Strong Stitches: Quilters, Cultural Knowledge, and Rebuilding

International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries
Strong Stitches: Quilters, Cultural Knowledge, and
Rebuilding Communities in Post-conflict Liberia
Stephanie Beck COHEN
Stephanie Beck COHEN, Indiana University, USA
Stephanie Beck Cohen is a PhD candidate in African art history at
Indiana University. She writes about transatlantic artistic exchanges
of women in Africa and the United States, as well as the strategic
deployment of textiles as diplomatic gifts. Additionally, Stephanie
is interested in how traditional arts forms are used today, and the
power of artistic institutions in capacity building in post-war nations
like Liberia. Contact: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Liberian quilters grow community networks and execute government commissions deployed as diplomatic
gifts. Originally an artistic tradition brought to West Africa by American settlers in 1820, women have been
quilting in Liberia for nearly two centuries. Nineteenth-century quilts visually promoted specific ideas
about Liberian society as modern and prepared to engage in the global economy, mining Liberia’s diverse
natural and cultural resources for iconographic content. However, since the civil war (1990-2003), quilters’
work changed as older communities were disrupted, causing artists and their work to adapt new functions,
content, and techniques within conflict and post-conflict Liberian life. This article analyzes three ways that
women artists contribute to the national rebuilding project in post-conflict Liberia: through reconceiving
national imagery in a traditional medium, by training young Liberians in the art form, and through crosscontinental engagement with the global fine arts world.
Keywords: Indigenous women artists, Africa, Post-conflict society, Government commissioned art,
Collaboration, Liberia
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1.INTRODUCTION
Like other nations in the global south, Liberia’s
history and culture are characterized by sensitive
multicultural complexities due to colonial or
pseudo-colonia l contex t s. Scholarship and
museum exhibition of Liberia’s artistic traditions
in the visual and performing arts concentrate
on the sixteen indigenous groups in Liberia’s
geographic boundaries. However, the symbols of
the nation like the flag, seal, and national anthem
ref lect American cultural hegemony, a legacy
of the American settlers who established the
Republic of Liberia in 1820. This means that the
material culture that viewers see in academic
enterprises related to Liberia differs from the
official state representation. The red, white,
and blue flag waving its single star and stripes
is reminiscent of the United States’ f lag. The
national seal, inscribed with the motto: “The love
of liberty brought us here,” reflects the mindset
of American set tlers who lef t a nineteenthcentury America conf licted about its growing
multicultural population to found a black republic
in West Africa, rather than the history of peoples
already settled in the region.
In the wake of the Liberian civil war in which
indigenous peoples contested the political and
socioeconomic dominance of an elite largely
described as descendants of American settlers,
h i s t or i a n s a nd p ol it ic a l le ader s que s t ion
those symbols meant to represent a diverse,
multicultural nation. The National Sy mbols
Review Project, launched in Februar y 2014,
interrogates how national symbols currently
represent the Liberian population, and ask what
kinds of symbols best represent the nation’s
people (Harmon, 2014).
However, the NSRP ignores a critical facet of
national representation: diplomatic gifting and
government artistic commissions. This article
explores Liberian quilts, the textile gifted internationally by Liberian politicians since 1892.
Previous scholarship on Liberian material culture
explored the aesthetic philosophies of the sixteen
indigenous groups in the geographic boundaries of Liberia. However, the artistic heritage of
American settlers who established the nation in
the nineteenth century has largely been excluded
from ethnographic and art historical studies (the
exception being photographic work by African
American visitor to Liberia, Augustus Washington; see Scruggs, 2010). I examine the uniquely
Liberian expression of quilting because, as art
historian Janet Catherine Berlo wrote: “cloth is
recognized as fundamental to studies of gender,
social identity, status, exchange, and modernization” (Berlo, 1992, p. 115). Quilts, serving various
functions as diplomatic gifts, family heirlooms,
and an arts practice that organizes social communities, are a material expression of change and
negotiation in Liberian culture today.
Because of the loss of historical records during
the civil war, research into Liberian histories
requires a multifaceted approach. This article is
based upon visual, historical, and contemporary
evidence of the role(s) quilts and quilters assume in conveying visual representations in and
outside of Liberia. Visual analysis of quilts in museums and private collections is complemented
by archival and oral accounts. Historical perspectives are drawn from newspaper articles, letters,
and diary entries. Contemporary perspectives
are also drawn from interviews with artists conducted in and around Monrovia in spring 2014.
From a broader scholarly perspective, Patricia
Mainardi’s article on quilting and women’s textile
arts provides a starting point to analyze the ways
that women in Liberia communicate visually to
convey layered meanings to multiple audiences.
In a seminal 1973 article, Mainardi wrote that
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International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries
quilting is “a universal female art, transcending
race class [sic] and national borders…Needlework
is the one art in which women controlled the
education of their daughters, the production of
the art, and were also the audience and critics”
(Mainardi, 1973, p. 1). The ability of the quilted
textile to transcend national borders through
f unc t ion and imager y is an impor t ant one,
especially as Liberian quilting practices have
been an explicitly transatlantic ar t form in
process, construction, material sourcing, and
exhibition since the nineteenth century. It is also
impossible to overstate the importance of women
in national rebuilding projects and peacekeeping;
particularly in Liberia (Moran & Pitcher, 2004;
Fuest, 2008).
