AFA Summer 2019

Antiques & Fine Art 111 2019 Quilt, unidentified African-American maker, Eastern North Carolina, ca. 1875–1900. Cotton top, linen backing, and cotton batting. 74½ x 72 in. Purchase with funds from Ann and Tom Cousins and the Decorative Arts Acquisition Endowment (1997.203). While a quilt covered with images of snakes might seem unexpected, nineteenth-century quilters often incorporated unusual motifs into their designs, from spiders to elephants. While a precursor to so-called “snake trail” quilts of the early twentieth century, this example appears to reference the colors of a snake native to the region of Eastern North Carolina where it was made: the venomous coral snake. While quilts were important items in a nineteenth-century household and were produced in quantity by women regardless of color or social standing, this work descended in a family living in the Piedmont area of North Carolina, and is rare in being among the relatively few surviving nineteenth-century quilts documented as being made by African-American women.