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Posted by Eli Leon Posted on: 04/30/07

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Both quilts were appreciated fully. The 1930s quilt, evocative of bridal attire and lacy wedding cakes, was admired from a distance, then approached gingerly, as if not to disturb its fragile perfection. The other, alive with movement, invited audience participation. Rather than the consummate expression of an archetypal ideal, it was something new and something different. Its vital force elicited a whole-body response.

This Double Wedding Ring showing was one of two revelatory experiences1 -- both involving groups of African-American women and their eye-opening responses to improvisational African-American quilts -- that convinced me that there was a distinctly non-European esthetic at play in these artistic productions. Next thing I knew, I'd turned a corner. I stopped collecting "regular" quilts and started researching African textiles and African-American quilts full time.

***

Three years after my purchase of the Hall Double Wedding Ring, Gussie told me that she and her then new friend, Arbie Williams, had taken to piecing quilt tops. Gussie, who was Catholic, had been sending hers to missions in Louisiana. I was surprised; Gussie was eighty-three at the time and, as noted earlier, hadn't quilted since she was twelve. I went out to look at what they were doing, which turned out to be strikingly improvisational. And Arbie, who was to become my chief informant, was a stunningly articulate spokesperson for innovative design. "If you get discomfortable with something you're making ..." she told me on one occasion, "just cut it down the middle and send it to the other side." From which I gleaned a title for the how-to article I was putting together for Threads magazine.

By now I was thoroughly immersed in what I called "Afro-traditional" quilts, and had a working model of a hypothetically separate black tradition that -- placing great value on improvisation -- often prompted works defying standard-traditional expectations while abiding by conventions that crosscut a broad spectrum of West and Central African cultures. I happily bought a number of Wells's and Williams's soon-to-be-award-winning tops. The next week, they had more. Gussie explained that they could do one a day.

On one of the many occasions that I phoned her that spring, Gussie was all worked up about winning a Cadillac Seville. Or probably winning one, as she explained. To find out for sure, she'd have to go to San Jose. There was a small chance that she'd won one of the lesser prizes in Category A, but she didn't think so. I'd received that Cadillac scam in the mail myself, and Gussie and I were old friends by then, but nothing I said could dissuade her from the conviction that she'd won. She just needed to find someone to drive her old Cadillac to San Jose to settle the matter. Later I wished I had taken her up on it.

She was in an especially talkative mood that day, which suited me fine. I loved chatting with her when I had the time although, when I didn't, getting off the phone could be a struggle. That afternoon I was laid up with some minor ailment and happy for the distraction. Gussie was doing most of the talking, covering several topics at once -- the big one being the Cadillac Seville. I was lazily uh-huhing when she casually switched to the Reverend Hall's receipt book. Receipt book? I sat up in bed. "What receipt book?"

"Oh yes," she said. "You know that fancy book I write receipts out of? It used to belong to the Reverend Hall."

I bombarded her with questions. None of Hall's receipts, she assured me, were still in the book. Then she recalled that the first few pages were stapled to the front! She agreed to locate the thing while I zipped around, jumping into clothes, putting shoes on the wrong feet, forgetting about my ailments. When I called back, the line was busy; apparently she'd left the phone off the hook. When I finally got through, Gussie accused me of holding her up for so long that she'd burned the spaghetti.

I had trouble sticking to seventy-five on the freeway. When I finally got my hands on the book, I could hardly see straight. Someone had indeed stapled a couple of pages to the cover. Gussie wasn't too happy about undoing this bit of workmanship but accepted my assurances that it could easily be restapled. And there they were, four magnificent carbon-copy receipts from 1959 and 1960. Two, signed Jack R. Hall, were for loans. They included the names and addresses of the lenders -- one a Thomas Shaffer in San Francisco -- as well as a San Francisco address for Jack himself: 3054 California Street. The other two were penned by Louise A. Hall (one of the irate wives, no doubt), and were for the rental of a room.

I was in shock. For an eternity, it seemed, I'd been trying to conjure this stuff up. Could its sudden materialization be for real, or was I just dreaming? An eerie sensation washed over me, causing the room to sway. "Louise A. Hall." "3054 California Street." These precious bits of information seemed to be bubbling up from my subconscious. As if I'd always known them.

It was now 1984. Twenty-four years had passed since these receipts had been made out. The chances that any of the parties would be found at their old addresses had to be minuscule. From the perspective of a fellow who'd been looking for a man with no first name, however -- not to mention his shadow of a sister -- this was a windfall. I rolled up my metaphorical sleeves and got to work.

Louise wasn't in the phone book but, according to the most recent (two-year-old) city directory, was still at 3054 California in 1982. No 1982 telephone listing either, but my roller coaster was on the rise. I had the distinct sensation of closing in. And a Thomas Shaffer that I found in the white pages turned out to be my guy! He was off on a trip to the Holy Land, unfortunately, but his sister told me that she'd most certinly heard about that crooked preacher who'd borrowed money from him some twenty-odd years ago and never paid it back.

I found several of Louise's neighbors in a reverse directory, called one, and was told that the old lady in 3054 had recently "passed." Another roller-coaster dip. But one of her sons, this neighbor believed, had moved into the apartment. Was there still hope? For years I'd been buying into Gussie's notion that Jack's sister made the quilt. Now, in a flash, I realized that one of Jack's wives might have been the quiltmaker. Maybe she'd even left other work behind? What would this master of improvisation have done with the Grandmother's Flower Garden or the Dresden Plate -- the other favorite patterns of the period? I would recognize the woman's mark, I was sure.

I gave the neighbor my phone number and implored him to tell whoever lived at 3054 that I had a quilt that used to belong to the Reverend Jack R. Hall and was hoping to find out who made it. Happily, when he went to deliver this message he discovered that the deceased lived one house down from 3054. Louise might still be alive!

No one was home, but the neighbor slipped my message under the door. For days, then, I had adrenaline rushes every time the phone rang. I called a second neighbor and got a second commitment to deliver my message. I knew I could blow everything by showing up unannounced but it was almost impossible for me to stay put.

Eventually I got the call. When my hello was met by silence on the other end of the line, I was convinced that it was Louise. So I started babbling. "It's just about this quilt," I said. "The Reverend Hall left it behind when he went to Arizona. I'm trying to find out who made it. The lady said his sister, back in Arkansas ..."

That did it. Hall had some quilts, Louise jumped in to say, that his mother, Emma Hall, had made. None by his sisters who, anyway, were both dead. Rosie and Addie -- she couldn't remember their last names. Hall, however was still alive. She didn't know where he was but she'd heard from him recently and it wasn't Arizona. We had quite a chat. She still wasn't ready to give me her phone number but agreed to let me come by the next day to show her the quilt.

When we finally got together, Louise was cordial and cooperative. I brought two quilts, the Double Wedding Ring, and a second one to test my new informant's reliability. Louise didn't recognize the test quilt but identified the Double Wedding Ring as Emma's. When his mother died, ca. 1948, Jack had gone to Sweet Home and returned with a chest full of her things. Included were a grey Star quilt, two other Double Wedding Rings and a packet of family photos, as well as this striking quilt, which Louise hadn't recognized as a Double Wedding Ring. She remembered Rosie Huggins and Addie January's last names by now -- or had decided it was safe to reveal them to me. And Jack had two more sisters. "Zuline" was the oldest. The youngest was still alive in 1980 -- just a few years back -- but Louise couldn't recall her name. Jack was the baby.

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