The analysis that follows describes the context in
which quilts became the diplomatic gift, why they
remained so during the civil wars even amidst a
general desire to reject American cultural tropes
in favor of indigenous Liberian traditions, and
how quilting as an artistic tradition functions as
part of cultural rebuilding in the post-conflict
state. I will examine three critical ways that quilters and their artwork contribute to the discussion negotiating national imagery and rebuilding
communities in post-conflict Liberia.
2. IN AND OUT OF SIGHT: LIBERIAN
QUILTERS AND CULTURAL CREATIVTIY
First, it is necessary to ground the discussion of
Liberian quilting and the formation of national
identity in the history of settlement along the
West African coast. The response to a growing
free black population in nineteenth-century
America was unease for many white Americans,
especially in the south, where the dehumanizing
institution of slavery was still practiced. Abolitionists, both black and white, were divided on
how to reconcile the history of unequal power dynamics and institutional racism. One response to
the “problem” was the formation of the American
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Colonization Society, whose dual objectives included establishing an independent black republic
on the coast of West Africa for black Americans,
as well as to provide a place from which to missionize on the continent.
The brig Elizabeth, with nearly ninety settlers
aboard, left New York for the coast of West Africa
in 1820; and in 1821, they settled the area that
is Liberia’s capital today, Monrovia (Dunn et
al., 2001).,. The settlers’ relationship with the
Dey people living in the region was alternately
violent and amicable as they traded, established
towns and spread settlements along rivers and
the coast. This pattern of tension and negotiation
with local communities continued throughout the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the national government of the Republic of Liberia declared
independence from the ACS in 1847 and spread
its administrative power into the interior regions
that form Liberia’s geographic boundaries. An
unequal socioeconomic and political power
dynamic developed as the national government
both disrupted and worked alongside indigenous
political and cultural systems, generally favoring
the American-descended elite. It is important to
note, however, that not all American-descended
families were part of the political and economic
elite; many settlers were and continued to be
subsistence farmers without accumulating massive amounts of wealth associated with “AmericoLiberian” class.
In the wake of African independence movements
of the mid-twentieth century, there were efforts
to reform the cultural and political hegemony of
the Liberian elite in the 1970s. On the cultural
front, that included the 1964 establishment of
Kendeja, a national cultural center ten miles
outside of Monrovia, with the idea that experts in
visual and performing arts from the nation’s sixteen indigenous groups could teach, exhibit, and
collaborate on national cultural projects (Dunn
et al., 2001). Reform efforts could not stem frus-
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tration with the unequal distribution of power
and wealth in the country, resulting in General
Samuel K. Doe leading a coup of the national
government in 1980, and the following civil war
(roughly 1990-2003). This paper considers the
period following the civil wars, primarily since
the election of Africa’s first female head of state,
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in 2006.
The first American settlers imported quilting as
an artistic practice to Liberia in 1820. With the
dual goals of establishing a black republic and
Christian missionizing in Africa, the Americans
who settled Liberia also brought the visual culture of antebellum America, with the intention
of recreating their own version of America in
Africa. This manifested in their plantation-style
architecture, their three-piece suit attire entirely
inappropriate for the West African climate, and a
number of artisanal practices like quilting (Holsoe & Belcher, 1988).
Quilts are three-layered textiles. The quilt top is
constructed with one of three methods: appliqué,
piecing, or whole-cloth quilting. Appliqué, the
most common quilt top type in Liberia, is made
by cutting design shapes from cloth and attaching
them to a large cloth background. Pieced designs
are constructed by attaching smaller, generally
geometric, shapes to one another to build a top,
while whole cloth quilting relies on the quilting
stitches to create the design in the final stages
of completing the textile. Appliqué requires the
most fabric, as design pieces are cut and attached
to a solid piece of cloth. Appliqué also allows for
fluidity of design and malleability in proportion
and scale of design elements.
The middle layer of the quilt is called batting. In
nineteenth and early twentieth-century Liberia,
materials used for batting were varied. Kapok,
the indigenous silk cotton that grows on trees
and was used in indigenous textile weaving,
was often used to stuff quilts (Bishop & Franko,
1988). Older scraps of cloth and American cotton
raised in Liberia was also used as quilt batting.
Factory-made batting imported from China filled
Liberian markets in the mid-twentieth century,
and quilters used the abundant, cheaper material.
In the post-conflict decade, batting is no longer
imported from China, and quilters buy pre-made
comforters from the market, tear them open, and
re-use the interior foam or synthetic stuffing
in their quilts. Using foam or synthetic batting
results in different structure and appearance. The
batt in pre-war quilts is thinner, and as a result,
the finished quilts are in lower relief. The thick
batting from imported comforters result in a high
relief, poufy sculptural form. With the funding of
cotton-processing textile projects in the northern
part of the country, in the future quilters may
return to locally produced batting. Having a local
batting supplier would be an opportunity for the
creative and industrial sectors to support one
another, providing local markets for industry
and solve material supply chain problems for the
artists.
Quilters in Liberia have, from the beginning,
incorporated both indigenous and imported
materials into their works. Reinforcing this
aspect of the tradition is the contemporary use
of lapa, the colorful printed fabric associated
with African fashion and design, into quilts1 .
Nineteenth-century quilters used plain-colored
and patterned fabric imported from the United
States, with women correspondents sending
Liberian quilters quilt squares in the latest trendy
colors and patterns (Murdoch papers, 1858).
Beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth
century, however, local patrons requested lapapatterned cloth in their quilts. The changing
aesthetic tastes of local and overseas audiences
(in addition to the quilters’ preferences) gradually
steered material choices away from Americanprinted cloth designs2.
1
The history of the printed cotton cloth in West Africa commonly thought of as “African cloth” today is rather complex.
Originally made and intended for sale in Indonesia and Southeast Asia (and failing to do so), Europeans printing
patterned cloth marketed it instead to their colonies in the Americas and Africa. Today, the colorful printed lapa are
ubiquitous in African fashion design. See Picton and Becker, 1995.
2
The practice of cloth exchange is, of course, much more nuanced. Large Liberian Diaspora populations live in the
United States, especially since the civil war. Liberian women in the Diaspora often send and carry American printed
cloth back to their Liberian family members, and so patterned cloth from the United States is still used in Liberian
quilts. The practice is less frequent than in the past, as tastes in pattern preference change.
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International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries
The final layer of the quilt is the backing. Once
the decorative quilt top is constructed, the artist
winds the quilt back, batting, and quilt top onto
a square wooden frame, exposing smaller, easier
to work, sections. Frames accommodate four
quilters working at a time. The artist assembles
the quilt pieces on the frame and invites her
community of quilters to help her quilt—or stitch
through all three layers—the piece together. A
quilt top typically takes two weeks to a month to
assemble depending on difficulty of design, and
quilting the layers takes four skilled quilters two
full days to complete.
Historically, the work of women artists was
celebrated and encouraged from the 1857 and
1858 Liberian national fairs. Domestic production of household finery was seen as essential to
creating a national culture (albeit one referencing
antebellum America). Women settlers spun cotton thread, wove cloth, and made quilts. An 1858
pamphlet recorded fair awards, and the fair organizers recognized women’s work in particular:
The works of the lady contributors to the
National Fair are also worthy of a more special
notice and commendation. Of fancy articles of
needle work, there was, as there should have
been, a tasteful display of good execution and
finish…these fancy articles were interesting as
the contribution of young girls to a good extent.
They evinced a degree of taste and ability to
work which it is hoped will keep pace with the
increase of years (Committee of Adjudication of
the Republic of Liberia, 1858).
It is important to note the vocabulary used to
describe the young women’s work, “tasteful.” The
work and creativity inherent in making beautiful
objects was critical to the construction of imagery for the new nation. Berlo attests to the centrality of textile production as an expression of
cultural identity and self-fashioning, reinforcing
that these objects “are also eloquent historical
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texts, encoding change, appropriation, oppression, and endurance,” noting that the way textiles
look and how they are created is constantly
changing as the artists accumulate life experiences and translate them into visual expressions
(Berlo, 1992, p. 115-116).
Liberian quilt patterns draw inspiration from historical designs as well as the local environment
and everyday life. Mainardi and quilt historians
like Barbara Brackman all note the f luidity of
quilt pattern naming conventions, and the wide
variation in pattern execution (Brackman, 2009;
Mainardi, 1973). Liberian quilt patterns display a
wide variety of influences, especially incorporating local plants like the breadfruit tree, cassava
plant, coffee tree, the pepper bird (Liberia’s
national bird), and local industries essential to
the success of the economy. Over the course of
the twentieth century, quilt pattern books like
McCall’s and Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of
Pieced Patterns were gifted to quilters by visiting
missionaries and foreign embassy staff. Book
patterns are modified and combined with local
vegetal designs.
Contemporary quilters draw inspiration from
industrial patterns (floor tiles are one example),
and from images on the Internet. The naming of
quilt patterns is fluid, and a Texas or North Star
pattern is renamed Liberian Star, reflecting the
context of the quilter who made it (for one example, see Leona Johnson’s Liberian Star quilt in
the Michigan State University collection).
Some of the most popular designs are related to
emblems of state. The Liberian seal and flag are
common, as well as quilt patterns with maps, of
both the nation as well as individual counties.
When considering Latin American textiles, Janet
Berlo wrote: “It is increasingly apparent…that all
of the cultural crosscurrents and overlays in the
textiles…are not simply a passive response to five
centuries of colonialism. They are deliberate and
Volume 2 | Issue 1 | November 2014
sometimes culturally subversive. They are the essence of an indigenous textile aesthetic” (1992, p.
115). The same is true of Liberian quilts; particularly quilts that modify historical patterns, incorporate local political imagery, and are named for
historically precarious moments in artists’ lives,
as will be explored in the next section.
Since 1893, quilters executed government commissions for gifts deployed in diplomatic contexts
internationally, serving as the visual representation of the Liberian republic. Quilts visually
expressed the qualities of taste and civility crosscontinentally, especially noted in the reception
and exhibition of Liberian quilter Martha Ricks’
Coffee Tree quilt given as a gift to Queen Victoria
in 1892, and subsequently exhibited at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 and the
Atlanta Cotton States Exposition in 1895 (Hicks,
2003). Born into slavery in Tennessee, United
States, Martha Ricks (née Erskine) immigrated
to Liberia in 1830 at age 13 with her parents
and siblings. Literate and politically connected
through her family, Ricks is one of the few women
settlers whose historical record includes letters
published in the African Repository, the American
Colonization Society’s publication.
