harriet powers stamps

The post office got me again with the recent issue of stamps that celebrate Harriet Powers' quilts. I went in to mail a letter that required extra postage and came out with two sheets of Harriet Powers quilt making stamps.

Harriet Powers was an African American quilt maker born into slavery in 1837 in rural northeast Georgia. She most likely learned her sewing and quilt-making skills on the plantation where she was enslaved.

After emancipation, she lived and worked near Athens, and over time became known for the remarkable pictorial quilts she created - quilts full of symbolism that read like illustrated panels that tell a narrative story. Powers used her quilting as a way to preserve her faith, her African American culture, and her own personal story.

Only two of her quilts are known to survive today, but those two works have become cornerstones in the story of American quilting - especially the tradition of story quilts. Each of the blocks in her quilts is its own little scene, almost like a storyboard.

Today one of Harriet Powers’ quilts is in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American History. The other is housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

History is told in many forms - through oral traditions, written narratives, documentary films, museum exhibitions, performance, art, and digital storytelling - all working to humanize the past. But what could be more intimate, more deeply human, than being wrapped in a handmade quilt, feeling the care, intention, and love stitched into every piece of fabric?