Program Schedule & Registration
Lectures will begin at 8:45 am both days
We are very proud to offer the best experts in textile history in our Penn Dry Goods Market lecture series. This year, you will have the opportunity to hear lectures from nationally recognized authorities in textiles. Our speakers are not merely experts in their respective fields, but are entertaining and very approachable.
All lectures require a ticket ($25/lecture purchased ahead), and tickets will be taken at the door. If you purchase a ticket the day of the event, it is $35/lecture.
SLHC will issue refunds only if a lecture is canceled, OR if it is filled before we receive your registration, OR if we receive your request at least 48 hours in advance of the program.
You can pay for each lecture with a credit card below.
Paying with Check or Cash? Download, complete, and mail in your registration form.
Mail completed registration forms to:
Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center
105 Seminary Street
Pennsburg PA 18073
2025 Textile History Lecture Series
Thursday, May 8 (all times are EST)
7:00 — 8:00 pm SHOW ME! An On-Line Trunk Show of Rare and Historic Quilts
(this is a Zoom only lecture and it will not be recorded)
Julie Silber, lecturer, author, consultant, and curator
As a long time collector and dealer, as well as the caretaker of several other quilt collections, Julie has had access to some of the greatest antique quilts ever made.
This Zoom talk features extraordinary historic quilts, some of them never published or exhibited before. Examples include true Baltimore Album Quilts, other Pre-Civil War quilts, museum quality Amish quilts, Depression-era examples, quilts with tens of thousands of tiny pieces, and unique pictorial and other one-of-a-kind quilts.
Friday, May 16 (all times are EST)
8:45 — 9:45 am This is the Way I Pass My Time:
Mennonite Hand Towels from Eastern Pennsylvania
Joel Alderfer, Collections Manager, Mennonite Heritage Center
In this lecture, we’ll look at a unique decorated textile tradition among Pennsylvania German young women in eastern Pennsylvania, the decorated hand towel – popularly called the “show towel”. What do we know about the origins of this textile form? Why do they seem to have been more common among plain Pennsylvania German women? What was their function? How were they displayed?
Given the presenter’s long-time roll as collections manager at the Mennonite Heritage Center, he’ll then focus on the Center’s large collection of these towels – nearly all from Mennonite families in southeastern Pennsylvania. He’ll highlight some of the design details and the unique needlework motifs found on the towels – some primarily used by Amish and Mennonite women. Joel’s presentation will be generously illustrated and he’ll likely even bring a few originals examples with him to display!
Sponsored by Harleysville Bank
10:00 — 11:00 am Colonialism, Power & Identity: Fashion in American Portraits, 1670-1840
Lynne Bassett, Independent Scholar, Curator, and Author
Fashion is often dismissed as a frivolous concern, mostly involving women and of no great importance to world events. Fashion has, in fact, been an instigator of the global economy starting with the Silk Road in the 6th century. A thousand years later—in the 16th and 17th centuries—the pursuit of textiles and fashion led to empire-building, wars, colonization, the subjugation of indigenous populations and the enslavement of Africans, as Bassett will demonstrate through this examination of American portraiture primarily from the collection of the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts.
Sponsored by Meadowood
12:45 — 1:45 pm Heritage Craft, Community, and Continuity among Scandinavian Americans
Josh Brown, Skwierczynski University Fellow (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) and folk weaver
Old identities are challenged, and new identities are formed when people are confronted with new contexts through immigration. Immigrants express those identities, in part, through their material culture. This presentation explores heritage identities expressed through craft among the Scandinavian Americans. As these immigrants and their descendants clung to traditional craft, new opportunities brought changes to the ways they created and understood the material world.
Sponsored by the Ted Breckel Memorial Fund
2:00 — 3:00 pm Pennsylvania German Quilt Turning—40 Examples from Both Sides of the Susquehanna
Debby Cooney, Independent Quilt Scholar
PLEASE NOTE: the same quilts will be shown in both the Friday and Saturday quilt turnings.
Sponsored by Stauffer Glove & Safety
SOLD OUT
3:15 — 4:15 pm Hidden in Plain Sight: Uncovering the Samplers of Black Girls
Lynne Anderson, Ph.D., President of the Sampler Consortium and Director of the Sampler Archive Project
Of the more than 40 schoolgirl samplers known to have been embroidered by African American girls, approximately half have no text or motifs signifying their makers’ ethnic origins. The samplers remain “hidden in plain sight” until genealogical research unexpectedly uncovers the identity of their black sampler makers, revealing previously undocumented educational venues and new examples of African American needlework. This presentation will focus on two groups of samplers by daughters from African American families living in 19th century Philadelphia, using genealogical and historical research to document the girls’ lives and position their needlework within historical and educational contexts. The girls’ samplers are testimonials to the educational options available to black students; the persistence of African American families in pursuit of education for their daughters; and the ability of black girls to achieve the same standards of needlework excellence expected of white girls.