Ricks consistently recorded her fervent belief in
the young republic, consciously considering what
it meant to be a citizen contributing to building
what was, at the time, the only independent black
republic in West Africa. In an 1858 letter in the
Repository, Ricks wrote:
I do not feel discouraged; in my judgment,
Liberia is still improving, though it may seem
slow to a great many, yet I think it is gaining in
strength…There are several families preparing
cotton to weave cloth-I among the rest, am
spinning a piece. I think that in a few years
there will be large quantities of cloth made in
Liberia. There are some who order wheels from
abroad, while others have them made here. I
am a true Liberian [emphasis mine], and stand
up for it; for the Lord has given us this land, and
He has blessed us, and who can curse it? Nobody
(Ricks, 1858).
A well-spoken, genteel Victorian woman who
had been a resident of Liberia nearly since the
settlers’ first landed on the West African coast,
Ricks was the perfect artist to travel to Europe to
represent the Liberian people at an audience with
Queen Victoria. Her silk quilt followed a conventional red, green, and white color scheme popular
in mid-nineteenth century quilting (Ramsey
& Waldvogel, 1998). Compositionally, it was a
medallion quilt, characterized by a central design
panel bordered by plain-colored fabric or a vegetal design, rather than repeated pattern blocks.
The central panel of the quilt featured green
appliqué pieces depicting a coffee tree—the most
important Liberian export crop in the second half
of the nineteenth century—resplendent with red
berries on a white ground.
Although no descriptions detail the quilted design, Liberian quilt convention dictates that there
were likely three quilted lines of run-around, or
echo quilting, around the appliqué pieces, and
that the white ground of the quilt was filled with
diamond or triangle quilting. Queen Victoria
noted the audience in her daily diary, and Ricks’
audience, luncheon at Lancaster tower, and
subsequent attendance at the Mayor of London’s
garden parties were observed with careful attention in the London papers (with articles repeated
in publications in Sierra Leone and the US).
Queen Victoria’s affinity for needlework was well
known, so the choice of medium was calculated
to communicate cross-culturally for maximum
diplomatic effect, reinforcing Mainardi’s assertion that quilting (and more generally, textiles), is
an art without borders.
Ricks returned to Liberia, but her quilt continued
to travel, exhibited at the 1893 Chicago exposi-
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International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries
tion as part of a larger Liberia exhibit designed to
interest potential business investors in engaging
in transatlantic trade. Ricks gained both new audiences for her work as well as a cross-continental patron. African Methodist Episcopal Church
leader Henry McNeal Turner traveled to Liberia
for AME church projects and commissioned a
copy of the Coffee Tree quilt to exhibit with other
Liberian cultural works at the 1895 Cotton States
Exposition in Atlanta. It is important to briefly
note the exhibition contexts for Ricks’ work, as
they provide context for the way that quilts as
art objects communicated to diverse audiences
around the Atlantic Ocean world. While it is a
matter for lengthier explanation elsewhere, it is
worth noting here that Ricks’ 1895 Coffee Tree
quilt was exhibited down the hall from a quilt
made by the most famous nineteenth-century
black American quilter, Harriet Powers. Viewers
of the exhibit would have been able to view and
compare Powers’ appliquéd Bible quilt, now in
the Smithsonian Museum of American History,
to the Liberian quilt. Both quilts received ample
journalistic acclaim and occupy a place in the art
historical record as important historical objects
and expressions of female creativity and skilled
design.
Liberian quilts appear in political exchanges over
the twentieth century; for example, a beautiful
silk quilt gifted to President John F. Kennedy3 .
However, as a women’s art form and one whose
exhibition context was, until the 1970s, primarily
domestic, quilts (especially those of the global
south) remain understudied, despite the fact that
quilts have often taken on the political and social
gifting roles formerly occupied by indigenous textiles (see Rongokea & Daley, 2001 and Kamehiro,
2007). Only one article by Kathleen Bishop (wife
of former ambassador to Liberia James Bishop)
discusses Liberian quilting. Bishop’s article is the
only academic record of Liberian quilting guilds.
This is likely due to the art’s origin in American
cultural traditions. As the tradition endured
3
40
and continued to visually present Liberia in and
outside of the country, it is time to consider how
quilters visually construct national identity, history, and foster rebuilding of local communities.
3. NEGOTIATING NATIONAL IMAGERIES
IN POST-CONFLICT LIBERIA
Liberian quilters visually negotiate histor y,
trauma, memory, and engage the present through
their quilts. Quilt patterns often reflect the natural environment in which quilters are immersed,
and pattern names are a window into a quilter’s
mindset and context. For example, one pattern
made by Gladys Cole during the civil war’s worst
years (c. 1994) is named “Octopus.” It evokes the
most traumatic period of the Liberian civil war,
nicknamed Operation Octopus, during which
Charles Taylor’s forces marched upon Monrovia.
Taylor’s soldiers destroyed cities, razed towns,
and violently abused Liberian people. During this
period, the violence touched every part of the
small nation.
The pattern was drawn from images on f loor
tiles, and its pieces crawl, tentacle-like, in a
single piece of appliqué to every edge of the quilt
(Figure 1). Visually, the appliqué piece covers
and touches nearly every surface of the quilt top.
The quilt pattern not only evokes the way that
violence touched the landscape in an abstract
way, but also serves as memorial and an object
Figure 1. Gladys Cole, Octopus quilt, c. 1994, cotton.
