Born: 29 October 1837, United States
Died: 1 January 1910
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Harriet Powers was an American folk artist and quilter. She was born into slavery in rural northeast Georgia, married at a young age, and had a large family. Following the American Civil War and emancipation, she and her husband became landowners by the 1880s but lost their land due to financial problems.
Powers used traditional appliqué techniques to create quilts that depicted local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events. Only two of her quilts have survived: the Bible Quilt from 1886 and the Pictorial Quilt from 1898. These quilts are recognized as outstanding examples of nineteenth-century Southern quilting. Her work is now on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Bible Quilt from 1886 and the Pictorial Quilt of 1898 depict biblical and historical scenes, along with celestial phenomena. Both quilts are a combination of hand and machine stitching, utilizing both appliqué and piecework techniques that showcase African-American and African influences. These quilts are notable for their bold use of these techniques in storytelling.
Art historians have noticed similarities between West African appliqué wall hangings and Powers’s work. Like the appliquéd textiles of Benin, her work incorporates standardized symbols with little variation. For instance, most of the human figures, whether male or female, in the Bible Quilt, seem to follow a common pattern. Male figures are distinguished from female figures by a V-shaped cut in the skirt. Additionally, her representations of humans, animals, and objects are minimalist and capture the essence of the subject, aligning her work stylistically with that of the Fon, Asante, Fante, and Ewe cultures.
The following is shared from The New Georgia Encyclopedia, which allows the use of protected materials for noncommercial educational purposes.
Harriet Powers is one of the best-known southern African American quilt makers, even though only two of her quilts, both of which she made after the Civil War (1861-65), survive today. One is part of the National Museum of American History collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The second quilt is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. The cotton quilts consist of numerous pictorial squares depicting biblical scenes and celestial phenomena. They were constructed through applique and piecework and were hand and machine stitched.
Powers was born into slavery near Athens on October 29, 1837, and lived more than half her life in Clarke County, mainly in Sandy Creek and Buck Branch. The first of the Powers quilts was displayed in 1886 at a cotton fair in Athens, where Jennie Smith, an artist and art teacher at the Lucy Cobb Institute, a school for elite white females in Athens, saw it. She asked to purchase it from Powers, but Powers declined to sell it. Smith remained in touch with Powers, however, and five years later Powers, having financial difficulties, agreed to sell the quilt for five dollars. At the time of the sale Powers explained the imagery in the squares, and Smith recorded the descriptions along with additional comments of her own.
The history of the second quilt is less clear. One account indicates that the wives of Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University) faculty members saw the first quilt in the Cotton States Exhibition in Atlanta in 1895 and decided to commission a second quilt by Powers. Another account suggests that the second quilt was purchased by the same faculty wives who may have seen it at the Nashville, Tennessee, Exposition in 1898. Regardless, the faculty wives presented the quilt to the Reverend Charles Cuthbert Hall of New York in 1898, while he was serving as the chairman of the board of trustees at Atlanta University. Subsequently, the folk art collector Maxim Karolik acquired it from Hall’s heirs and donated it to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Powers’s quilts are remarkable for their bold use of applique for storytelling and for their extensive documentation. Her use of technique and design demonstrates African and African American influences. The use of appliqued designs to tell stories is closely related to artistic practices in the republic of Benin, West Africa. The uneven squares suggest the syncopation found in African American music.
Only one image of Powers herself survives. The photograph, made about 1897, depicts her wearing a special apron with appliqued images of a moon, cross, and sun or shooting star. Such celestial bodies appear repeatedly in her quilts and are often carefully stitched in complex ways, indicating their importance to her. These images may have related to a fraternal organization or had religious significance to her. Powers’s interpretations of both quilts have survived, though they are likely influenced by their recorders. Powers herself probably was illiterate and may have used the quilts as visual teaching tools for telling biblical stories.
In January 2005 Cat Holmes, a doctoral student in history at the University of Georgia, discovered the grave of Harriet Powers, as well as that of Powers’s husband and daughter. The headstone, which was uncovered at the historic Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery in Athens, reveals that Powers died on January 1, 1910.
She was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement in 2009.