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

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For quite some time, I was obsessed with finding the Reverend Hall. He didn't seem to be in any of the usual places -- old phone books, city directories -- but, with a name as commonplace as J. R. Hall, it was hard to be certain. I took to calling Gussie every couple of weeks to see if anything more of Hall's had turned up. We enjoyed talking to each other and soon became friends. Then something remarkable happened. In the course of showing Hall's quilt to a group of elderly African-American women, I had a pivotal experience.

A black contractor who'd done some work for me had taken an interest in the quilts I was studying. When his five sisters, ages sixty-two to seventy-five, came to town for a family event, he brought them and his wife by for a private showing. The women, most of whom were quilters, responded with great enthusiasm. About to show the Hall Double Wedding Ring, I asked if everyone was familiar with the pattern. One wasn't sure, so I spread out a splendid example of a 1930s standard-traditional Double Wedding Ring (fig. 00), the kind often made from a kit, pieced of pastel floral prints on a white ground.

The quilt was in mint condition, lusciously crisp, exquisitely quilted -- an exemplar of superb workmanship from a golden age of American quiltmaking. The ladies loved it and a chorus of "ain't that nice," in hushed, cooing tones, circled the room. Seeing through their eyes this archetypical Anglo-American expression of femininity, I felt the same reverence and, unexpectedly, some trepidation about the reception the Hall Wedding Ring would get. This would be a hard act to follow.

But I proceeded to bring out the Reverend Hall's worn and spontaneously crafted quilt and was startled by the reaction. These five stately women, a moment before so sweet and serene, took to hooting and stomping until the house shook. All at once, I got it. We'd moved into a different esthetic universe.

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?"

1 This story is Chapter One of my book-in-progress, Meeting Mrs Murphy: Adventures of a Quilt Collector. An account of the second experience will be found in Chapter Two.

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