Amish quilts - Current and Coming - Museum of American Folk Art, New York City, New York

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 1999 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Persecuted in Europe, the Amish followers of Jacob Amman, a Swiss Mennonite bishop, began to emigrate to America in the 1730s at the invitation of William Penn. They settled in Berks, Chester, Lancaster, and later Miflin Counties, where they became farmers, and today they are found in twenty-six states. They are largely associated with their antiquated style of dress, their renunciation of all modern conveniences, and the colorful abstract quilts they produced during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which are highly prized by collectors. The Museum of American Folk Art in New York City has assiduously collected Amish quilts for decades and is currently displaying twenty examples from its permanent collection of some one hundred. The exhibition, entitled Beyond the square: Color and Design in Amish Quilts, is on view until November 7. The curator is Elizabeth V. Warren and the sponsor is Philip Morris Companies.

Although strongly associated with their quilts today, the Amish did not bring this tradition with them. Rather, they adopted quilt-making from the "English" (as the Amish call those who live outside their community) in America. References to quilts in Amish probate inventories and other documents that predate the 1870s are rare. The Amish quilts that probably date to the 1870s and 1880s are typically of one color and made of wool or cotton, much like whole-cloth quilts made outside their communities. At the end of the century the Amish branched out with geometric quilts of more than one color in patterns such as Center square, Diamond in the square, and Bars.

A chief concern of this exhibition is to pick out the regional characteristics of1 Amish quilts. For example, the Diamond in the square pattern is unique to Lancaster County, where the Amish first settled. It is probably an adaptation of the center medallion quilts made in Pennsylvania in the first half of the nineteenth century. By the time the Amish adapted this pattern it was considered old-fashioned, which presumably appealed to their extremely conservative way of life. In this type of square quilt, a solid-color central square (rotated to become a diamond) lies within another square, each with a border and usually with large comer blocks. While the Amish used foot-powered sewing machines to piece their quilts, the quilting was usually executed by hand in beautiful stitching. Frequently the Amish worked representational motifs such as fruits, flowers, or baskets in intricate stitching.

The Amish settled in Mifflin County starting in the 1790s, and five distinct groups exist there today. Three of the groups are represented by quilts in the museum's collection. Variations of the four and nine patch patterns in a restricted color palette were the only type that the group known as the Nebraska Amish were allowed to make. Although Lancaster County quilts are most always made of wool, the Mifflin County Amish used a variety of fabrics, including synthetics such as rayon, which became available around 1921. Patterns made elsewhere in the 1860s - Log Cabin, for example - were adopted by the Mifflin County Amish at the end of the century. Crazy quilts also found their way into the Amish repertory.

Quilts made by the Amish who settled in the Midwest comprise the largest group in the museum's collection, particularly examples made in Indiana and Ohio. One quilt, probably made in Arthur, Illinois, in the 1880s is typical of this region in its fine materials, strong colors, and unusual borders. The midwestern Amish produced a wider variety of quilt patterns than their counterparts in Pennsylvania. Most of the examples are cotton and incorporate block designs with a narrow inner border and a wider outer one. Black and dark blue were popular background colors in Indiana during the 1920s and 1930s.

By the middle of the twentieth century Amish quilts began to take on a different appearance. Pale colors and synthetic fabrics were used more frequently, and the quilting stitches were less delicate because synthetic batting, being thicker, required fewer stitches than cotton to pull the quilt together. As collectors discovered the beauty of earlier examples, quilters revived old patterns in ways that are often less successful than their predecessors.

While there is no catalogue of this exhibition, an article in the summer 1999 edition of the museum's magazine Folk Art is adapted from the book Glorious American Quilts: The Quilt Collection of the Museum of American Folk Art, by Ms. Warren and Sharon L. Eisenstat. The book was published by Penguin Studio in 1996. Both the book and the magazine are available from the museum at 212-496-2966.