#66: Material Histories, Showing and Sharing Textiles

We are thinking today to talk about the Festival of...

Well, we're going to start with talking about the Festival of Quilts that we both went to a couple of weeks ago.

And while it's reasonably fresh in our minds to think about, use that as a starting point to talk about... what we're interested in textile contemporary textile practice and in historic textiles and sort of the why people make why we make and see where that goes what's your would you like to share your initial thoughts on on the festival of quilts this year i mean i don't mean a whole review of it to put you on the spot what were some of your highlights

Well, I mean, we should probably start by saying that we enjoyed seeing the Festival of Courts together, which was really nice to do.

And so, yeah, Ruth and I spent a lot of time in the galleries, actually, didn't we? We were spending a lot of time looking at the kind of contemporary work that was hanging.

Now, I mean, I suppose I should start with a small confession, which is that I don't love quilt shows.

And I feel like that's a kind of slightly terrible thing to confess in public.

But I do love quilts and I do love quilters, but I don't love meeting them in aircraft hangers.

And so I always kind of go along with a bit of a kind of mixed feeling in terms of expectation about what I'm going to see.

So I don't always go to the Festival of Quills and people are sometimes a bit surprised when I say that, because I, you know, I sort of, I like to let it sit with me for a few years and then go back and then have another look.

And this was after a little hiatus that I went back this time.

So yeah, we had a really nice day, didn't we? We looked at a lot of quills.

I think what, well, one of the things we were talking about when we're talking about doing this as a podcast was we were talking about how we have quite different sort of lenses for what we are looking at and looking for and seeing actually when we're looking at the same quilt and that's what makes us good visitors to go together because we stand a long time in front of people's quilts going well that's interesting well I thought that that's interesting um so what did I I mean I'm walking the galleries looking for handwork I mean I'm a hand quilter And so I always love when I can see the kind of hand of the maker in the sort of construction, the materiality of the quilt.

I'm looking for hand stitching.

I'm looking for texture.

I'm looking for You know, the kind of three dimensionality that hand stitch gives a quilt.

So I saw a lot of that this time and I saw a lot of that in sort of different contexts, which I enjoyed.

We'll talk about that.

I'm also interested in the way that people choose to either kind of conform to or push against the limits of display that are imposed on you if you are appearing in a quilt show.

Yeah,

absolutely.

That's always something that I find interesting because I suppose my point at the beginning about why I don't love quilt shows is that I don't actually love seeing quilts hanging on walls, which I know is like obviously is a convention that we're all so familiar with now that we don't ever really question it.

But as a historian of quilts, you know, most people who ever encountered a quilt in the history of quilting history, did not encounter it hanging vertically or flat.

And they didn't encounter it as a thing they couldn't touch.

And so, you know,