See photograph by Abbie Rowe in the John F Kennedy Library and Archives: http://www.jfklibrary.org/AssetViewer/Archives/JFKWHP-AR6663-A.aspx. The quilt that appears in the photograph, however, is not the quilt
currently in the collection. Note that the quilt in the photograph has an incorrect number of stripes in the American
flag. This detail was noted by Kennedy staff, and a new quilt with the correct number of stripes and a slightly
different design, was made and gifted to the Kennedys. The second quilt is in the present collection. What happened
to the original is unknown.
Volume 2 | Issue 1 | November 2014
that inspires recall of those years. When a group
of women discussed a picture of an Octopus quilt
in Cole’s portfolio, they began to tell personal
stories from the war. Quilters recalled the trauma
of losing their homes and families, but also how
they coped, recreating home and community in
new places. The act of making quilts served as a
practice of normalcy amidst massive disruption,
and coming together to make tangible objects
was important for anchoring their lives and communities. Quilts serve as tangible objects through
which to elicit stories, sharing community and
national trauma, but also affirming shared experience and survival.
Despite their roots in an American settler tradition, quilt commissions, both private and public,
continued during the coup d’état and the war.
General Samuel Doe, President Charles Taylor,
and their wives all commissioned quilts for diplomatic deployment (Bracewell, interview, 2014).
After the war, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
continued to use quilts as diplomatic gifts. On her
first visit to the United States, she gifted George
Bush with a quilt, and in her more recent state
visit (2012), gifted three quilts to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art.
Two of the quilts she gifted to the NMAFA were
part of a larger commission from her second
inauguration. The inauguration quilts, around
35 in total, were hung behind Sirleaf during
the inauguration. Afterwards, the quilts were
given to attending officials from foreign nations
(Figure 2). Following historical convention, the
quilts were composed in medallion format: a
central design with plain border. The nation’s
natural resources, along with the national seal or
geographical outline of the country were featured
content. Because appliqué quilts take one to two
months to complete, such a large commission on
a short time frame (artists had less than a month
to complete the commission) required that the
quilters experiment with different media.
The National Quilters’ Association hired local
painters in Monrovia to paint the central medallion designs and quilted around the painted
design. Although the painted quilts are less
sculptural than appliqué work, the use of familiar
composition and quilted framing still has visual
impact. As a matter of aesthetic tastes, quilters
indicated that they preferred completing appliqué work. However, the experimentation within
the medium and collaboration with other artists
in Monrovia are an important component of how
contemporary quilters negotiate new demands in
their work. Experimentation combining painting
and quilting, while new in Liberia, is common in
other contemporary quilts in the United States.
Like Martha Ricks’ Coffee Tree quilt, the inauguration quilts promoted the nation’s readiness
to engage in global markets using a decorative
textile tradition. Figure 2 (far left) even features
a coffee tree, although the painted central panel
presents the imagery naturalistically rather than
the spatial abstraction of an appliqué quilt.
Figure 2. National Quilters’ Association, Inauguration quilt (from left to right): Coffee, Rubber, Iron Ore, Timber,
2012, cotton and acrylic
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International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries
Displayed together, the coffee tree, timber, iron
ore, and rubber tree quilts are useful to imagine
the entire aesthetic effect of roughly 35 panels
of quilts framing the president. The textiles
constructed a space that visually sculptural and
soft, mural-like in its repeated compositions.
Activated in space by the inauguration, the quilts
became a part of Liberian history. The historical
pieces, the tangible remnants of inaugural activity, now reside in collections all over the world
where they can, when exhibited, elicit memories
of Africa’s first female head of state’s second
inauguration. Gifting pieces that constructed
space during inaugural activities is one way that
Sirleaf’s administration created connections with
foreign institutions.
Sirleaf’s administration uses quilts in a number
of ways. Quilts are deployed quilts as diplomatic
gifts between Liberia and other African nations
(Figure 3 and 4). These two examples, gifted to
the presidents of Sierra Leone and Ghana, respectively, are medallion quilts featuring the flags,
maps, and seals of those nations. Direct comparisons can be drawn with mid-twentieth century
Liberian quilts, like the silk quilt in the John F.
Kennedy Library and Archives collection. In the
JFK quilt, the American and Liberian flags cover
the central panel in the quilt, with the red, white,
and blue colors representing both countries
Figure 3. Waste Not, Inc., Diplomatic gift quilt
for Sierra Leone, 2014, satin.
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forming three frames around the central panel.
Quilting around appliquéd motifs radiates out in
three lines, emphasizing the appliquéd flags. The
flags touch, mirror images of each other, alluding
to the connections between the nations.
In comparison, the Sierra Leone and Ghana quilt
gifts also emphasize the relationship between nations by using a clear compositional structure repeating the flag motif and picturing the national
seal (in the case of the Ghana quilt).
Government ministries also commission quilts
to launch campaigns or to visually communicate
information to the public. Recent press notes that
communication in Liberia (and adjacent Sierra
Leone) is most effective when presented in text,
image, and through sound. This is both cultural
and a necessity, as there is still a high rate of illiteracy in the country (Quist-Arcton, 2014).
In a Ministry of Gender quilt from 2009, quilters
c onve ye d ide a s a b ou t dome s t ic v iolenc e ,
addressing United Nations Securit y Council
Resolution 1325 (Figure 5). UNSCR 1325, passed
in 2000, addresses the role that women play in
peacekeeping processes and the impact of war on
women; this was felt acutely throughout Liberia’s
civil war (UN Office of the Special Adviser on
Gender Issues, 2003).
