into a lot of aspects of 00:19:00American culture culture of other societies as well though I certainly have studied American culture most in terms of quilts because they are this handmade kind of seemingly handmade object there they're using the factory made goods the fabric the thread often the batting as well and often using commercially published patterns so they have sort of this handmade quality and that's what we associate with quilt these ideas of tradition and simplicity and authenticity yet they also reflect this amazing history of industrialization quit making on the scale that we have now on the scale that we had in 1850 wouldn't be possible without the idustrial revolution of generating lots of cheap abundantly available fabric that could be cut up only to be sewn back together again technology like the sewing machine also really created as a demo democratization 00:20:00of filmmaking as well so it's really amazing to look at quilts overtime and see how these changes have transpired and how about making reflects the culture with that it came from the late 20th century of to the current day is now seen the biggest explosion yet in quilt-making is a multi-billion dollar industry and yet at the same time most people assume it must be a dying art that it's still this old-fashioned thing I think one of the most unique to get your question unique aspects of world history is that from almost the very beginning in the United States quilt-making was regarded as old-fashioned something that was on its way out because that's what we like about quilts that they make us feel that we're 00:21:00doing this old-timey thing and that's how people felt in cities in the eighteen forties when they had quilting bees and kind of pretended to be old-fashioned colonial women and that's what happens today as well even though people are using cutting-edge technologies to do the work.

AP: You mentioned technologies and how its advanced the art of cool making do you think technology is taking away the article baking or taking away this is old-fashioned approach?

JS: I think that there's the old-fashioned approach is sort of a myth so i don't i don't see it as taking away anything from that the one thing I've noticed with some of the new technologies is that there's so much emphasis on precision and this degree of workmanship and that you're losing sort of this tactile comforting quality of the quilt Susan with the process of them right the feeling 00:22:00of making it you know and to some extent and I was just at the international festival in houston texas and looking through the award-winning quilts and I kept seeing you know there's this real emphasis on technical precision which is amazing these are fabulous artist they're fabulous crafts people but some of that sort of the creativity comes that comes from sort of experimentation and you know I certainly would would dig into my grandmother scrap bag of fabrics and and that sort of thing some of that might be missing and sort of the idea of just making a quilt just because you love to have a quilt rather than trying to win an award and make sure that you have this technical excellence I think that there is such a wide range of quilt-making going on today in the United States 00:23:00and around the world that we have some of each and there's room for each we don't all have to be winning best of the best in show at the International Quilt Festival I probably won't ever be entering quilt even I think I'd rather give a quilt is a gift to a friend who has a new baby and not worry if my points my triangles matchup that it's more the expression of giving that quilt and knowing sort of the symbolic meaning behind the quilt.

AP: Not so much competition

JS: Yeah

AP: Your book Amish Quilts: Crafting an American Icon why would you consider Amish quilts an American icon?

JS: Well they took an iconic status in the nineteen seventies and eighties and they really became sort of cult objects. What happened was New York art enthusiasts in the late sixties early seventies sort of discovered Amish quilts because they they were out tooling around the countryside or seeing them an 00:24:00antique stores or at outdoor markets. They recognized in Amish quilts the similar similar aesthetic to the sorts of abstract and minimalist painting that was going on in New York City at that time so painting by color field painters that Joseph will like Mark Rothko, Josef Albers, Barnett Newman kind of this stripe paintings of artists like Kenneth Noland and I'm supposed to run fairly similar scale you could hang them on a wall an apartment or gallery and they looked a lot like a painting. So this sort of launched this craze for Amish quilts in the nineteen seventies extending into the nineteen eighties at that eventually they became kind of iconic once they were on US postage stamps once they were used in the marketing campaigns of companies like Auntie Anne's 00:25:00pretzels they became this very recognizable figures and an Amish quilts at least certain patterns looked very distinct from the quilts made by non-amish that's not true across the board but there are a few patterns that were fairly distinct the Amish and those are the sorts of quilts that became a classic patterns really recognizable you know Absolut Vodka even used a quilt and in one of their advertising campaigns because they for this moment in the in the eighties in particular they really reached and sort of elite status as artwork also became worth quite a bit of money at that time show are you have a lot of history with Amish quilts.

AP: One of the things I discuss with my partner Liam is the impact of course and the Underground Railroad. Can you tell me a little bit about how well they relate?

