Decorative Sunday
GEE’S BEND QUILTS
Since the 19th century, the women of Gee’s Bend in southern Alabama have created stunning, vibrant quilts. In 2002, folk art collector, historian, and curator William Arnett organized an exhibition entitled "The Quilts of Gee's Bend," which debuted at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and later travelled to a dozen other locations across the country, including our own Milwaukee Art Museum (September 27, 2003 - January 4, 2004). This exhibition brought fame to the quilts, and Arnett's foundation Souls Grown Deep Foundation continues to collect and organize exhibitions for Gee’s Bend Quilts.
The images shown here are from Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts, with essays by John Beardsley, William Arnett, Paul Arnett, and Jane Livingston, an introduction by Alvia Wardlaw, and a foreword by Peter Marzio. The book was published in 2002 by Tinwood Books, Atlanta, and published in conjunction with the 2002 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. It includes 350 color illustrations and 30 black-and-white illustrations. The dust jacket notes observe:
The women of Gee’s Bend - a small, remote, black community in Alabama - have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces dating from the early twentieth century to the present. . . . [The] quilts carry forward an old and proud tradition of textiles made for home and family. They represent only a part of the rich body of African American quilts. But they are in a league by themselves. Few other places can boast the extent of Gee’s Bends’s artistic achievement, the result of geographical isolation and an unusual degree of cultural continuity. In few places elsewhere have works been found by three and sometimes four generations of women of the same family, or works that bear witness to visual conversations among community quilting groups and lineages.
Our copy is a gift from our friend and benefactor Suzy Ettinger.
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crack fic idea: the will livingston is still alive and living in jackson. when ellie meets him for the first time she’s so starstruck she can’t form words. once she gets over it, she helps him write no pun intended: volume three. joel loses his mind because of all the shitty pun ideas he’s heard in 24 hours.
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In Advancement of Learning, [Francis] Bacon argues that just as there are 'brotherhoods' in families and those associated with certain skills (crafts guilds), there should also be a 'fraternity in learning and illumination.' By 1586, the Fra Rosi Crosse Society, or the Order of the Rosicrucians, which became a degree in the Knights of the Helmet. Bacon later gave the group the name of Acception Masons, who were to carry out the long-term objectives of societal reform outlined in the Advancement of Learning...
...At Gray's Inn, Bacon was a member of the Order of the Helmet, dedicated to the goddess Pallas Athena, who was most often represented dressed in armor like a male soldier, holding a spear in her right hand, with a serpent writhing at her feet, and wearing a Corinthian helmet raised high atop her forehead. Developed in the early seventeenth century BC, the 'Corinthian style' helmet had no earl holes, but had solid nose guard a phallic cap-shaped crown. It is also known as the Cap of Hades, Helm of Hades, or Helm of Darkness. Wearers of the cap in Greek myths include Athena, the goddess of wisdom, the messenger god of Hermes, and the hero Perseus. Rabelias called it the Helmet of Pluto, and Erasmus the Helmet of Orcus, a Roman god of the underworld.
In classical mythology, the helmet was also known as the Cap of Invisibility that can turn the wearer invisible. According to Bacon, 'the helmet of Pluto, which maketh the politic man go invisible, is secrecy in the counsel, and celerity in the execution.' Thus the members of the Order of the Helmet likewise served 'invisible' to the world, much of their labour being published anonymously or under pseudonyms. To signify their vow of invisibility the knights of the order all had to kiss Athena's helmet. Pallas Athena was known as 'the Spear Shaker', or the 'Shaker of the Spear', while the cryptically hyphenated version of the name 'Shake-Speares' appeared on the title pages of certain plays of Shakespeare, and on every page of the first edition of his sonnets.
David Livingstone (Ordo Ab Chao: The Grand Lodge, Chapter 1: The Elizabethen Age: Knights of the Helmet, pg. 5-6, 2022)
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