Figure 4. Waste Not, Inc., Diplomatic gift quilt
for Ghana, 2014, satin.
Volume 2 | Issue 1 | November 2014
The quilter used a familiar composition (the
medallion quilt) to convey women’s rights and
unacceptable treatment and actions regarding
Liberian women. The central medallion space
features four figural images portraying women in
positive environments, in the ministry campaign
colors. The female figures in the central section
attend school, vote, make things with their hands
(sew), and work at a computer; each image functions to support an overall message that educated
and employed women contribute to a functioning
society. In a wide border strip encircling the central medallion, silhouetted black figures provide
a sharp contrast to the central imagery.
Accent uated w it h tex t , t he f ig ures in each
corner illustrate situations in which women are
mistreated, harming the entire community. The
figures illustrate conditions of poverty (upper
left, with a women in tattered lapa skirt), rape
(upper right, women struggling with an attacker),
dome s t ic abu s e ( lower lef t), a nd t e en a ge
pregnancy (lower right). The juxtaposition of
color and placement of the figures outside of
a central composition visually reinforces the
place of those actions in Liberian society. Text
complements and emphasizes the images, with
large appliquéd letters inscribing “STOP” along
the exterior border. Embroidered text reading:
“Empowered, Protected, and Equal” at the bottom
of the quilt conveys the overall message of the
piece. Although a quilt in form and medium, this
work is no bedcovering; it is meant for a public
context and audience. It is both didactic and
confrontational, engaging uncomfortable truths
about Liberian life today, especially for women.
Finally, quilts in both historical and contemporary styles are collected and exhibited in foreign
embassies in Monrovia. The Embassy of the
United States owns four Liberian quilts made
by Waste Not, Inc. and Quageh quilt guilds. Two
quilts feature historical patterns, a Whig rose
variation and a double tulip variation, and two
quilts feature figural scenes. Narrative figural
scenes first appear in quilt collections during
the 1970s, and reflect painted scenes similar to
artworks displayed in the National Museum.
One figural scene in the US embassy collection is
a village scene, and the other a narrative scene
featuring an exchange of gifts. Each figural scene
follows a similar, loose compositional structure.
In both embassy quilts, landscapes are set at
the top of the quilt’s central medallion panel,
including architectural and vegetal elements.
Figures in motion are placed at bottom of the
central panel. These more narrative scenes
separate veget al, f igural, and architect ural
element s from one another, abstracting the
appliqué work into a pattern-like composition.
As in more historically-based patterned pieces,
quilters balance naturalism and pattern when
incorporating figural designs.
4. REBUILDING COMMUNITIES
Figure 5. Waste Not, Inc., United Nations
Security Council Resolution 1325 quilt, 2009,
cotton.
In the post-conflict decade, quilting has continued
to serve as community bedrock among displaced
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International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries
Liberian women. One example is the dispersion
of a single quilt guild called Gbandemu in Bensonville, Liberia. Bensonville is a town about two
hours outside of Monrovia, and Kathleen Bishop
cited Gbandemu in her 1988 article. Today, the
women from this single guild are part of multiple
quilt guilds spread across several towns, creating new communities and networks. All of the
guilds assemble under the umbrella organization
registered with the Liberian government as
the National Quilters’ Association. Experienced
quilters in the towns of Bensonville, Barnersville,
Caldwell, and Monrovia teach the art to local
women. The practical skills of stitching give
women a trade, and selling quilts provides money
for schooling and housing their families in a
region where both training and employment are
difficult to find.
The Bensonville Mothers’ Club and Waste Not,
Inc. guilds have training programs that serve as
good examples of how the quilting community
contributes to community rebuilding efforts in
Liberia. Their training programs might inform
future grassroots effort to reconstruct postconf lict communities through the visual arts.
Both organizations founded and built education
programs upon existing communities based in
Bensonville before the civil war. The teachers and
leaders of these groups, sisters Alice Bracewell
and Sarah Logan, were raised in Bensonville
as members of Gbandemu guild before the war.
Other quilt guilds have similar programs, but this
section will focus on Bensonville and Monrovia
programs as case studies.
The Bensonville Mothers’ Club is a six-month
training program funded by the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE-Liberia) and
FinnChurchAid. The program focuses on practical
skills training for young women, whose educational opportunities are constrained by the postconflict environment, lack of available teachers
and educational resources. Young women, often
mothers, attend training sessions in the morning,
44
and school-age children attend training sessions
after school in the afternoons.
The women are trained in one of three areas: textile arts, baking, and hairstyling, depending on
their affinity for each activity. The textiles program consists of six months of training beginning
with hemming pieces by hand and on a pedaloperated sewing machine. The women progress
to cutting patterns and learning to appliqué, and
finish with quilting once they are deemed adept
at the previous tasks (not all trainees progress
past hemming and stitching, and further practice
those skills).
Informational workshops are incorporated into
the skills training to educate women on personal
banking and health. Each cohort of quilting trainees opens a group bank account, and throughout
the training process, is instructed in managing
project budgets. Quilt cohorts are given fabric,
a quilt frame, needles and scissors for each
member. For each completed and sold quilt, the
cohort divides proceeds in three ways: a portion
goes into savings in the bank account, a portion
to buy new materials, and the final portion is
divided up among cohort members for personal
use. Other workshops focus on domestic violence
and hygiene, set up and run by members of the
Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia and the
Ministry of Gender. Thus far, they have successfully graduated two cohorts since the program
began in 2012.
