Comfort and Glory on Display at the Sam Rayburn Museum in July and August
July, 15, 2016
Bonham, Texas — The Sam Rayburn Museum, a division of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, proudly presents Comfort and Glory: Selections from the Briscoe Center’s Winedale Quilt Collection.
“This exhibit showcases nine quilt treasures dating from the 1840s to the 1980s,” said Katherine Adams, quilt curator at the Briscoe Center. “They represent some of the center’s most impressive and historic quilts, including Tiger Lily (1940, pictured right), a masterpiece by Bertha Stenge, known as ‘Chicago’s Quilting Queen,’ and the Texas-made Snowflake (circa 1875–1890), which features paper-cut appliquéd motifs and quilted hearts.”
The exhibit will run July 29–August 13, 2016, and coincides with the Bonham Quilt Hop scheduled for July 29–30. Many quilts will be displayed across town during the hop, including at the Bonham Public Library, the Fannin County Museum of History and the Bonham Visitor’s Center. The Sam Rayburn Museum will also host the hop’s opening reception from 5 p.m to 6:30 p.m. on Friday July 29.
The Briscoe Center’s exhibit at the Rayburn Museum takes its name from the forthcoming book Comfort and Glory: Two Centuries of American Quilts from the Briscoe Center, published by the center and the University of Texas Press. Written by Katherine Adams, the book features 115 remarkable quilts from the center’s Winedale Quilt Collection. Color photographs of related documents and material culture objects from the center’s collections—quilting templates, clothing, sheet music and political ephemera, among them, enrich the stories of many of the quilts.
The Briscoe Center will display 21 quilts in an expanded version of the exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, November 2–6, 2016. Additional versions of the exhibit also will be at the Winedale Historical Complex in Round Top, Texas, in February 2017 and at the Briscoe-Garner Museum in Uvalde, Texas in April 2017.
Comfort and Glory is the first book-length publication to focus exclusively on the Winedale Quilt Collection, a premier scholarly resource for the study of American quilts and their history. It will be available for purchase at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, as well as online from the University of Texas Press.