AP: sure it's a great question it's become known now as among the quilt circles as the underground railroad quilt code this is a bit of folklore that's been perpetuated through several publications initially there is a children's book called Sweet Clara the Freedom Quilt and there's also a book called Hidden in Plain View and both of these books sort of elevated this idea that enslaved african-americans used quilts as part of their way to get to freedom using the Underground Railroad it's really pretty amazing story how could use sort of an everyday object use your creativity, ingenuity usually done 00:27:00by women sort of empowering story of women helping their community get to freedom . Unfortunately we just don't have evidence that actually suggest that this indeed happened the the book Hidden in Plain View which I mentioned was based largely on one woman's family lore and that family may indeed have had this legend that they made quilts to help escape to freedom but investigation of even that story that this particular woman told included patterns that actually werent in circulation in the 19th century included a bit symbolism that probably don't don't translate well to Antebellum era and that are using contemporary ideas about quilts applying the retroactively and the thing is we also don't have other kind of collaborating evidence. Could be in the form of 00:28:00the excellent close themselves or more likely in the form of other narratives either recorded in text or recorded orally. There are a lot of slave narratives that were recorded in the early 20th century under the auspices of the federal government, the most well-known or part of the Federal Writers Project during the New Deal that interviewed and hundreds, thousands of people who grew up in slavery and they do talk some talk about the Underground Railroad I think it's important to keep in mind that the Underground Railroad really only helped a very very small number of people get to freedom in the north it's one of these amazing stories that our culture has blown into something larger than it actually was because it's such an amazing tale of seeking freedom out of slavery , but they were only a few have that it was often border states that were able 00:29:00to to make their way across the make... people living in border states could make the way across the Mason-Dixon line um but this idea of quilts serving a function in an underground railroad has really had a huge appeal to school teachers, filmmakers, to other people who are interested in celebrating this aspect of American culture I think it's an amazing part of folklore, but I think it's important to to view it as folklore rather than view it as a definitive fact and folklore and myth are important parts of our culture just as they were important parts of you know ancient Greek culture. They help tell us who we are they had helped tell us what values we think are important and that's what this myth does and I don't think it's dangerous necessarily to continue talking about 00:30:00this myth but I think it's important to talk about it as folklorerather than as fact and I say the same thing is true about you know talking about Betsy Ross so in the first American flag we don't really have that much evidence that she really did that but her grandson did a really great PR campaign in the late 19th century that celebrated her as the first creator of the American flag as we know it so doesn't do any harm to keep perpetuating that story, hard to say and there aren't that many women who we can name from the Revolutionary era who did a specific concrete thing so there's some there's this appeal to it but we just have to be careful about how we talk about them talk about it as a as a story and that's part of folklore rather than part of evidence-based historical narrative

AP: You mentioned women women often are seen as the foundation of quilt-making. 00:31:00Do you think that quilt making is confined to just women?

JS: Absolutely not we can see that right now here in the 21st century more than ever there are many professional male quiltmakers, quilt artists and who have achieved a lot of success in the field and professionally but it's not a new phenomenon of the 21st century either. Before the Industrial Revolution when textiles were quite expensive, it was largely men at least in some areas of England other parts of Europe as well who are making quilts they as professionals as tailors and rather than as a domestic home craft and then there's certainly have been other examples throughout the eighteen nineteen twenty century of male called making as well or often males who would partner with the women in their households to help with quiltmaking in addition but 00:32:00there's sort of this interesting kind of occult of the male quiltmakers currently going on there's a number of male artists who have achieved quite a quite large followings either through social media through teaching quitmaking classes there was just this past year a quilt cruise that which is this crazy phenomenon and of itself that people pay money to go and quilt themed cruises and this was a quilt themed cruise where all of the quiltmaking instructors were men so it's it's a significant aspect of quiltmaking today that said I think quiltmaking is very gendered female and especially through the 19th and much of the 20th century, it has largely been a domestic home craft and we sort of have celebrated quiltmaking as one of women's original arts along with other needle 00:33:00arts because it was fell into this role of with the kinds of things that were appropriate for women to do. Women who didn't necessarily have other outlets for creative and artistic expression.

AP: In what ways do you think quilt reflect the community or region? Do you see quilts are different in the north, out west, down south? Do they reflect the region that they're made in?

