QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Saturday, October 31, 2020

Political Quilt from 1932

 

Political commentary in an earlier election

The Johnson County Kansas Museum is showing this marvelous quilt from the early 1930s in an exhibit opening next week.


The 1932 election was between Herbert Hoover & Franklin D. Roosevelt,
quite recognizable here. Roosevelt won 42 states; Hoover 6.

Estella Bell Graves-Smith (1871-1963) lived in Olathe, Kansas, near Kansas City, where she read the local newspaper the Kansas City Star. According to the family story: "She saved the cartoons from The Star, traced them with pencil, and then hand-stitched the cartoons into a quilt top! "

She embroidered about 36 cartoons, alternating with blocks of plain fabric featuring a quilted wreath.

Democrat's donkey and Republican's elephant on Hoover's Washington farm.

A post-election sentiment.

Copied from a November 10, 1932 cartoon by the Star's
resident cartoonist Silvey J. Ray.

S.J. Ray (1891-1970) was Estella's collaborator.

Many quiltmakers looked to the Kansas City Star for inspiration but no one else checked the editorial page.
A similar political comment from the early 1930s:
Texan Fanny B. Shaw's Prosperity is Just Around the Corner

In the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art

The Johnson County Museum will be showing two dozen of their quilts in Common Threads opening November 7, up through January 23, 2021.
I'll get over there in November and see if I can get more pictures.

https://jocohistory.wordpress.com/2020/10/25/common-threads/

And I am doing a virtual program for the museum in their History on Tap series:  "Quilts on the Kansas Frontier" on November 12 at 6:00 Central Time. I think you have to bring your own beer this year.

Check their Facebook page for registration information.
https://www.facebook.com/JocoMuseum/

6 comments:

  1. What a wonderful idea. Wish I'd seen this earlier I'd have saved copies of Tom Toles cartoons from Washington Post, especially since he's retired now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. BB, thanks so much for posting this!

    ReplyDelete
  3. So fantastic. I think of the Prosperity is Around the Corner quilt often since I first saw it in a book. This embroidered political cartoon quilt is inspiring.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love how in, "SHOW THE NEW TENANT AROUND,"the rear ends of both the donkey and elephant are turned toward the viewer!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, I think I signed up for the talk through your link. These quilts are so relevant today!

    ReplyDelete
  6. A GREAT SPELL CASTER (DR. EMU) THAT HELP ME BRING BACK MY EX GIRLFRIEND.
    Am so happy to testify about a great spell caster that helped me when all hope was lost for me to unite with my ex-girlfriend that I love so much. I had a girlfriend that love me so much but something terrible happen to our relationship one afternoon when her friend that was always trying to get to me was trying to force me to make love to her just because she was been jealous of her friend that i was dating and on the scene my girlfriend just walk in and she thought we had something special doing together, i tried to explain things to her that her friend always do this whenever she is not with me and i always refuse her but i never told her because i did not want the both of them to be enemies to each other but she never believed me. She broke up with me and I tried times without numbers to make her believe me but she never believed me until one day i heard about the DR. EMU and I emailed him and he replied to me so kindly and helped me get back my lovely relationship that was already gone for two months.
    Email him at: Emutemple@gmail.com  
    Call or Whats-app him: +2347012841542

    ReplyDelete