Marian Bradshaw Lecture: Canadian Quilts and Their Makers with Lisa Binkley

About this event

Lisa Binkley explores a range of quilt styles to reveal the social, cultural, and economic experiences of their 19th century makers. For centuries in what is now known as Canada, quilts have kept us warm at night and served as vehicles for makers to express their creativity. Drawing on her new book, Canadian Quilts and Their Makers: Design, Material and Place in the Nineteenth Century, Lisa Binkley explores a range of quilt styles—from homespun and patchwork to elegant appliqué and whole-cloth work—to reveal the social, cultural, and economic experiences of their nineteenth-century makers and users. In Canada, quilt making, furthermore, evolved with technological improvements, including new forms of transportation, such as the railway and steam-powered ships, and factory-made cloth and print media, furnishing makers with affordable textiles and myriad new patterns. As settlement extended west from the Maritimes to the mid-west/Prairies, quiltmakers were influenced by their surrounding environments. The quilts presented here offer a glimpse into Canada’s quilt-making history, its relationship to European influences, and how to read quilts as documentary evidence, unravelling aspects of Canadian women’s daily, domestic, and design histories that are often overlooked. The Macdonald Stewart Foundation is the lead sponsor for our Marian Bradshaw Lecture Ornamentum is the media partner for this event. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Lisa L. Binkley is an associate professor in the Department of History at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia; a member of the Royal Society of Canada, College of New Scholars; and founding co-director of the Material Culture Collective. Among her publications are Stitching the Self: Identity and the Needle Arts, coedited with Johanna Amos; Dwelling on the Margins of Empire: Colonized and Indigenous Peoples’ Imaginaries of Home; and Where We Meet: Expressions from the Indigenous Artists Collective, coedited with S.J. Jones and Rachel Hurst. The lecture will take place at Arts & Letters Club, located at 14 Elm Street in Toronto. The entrance is located on Elm Street, off Yonge Street. Coffee, tea, and pastries will be made available. Presentation will begin at 11:00AM ET. IMAGE DETAILS 1. Martha Gervais, Laura, and Emilie Bottineau, Bottineau Quilt, c. 1885-93. Cotton, velvet, satin, and wool, 70-78 in. Made at Red Falls Lake, Minnesota. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society. 2. Anne Little Bell and Elizabeth Bell Davidson, Fallowfield Quilt, c. 1820-48. Wool on linen and cotton., 199.4 x 177.8 cm. Queen’s University, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON, Heritage Quilt Collection, Q83-001. 3. Jessie Campbell, Whig’s Defeat, c. 1860. Cotton, 222 x 175 cm. Queen’s University, Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston, ON), Q89-001. 4. Janett Vanalstine, Barn Raising Variation, c. 1970. Silk, velvet, and cotton, 162.5 x 178.0 cm. Made in Lennox and Addington County, Ontario. Canadian Museum of History (Gatineau, QC), McKendry Collection, 2001.188.626.