Sponsored by M. Finkel & Daughter
Saturday, May 17
8:45 — 9:45 am A Useable Past: American Hand-Weaving Revival in Appalachia, 1892-1940
Matthew Monk, Linda Eaton Associate Curator of Textiles, Winterthur
At the turn of the twentieth century, Progressive Era reformers, known as mountain workers, used Appalachian crafts, particularly handweaving, as material evidence to promote the idea that white Appalachian Americans were simultaneously worthy of charity but also that Appalachian culture was more authentically American because of isolation. These social entrepreneurship efforts worked, tapping into national markets for colonial revival textiles. This talk will focus on the history of three Appalachian handweaving revival centers that developed independently but simultaneously across the region.
Sponsored by the Ted Breckel Memorial Fund
10:00 — 11:00 am Pennsylvania German Quilt Turning—40 Examples from Both Sides of the Susquehanna
Debby Cooney, Independent Quilt Scholar
PLEASE NOTE: the same quilts will be shown in both the Friday and Saturday quilt turnings.
Sponsored by Stauffer Glove and Safety
SOLD OUT!
11:15 am — 12:15 pm So intimately are we connected: Antislavery Textiles and the Weight of Cotton
Mariah Kupfner, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Public Heritage, School of Humanities, Penn State Harrisburg
Textiles connect us. They are often intimate objects. For many abolitionists in the early nineteenth century, this made them perfect tools to express and combat the evils of enslavement. Soft fabrics could contain hard truths and prompt Northern audiences to examine their own entanglement in systems of oppression. In particular, cotton helped many understand their direct connection to slavery.
In the anti-slavery movement, many women picked up their needles to express their commitments, to raise money for the cause, and to try and construct real alternatives to economies based on slavery. This talk explores the phenomenon of Free Labor activists who tried to source ethical textiles and the everyday work of antislavery stitchers who used their needles to envision a changed world. From pieced silk quilts to cotton pinafores, Free Labor mills to mulberry tree farms, this presentation explores the materiality and texture of textiles harnessed to try and make a world with less harm and more freedom.
Sponsored by Master Supply Line
12:45 — 1:45 pm The Joys of Tape Weaving as Viewed Through the Eleanor Bittle Collection
Brother Johannes Zinzendorf and Zephram De Colebi, The Mahantongo Heritage Center at the Hermitage
In this hands-on session, participants will weave a section of linsey-woolsey tape and then examine a selection of the remarkable variety of tape looms assembled over a 50-year period by Eleanor Bittle, the doyenne of tape weaving. Tape weaving is one of the simplest forms of weaving that, nonetheless, can create elegant textile forms. Historic examples of tape will also be shown from the textile collection of the Hermitage.
Sponsored by the Ted Breckel Memorial Fund
2:00 — 3:00 pm A Legacy in Thread: Schoolgirl Needlework and Female Education In Dutchess County, New York
Stacy Whittaker, Independent Needlework Scholar
Located on the Hudson River, halfway between New York City and Albany, Dutchess County welcomed its first European settlers in the late 1600’s. many cultural and religious influences led to the development of a strong tradition of education there that continues to this day. Female education in particular was encouraged by the development of both Quaker-related schools and a wealth of female academies. Samplers and other schoolgirl needlework were produced at most of these schools. This talk will illustrate, through examples of this needlework, the rich tradition of both embroidery and female education in Dutchess County and how the study of that work provides a unique and fascinating window into the lives of women in the Post-Revolutionary Hudson Valley.
Sponsored by The Betty Whiting Fleming Grant Fund of the Loudoun Sampler Guild
3:15 — 4:15 pm The Quilt That Never Was: Solving the Mystery of the Inscribed Great Valley Quilt Blocks
Charlene Bongiorno Stephens and William Stephens, Independent Quilt Scholars
Quilts have long been relegated to a lesser place in the art world, assigned this status because they were simply “women’s work.” Since most quilts unfortunately had no maker’s attribution on them, their anonymity fueled this lack of importance. However, the textiles with name inscriptions can provide for us an important window not only into women’s history but into the history of their time and place. These objects of material culture can become a microscope revealing not only the makers’ personal details, but even national, state, local and even family issues.
What could be the importance of blocks that were never assembled into a quilt? We will closely explore 52 intricately inscribed Chester County quilt blocks from the Great Valley and dated in the early 1840’s. Including a separate name inscribed quilt related to the Schwenkfelders as a guide, the goal will be ascertaining why the blocks were created, who made them and why they remained uncompleted, but most significantly, the importance of these objects of material culture in understanding/illuminating one of the great issues in 19th century America.
Sponsored by Jeffrey S. Evans & Associates