Projects at the Clarke: Quilt Preservation and Documentation project

This week, We'll go behind the scenes at the Clarke to check out an ongoing project to preserve the quilt collection with the help of the Redwood Empire Quilter's Guild.

“A museum has to renew its collection to be alive, but that does not mean we give on important old works.” -David Rockefeller

Every two years, the Clarke hosts a quilt exhibit that coincides with the Redwood Empire Quilter’s Guild biennial quilt show, which is hosted at Redwood Acres Fairgrounds in Eureka. The Clarke has had a long relationship with the Quilter’s Guild, who host a fund at the Humboldt Area Foundation and have helped to fund a number of projects to support our quilt collection, including money for a custom case for the historic Grant Quilt and storage racks for our quilts while they’re not on display. In 2018, we applied for and received a grant from the Guild to replace the archival tissue paper that the quilts are stored in. The tissue is replaced every 5 years to prevent damage to the quilts through acid accumulation. As the quilts naturally break down (as all things eventually do), they give off acids that, if concentrated, will accelerate damage to the quilt. Replacing the paper slows that accumulation of acids and helps preserve the quilt. With the grant, we also received money to bring in an intern to help with the project, which has been incredibly helpful and has helped make the process much more efficient and safer for the quilts.

This project has been a lot of fun to work on and has given us the chance to review the quilt collection, update records, and think more about the information contained within the collection. In the process, we’ve found incredible quilts ranging in size, pattern, color, age, and more. Quilts are artifacts that are both utilitarian and, in a trend that began in 1970s, seen as pieces of art, and it’s not unusual to hear of people investing considerable emotional and physical energy into making them. In years past, before the mass production of fabrics and improved transportation, fabric was expensive and people did all they could to save and reuse fabrics, which turned the quilts into not only usable items but repositories of memory as you could look at the quilt fabrics and recall that this came from your mother’s dress or that came from your uncle’s suit. The quilts in the collection were prized possessions that were used, repaired and used again to keep generations of Humboldt County residents warm.

​With the upcoming quilt exhibit, I’ve been thinking about how the Clarke quilts relate to the general Humboldt County community. Some of them were rather large quilts, up to 80-90 inches long and sewn by hand, and some of these particularly large quilts were made to raise money. It was an undertaking that was sped up (and was much more fun) when friends were involved and could help out with the process. Women could find support for their creative endeavors, appreciation for the hard work they did, and a space to share experiences, stories, emotions, and perspectives outside of the male gaze and social structure. There is also a story which made the local newspaper of how Susie Baker, a woman from Blue Lake and the author of the Susie Baker Fountain Papers housed at HSU, invited a group of friends over for “the ostensible purpose of tying a quilt intended, so it was said, for a church sale.” in 1915. When the group arrived for the dinner party that went with the quilt tying festivities, they found envelopes with the announcement that she was engaged to a Mr. Eugene Fountain of Arcata, which turned the social event into a celebration of a new phase in Susie’s life. While the quilt tying is only passingly mentioned here, it served as a conduit for collaboration, as the women came together to work on the quilt which would benefit another community they shared, their local church.

We have quilts from other communities, such as an unfinished crazy quilt top that was started to eventually be auctioned off to raise money for a local fraternal organization, but for some reason was never finished, and a quilt featuring embroidered signatures of community members from Blue Lake, Eureka, Garberville, Berkeley, Korbel, Arcata, and more that was thought to have been auctioned off to raise money for the establishment of a new Order of the Good Templars group in Blue Lake. More often than not, the makers of these quilts are unknown or unnamed. It’s a mystery, but you can still learn a lot about the women who made the quilts, and the period that the quilts were made in, even if you don’t know their names or their stories.

Blue Lake Signature Quilt

Be sure to come by and check out Sewing Circles when it opens in July!