This fall, a new exhibit in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, will explore the past and present of textile arts in Berkshire County. Titled “What Quilts Reflect Back to Us,” the show will be held by the Berkshire County Historical Society at Arrowhead – the historic home of Herman Melville – from October 4th through the 21st. It pairs contemporary work from local quilter and textile artist Francesca Olsen with selections from the society’s archive and features quilts dating back to the mid-19th century. On October 10th, Olsen will speak at the exhibit’s opening about what it meant to curate a show featuring the work of quilters whose identities are lost to time, and what it meant to construct a dialogue between her own life in 2025 and the anonymous artists of centuries past. Quilters are encouraged to bring their own work to the event. Olsen spoke with WAMC about what it means to tap into a timeless folk art like quilting, and what she learned about the Berkshire County quilters who came before her.
OLSEN: I've worked probably at least 20 years in sewing and quilting. It's almost always been an art form for me. My family came here to the United States from Italy, and I come from a line of tailors, and I love quilting. I worked at JoAnn Fabrics when I was a teen- RIP. I picked up a lot of knowledge from the older people who had come in there, and since then- Sewing people really like meeting each other, so I've been able to learn a lot and connect a lot along the way.
WAMC: Now, this summer, you did a residency through the Berkshire Art Center that allowed you to get in touch with past works of the textile world here in Berkshire County. Tell us about that- What was that residency like, and what did you learn from it?
So, I was awarded the Berkshire Art Center residency, and it started at the very end of May. So, I've been spending June, July, August, and like some of this month, too, just casually going to Arrowhead when I can. I have a workspace there. It's been so nice to connect with them. The Berkshire County Historical Society and Arrowhead are housed in the same area, so, when I first met Lesley Herzberg, the executive director there, she said, oh, we have, in the Historical Society archive, the county's largest collection of quilts. And I was like, you do? This is amazing! So, in July, I had a wonderful morning with Erin [Hunt], the curator there, looking through all of these boxes of old quilts. And they have things from like 1845, they have things that people donated to them in like 2012. We're going to show a Red Cross quilt that commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Berkshire Red Cross that was donated in like 1995, so they really run the gamut. And it's been so cool to just do the kind of primary source historical learning that you can really only do by going through an archive.
Now, I imagine this results in an opportunity to, through your own creative work, engage in a sort of a conversation with quilters of the past, both within your family and within Berkshire County. What was that like to sort of strike up a conversation across time through the medium of the quilts?
Oh, yeah! Oh, I love that question. Okay, so I know a lot of quilters, so I've been reporting back and saying, like- I've taken so many photos of everything that I've seen, and I've sent them to people being like, can you even believe that this nameless woman, probably, made this by hand? A lot of these quilts are missing labels, so that's part of the reason why I wanted to show them. It's just nice to honor these makers who we may never know who they are. Some of them, we know who they are. I am also inviting quilters to our event on October 10th to share their own work, because I want to make it a really friendly community meet and greet thing, and I know that we have a lot of Berkshire quilters, so I'm excited to see people add to that body of knowledge about quilting in the Berkshires and see what other people have commemorated.
What were some of the biggest surprises you found exploring this archive of folk art through the Berkshire County Historical Society?
So, the labelessness really did strike me. That's actually something that like we talk about in craft discourse now, like, how are you labeling your work so that it can last beyond you and the stories that your family tell about you? So, I was really shocked to see these gorgeous, hand sewn, incredibly specific and rigidly made quilts with these intricate patterns that don't have a made by label on the back. Some of them may have fallen off, some of them just were turned in made by somebody on a farm somewhere, and that, to me, is so fascinating, because when you look at a textile, you're like, how did this person live? Where did this fabric come from? Something really cool and surprising is that we discovered that one of the quilts on display, which is made by quilting tiny, little hexagon shaped fabric pieces together, that quilt has this border that is made of red paisley, and we found out that the red paisley fabric most likely came from a woolen mill in Lowell, Mass, because that's in the 1800s where most of the textiles were being printed. So, this whole quilt world extends to the broader conversation about society and textiles and printing and mills and that history too. And so that was really surprising to me.
Now, back in 2023, we talked about another display of some of your textile art where you explored the personal narrative of surviving cancer through quilting and through artwork like this. As you examine the work of others in the past, and as you say, some of them anonymous, did you find any personal themes emerging through this classic, somewhat timeless folk art form?
Oh, yeah. So, okay, number one, we have a quilt that we're going to display that is some kind of family heirloom quilt. It was made in, I want to say, like the 1840s or 1850s, and it has the written signatures of a ton of family members in the Baldwin family from the Berkshires. It looks like it may have been a community quilt that many people made squares of and then pieced together. So, this is a storytelling quilt that shows how many family members were in the area, and kind of collects their names into this one quilt. That's a really common theme. There's like, maybe two of those that we're going to show, but that's the kind of historical storytelling that comes up again and again. It's just like, we're here, here we are, here are our names, and it opens so many questions of, how did you live? There's a quilt from like, 1845 from Tyringham that's made of what appear to be old work shirts. So, it's just squares, it's not fancy, but I can just see somebody putting that together of the textiles that they had in their rural area with no electricity, creating a functional object that will work in the home, but is also this living record of rural life.
I can imagine there's a sense of personal responsibility that may be, I don't know, daunting to some degree to take on the mantle of sharing the work of folks from the past, some of whom, as you say, have not been acknowledged for their work. On that curatorial note, what went into that thinking as you put together this show?
I was really inspired by the curatorial thinking that's already going on at Arrowhead, and I was kind of prompted in that direction by some of the volunteers there and by Erin, the curator. I'm the first person to say, like, look at that pattern, look at this use of color! But one of the volunteers there was like, but think about, this dye has probably faded- Think about how vibrant it must have been 150 years ago. Think about where this silk came from- If it was constructed here in this rural area in the 1800s, how did they get this silk? Those kinds of things, and that extrapolation of stories is just amazing. And because I'm in the craft and I'm on kind of the younger end for a quilter, I would say I do feel a responsibility to show it, because I just think about all of these people making all of these incredible works that are functional and used in the everyday. And some people don't look at that as art, but to me, that's one of the purest forms of art is art that lives with you and evolves with you.