JS: I think historically quilts have indeed often had a very regional connection, its part of the pleasures of sitting star quilt making have been able to you know see in large numbers these historic antique quilts as well as manyof the state quilt documentation projects that were conducted in the nineteen eighties and nineties and early two thousands and these were for grassroots documentation projects where be quick documentation days in a 00:34:00community and people could bring in their quilts and there would be an expert on hand to tell them a little bit about pattern, help them get the date and in mass all of these quilt documentation projects told us a lot about the regional differences among quilt makers ,but over time those regional differences have diminished which is not a surprise when consumer culture has more of a national reach and quiltmaking trends are more and more influenced by consumer culture it's not a surprise that there is a sort of more unity less distinction regionally among quiltmaking trends. There are some sort of that shifts today I would say perhaps might be like more of a divide between maybe more cities and suburbs and more rural areas. There's a recent movement called the Modern Quilt Guild, modern quilt movement which modern quilts and are inspired by mid 20th 00:35:00century modern design by Amish quilts, by some of the very utilitarian quilts spite made by African-American and other rural women earlier in the 20th century and that's an aesthetic that really caught on somewhat among the younger demographic the quilt makers but often it's this kind of less conservative visual sensibility that has an appeal there I think there's we can we can learn a lot about a quiltmaker maker by the style quilt they make but less and less of that is specific to regionals and them.

AP:Any challenges that quiltmakers face today?

JS: Today's quilt industry is experiencing rapid consolidation among many of the 00:36:00large publishing houses that publish patterns and magazines, among some of the fabric companies as well. Some of the smaller independent fabric company's been bought out by larger companies. Same thing is happening in publishing and many of the small locally owned and operated quilt shops fabric shops are shuttering because just like other businesses they can't compete with online sales when you have access to every fabric and at much discounted price compared to going to your local fabric and quilt shop and buying directly from the businessperson there. What online fabric stores don't have is that community that still exists in many of these small shops, but it's been hard for these small shops to sustain themselves among that kind of competition. I think quilts particularly 00:37:00today but always or at least since the early 19th century have really so closely been tied to consumer culture because you're not just buying the fabrics, youre buying all of this other stuff that goes along with it. All of the the gear in the gadgets, the fancy selling machines, the rotary cutters, the templates, the die cutters. All these things make quilt making I think a lot more fun for people, but also really situate it very firmly in this large industry that is about constantly like buying new things. so it's hard to keep up if you really want to have the latest and greatest things all the time and you know how does that make it any different than any sort of other hobby or sort of form of consumer culture where it's it's a lot a lot of it is about acquiring even though there's this very creative process that's also taking place.

AP: With the problems that that you mentioned that quilt makers face today what do you think we can do to preserve the history the not the history, to preserve the quilt for the future?

JS: Well I think we need to remember that quilt making today is part of a long tradition and rather than see it as a separate thing. Someone makes a double wedding ring quilt today, it is in conversation with all the double wedding ring quilt that have been made over the last century and a half that it's part of this ongoing process of being inspired and making and remaking and adapting that quiltmaking is always sort of represented. One thing i really like to see is the the beneficiaries of this large multibillion-dollar quilt industry would love to see them be real leaders in the effort to preserve quiltmaking history not just 00:39:00preserving the quilt themselves but also the stories of the quilt makers and to understand the significance that they are just the latest iteration of this long tradition and that in order to continue this tradition which helps their bottom line in fact you know if they can keep selling fabric and sewing machines to a future generation of quiltmakers that will only benefit them, but to understand that it's part of this larger story i'd love to see you know corporations, the corporate leaders in the quilt world really help us own this this heritage. I'm involved in this very small nonprofit you know we have a very limited budget and museums that I'm been affiliated similarly are you know just make able to make do you know they're doing all this preservation work. I'd like to see it as part of the mission of the corporate side the industry of the quilt world to see that 00:40:00as their priority as well.

AP: And last but not least besides keeping eople warm and decorative art, what do you think is the purpose of a quilt? What do you think they symbolically represent?

JS: I think we now associate quilts with all these very warm loving qualities of feeling safe, feeling comforted. When tragedy hits hard wide when the tsunami hit in Japan five years ago, to the aftermath of 9/11 , to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, to the Quilts of Valor Project that creates a quilt for every veteran following their stint of duty. Quilts so symbolically are comforting no matter what they look like, they have this association that's really intimately tied to 00:41:00them and I think that's why we make quilts for all of these occasions to memorialize people, to respond two tragedies because they make us feel safe and they make us feel comforted and I think quiltmakers love the process no doubt and they love you know this creative expression but ultimately then having this thing that that is tangible, physical representation of feeling safe and comforted, its really significant.

AP: thank you Dr. Smucker an honor listening to your answers and what perspectives you have called making and quilt history. I look forward to hearing more classes.

JS: Thank you thank you very much my pleasure.