Waste Not, Inc., based in the Congotown suburb
of Monrovia, is self-funded by quilt and bakery
sales, and will expand to a larger space when
their funds cover the placement of a roof on an
existing building in Monrovia. The leader of the
guild, Alice Bracewell, also heads the National
Quilters’ Association, the umbrella organization
that includes Monrovia, Bensonville, Barnersville, Caldwell, and Arthington guilds. Based in
the capital city, members of Waste Not actively
recruit young women and men from suburbs like
Volume 2 | Issue 1 | November 2014
Congotown to be trained in practical skills. Young
people join the quilters on the front porch of
the studio (conveniently next to a neighborhood
elementary school near the ELWA junction just
outside of Monrovia) to learn hemming, pattern
design and cutting, appliqué, and quilting.
According to Bracewell, recruiting young people
to learn practical skillsets not only keeps them
occupied outside of school hours with productive
activities, but also helps to build the new community comprised of people who fled their homes
during the war. Additionally, young people who
work on the quilts earn a portion of the proceeds
once the quilt sells, consistent with the skill level
they execute and time put into working on the
quilt. For young quilters, the money most often
goes towards school fees and contributes to family income. Although the bureaucratic processes
for registering a business and receiving appropriate licensing are often difficult to navigate (often
obstructing rebuilding efforts), Waste Not, Inc.,
is registered as a business with the Liberian government in preparation to export their artworks
internationally. Bracewell has also applied to the
government to be granted educational licensing.
Liberian-run organizations like Waste Not and
the Bensonville Mothers’ Club are few in a country still occupied by UN Military Command and
filled with non-governmental organizations. Aid
organizations emphasize capacity building, but
local anecdotes relate that outside-initiated programs are often discarded when monetary support ends. Community rebuilding efforts depend
on capacity building; that is, building up longerterm leadership and skills within the community.
Additionally, cultural structures and norms often
dictate the success of programs like the two detailed above. In post-conflict Liberia, community
groups like quilt guilds have a high stake in a
stable community. They have relationships that
they can rely upon to grow communities in new
locations, and the cultural wisdom and practical
skills to impart to young Liberians. In the post-
Ebola epidemic Liberia, these foundations will
become increasingly important.
5.CROSS-CONTINENTAL
COLLABORATION
Engaging in a global artistic community is the
third important way that Liberian quilters contribute to alternative visual images of Liberia
internationally. Liberian art and material culture
traveled around the Black Atlantic region as
parts of expeditionary, anthropological, and art
collections since the nineteenth century. However, the material culture in museum collections
storage competes with photographs f looding
visual culture networks primarily in use today
(for instance, internet outlets like Youtube and
television news programs). “Othering imagery”
stereotypes plague Liberia and, more broadly,
the African continent. As a response to dominant
visual tropes of Africa that include poverty, violence, and disease, the visual arts are critical to
providing alternative images of place and culture
from within the communities and nations on the
continent (Seay & Dionne, 2014).
Images of Liberia craf ted by foreigners and
the Liberian visual arts have been in constant
competition to create a visual presentation of
Liberia since the nineteenth century. The first
international imagery of the Liberian landscape
and textual accounts of the nation were created
for the American Colonization Society, whose
propagandistic bias demanded crafting a land
both in need of the colonists’ aid, but also an
attractive place to immigrate (Scruggs, 2010).
In the following century representation shuffled
be t we en t he n at ion a l gover n ment (whose
symbols are now contested), foreign corporations
(like the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company),
and collections of indigenous Liberian objects in
foreign museum exhibitions.
After the late twentieth-century civil wars, combatting the dominant imagery of war (eg. 1990s
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International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries
Liberian child soldiers) and most recently, heavily
adorned medical professionals combating the
Ebola virus is of primary importance to Liberians. To project a nation healing, ready to engage
in global economies and projects, as well as attracting tourism (one of the major industries in
many developing countries), the public imagery
(and reality) needs to change.
Global artistic collaborations afford artists the
opportunity to combat images that play to stereotypes and provide a more nuanced sense of
Liberian culture and perspectives. One example
of artistic collaboration facilitated in 2013-2014
by the United States’ Department of State Art in
Embassies program is evidence of the impact of
collaboration on these artistic communities. Tom
Ashcraft and Peter Winant of Workingman Collective (USA) selected the Liberian quilters from
Waste Not, Inc. and Quageh quilt guilds to collaborate on works exploring Liberian life today.
Meeting twice in Monrovia over the course of
nearly a year, the artists exchanged aesthetic
philosophies in addition to sketches and design
ideas. The emphasis on education and proverbial
history as necessities in contemporary Liberian
life inspired two sets of artworks. The result of
the collaboration was an installation in metal at
the United States Embassy in Monrovia, and two
quilts that returned to the United States for exhibition. Both sculptures and quilts engage two important iconographic images in Liberia, a school
desk and the pepper bird (Pycnonotus barbatus,
Common bulbul). The pepper bird is ubiquitous
in Liberian folk imagery and literature; its everpresent and insistent cry awakens Liberians in
the morning.
National Quilters’ Association artists incorporated the pepper bird into designs in the past
(Figure 6). However, this collaboration allowed
both groups of artists to play with compositional
structure and concept. Workingman Collective,
46
4
whose artistic production is process-oriented,
constructed four site-specific sculptures installed on embassy grounds. The sculptures
mounted pepper birds onto students’ desk chairs,
incorporating a representative emblem of education to the folkloric. The work considers “the
relationship of play, learning, and building community across generations;” and according to the
artists (from both countries), the collaboration
process felt organic, each side inspired by the
other (Workingman Collective, 2014)4.
Figure 6. Quageh (Caldwell, Liberia), Pepper bird quilt,
2014, cotton.
Fig ure 7 shows one of t wo quilt s result ing
from the collaboration. Alice Bracewell and
Maude Davis designed and appliquéd the work,
recruiting the members of Waste Not and Quageh
to execute the quilting. The quilters adhered
to the traditional compositional structure of a
medallion quilt with framing borders.
For materials, the quilters used both solid colored
cotton and lapa, drawing in an extra material
For images of the Workingman Collective sculptures installed on US Embassy grounds, see: http://
workingmancollective.blogspot.sg/.
Volume 2 | Issue 1 | November 2014
forged during an art-making process are durable;
one of the American artists has applied for a
longer artistic residency in Liberia to create a
new project.
Figure 7. Alice Bracewell and Maud Davis, quilt from
the Story series, 2013-2014, cotton. (From left: Tom
Ashcraft, Tezee Davis, Maima Bracewell, Peter Winant,
Betty Bracewell, Alice Bracewell, Aletha Dewalt).
element that is also a result of transoceanic
exchange beginning in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The central panel is particularly interesting. The
image of a student desk is repeated, but not in a
bock pattern. Instead, the desk image is rotated
in the four appliqué pieces, resulting in a threedimensional view of the desk over the entire
central panel. It is a visual play on the threedimensionality of the quilted medium; while
each appliqué piece is flat, the patterns placed
together give multi-dimensional visual effects,
in addition to the physical relief the quilting creates on the surface of the textile. In contrast, the
pepper birds, spaced between the desk and at the
corners of each border, appear flattened on the
quilt surface. Compared to the more naturalistic
depiction of the pepper bird in previous the quilt
(Figure 6), the abstraction of the pepper bird is
a purposeful deviation, alluding to the overall
conceptual nature of the design and collaborative
process. Throughout the work, Bracewell and
Davis manipulate shape and form to draw attention to the materiality of the quilted medium in
its representational and sculptural expressions.
In the use of and deviation from tradition, the
collaborative project changed the creative output
of Liberian and American artists. Relationships
The relationship the artists built also created a
larger patronage network for the quilters; the
gallery representing the American artists is in
discussions to procure pieces inspired by the
series. While the quilters’ works are in several
museum and private collections in the United
States, having gallery representation will expose
their work to different new and wider audiences.
6.CONCLUSION
As teachers of practical knowledge and cultural
history, creators of cultural messages and imagery, and cross-cultural collaborators, Liberian
quilters have a unique material presence. They
mediate between a foreign artistic tradition and
its local expression, and their work reflects its
multicultural heritage by consciously incorporating and revising the iconography and media that
make up the works. Quilters took on new roles
in the community dictated by necessity as communities were scattered during the civil war, and
created a space for their skillset after the war.
Today, quilters establish new community connections in settlement communities established
to house people displaced by the war in evergrowing suburbs around Monrovia.
Quilts give physical form to concepts like domestic violence and the role of education in postconflict Liberian life. The objects being displayed
are also three-dimensional explorations of the
negotiation between historical and contemporary
Liberian identities. Thus, quilters aid in reconstructing the imagery for and about Liberians.
However, it is equally important to examine their
artistic production in concert with their contribution to rebuilding networks and skillsets within
their communities.
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International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries
Education extends beyond the schoolyard, particularly in Liberia where officially sanctioned and
written histories are contested and often exclusive in scope, as they are focused and grounded
in American settler accounts and perspectives.
When younger Liberians are trained in quilting
by the women of Waste Not and the Bensonville
Mothers’ Club, they receive practical skills, but
also cultural knowledge through the ways that
they are taught to look at the environment around
them, drawing inspiration from both the natural
world and their cultural context—the wealth of
folklore and oral history within the community.
As an organization built by members within
Liberian communities, the National Quilters’ Association provides one model for rebuilding incountry human networks through cultural and
educational institutions. Through their artwork,
the quilters struggle with and shape individual
and national identities for multiple audiences.
Understanding how they manage to access multiple populations may provide a model for other
cultural organizations negotiating post-conflict
state contexts. Finally, training younger citizens
whose educational and familial situations were
restricted by the civil war is a critical aspect
of nation rebuilding. Liberia’s future depends
on community leaders and citizens thoroughly
understanding their diverse histories, and being
able to refine imagery that speaks to and about
Liberia to best represent the contemporary Liberian experience.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation and Council on Library and
Information Resources for funding this project,
and the International Bank Liberia (particularly
Patricia Findley and Kenya Kamara) for providing
st r uc t ura l suppor t in count r y. My deepest
gratitude is due to the artists interviewed for this
article: Alice Bracewell, Sarah Logan, Gladys Cole,
48
Alice Daniels, and the members of Waste Not, Inc.,
the Bensonville Mothers’ Club, Quageh, and the
Arthington quilters. Thanks also to the reviewers
for their comments and suggestions.
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