Four Centuries of Quilts: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection, Linda Baumgarten and Kimberly Smith Ivery

Four Centuries of Quilts is a sumptuous journey through 400 years of quilt-making drawn from the renowned Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Collection. With over 300 dazzling colour images and intimate detail shots, the volume examines quilts as both functional craft and formal aesthetic—their pieced patterns and appliqué telling rich stories of migration, faith, domestic life, and artistry across Europe, America, the Mediterranean and beyond. Essays trace the evolution of quilting from its Indian origins in the late 16th century, through Amish and African-American traditions in early America, to complex Victorian album quilts—each block and stitch a testament to the maker’s identity and era.

Lavishly produced and elegantly designed, the book rises above the status of mere catalogue. Technical annotations, historical context and archival photography bring voices of craftswomen—farmers, hobbyists, philanthropists—into focus, suggesting quilts are canvas as much as coverlet. As one reviewer memorably notes, they “take the viewer into the sublime,” affirming the authors’ claim that quilts are art, not just craft.

Our thoughts on this book: read here

About the Author
Linda Baumgarten is Curator of Textiles and Costumes at Colonial Williamsburg, where her expertise in historic fabrics has shaped exhibitions and publications that unite craft, context, and colonial-American life.

Kimberly Smith Ivey, Curator of Textiles and Historic Interiors at the same institution, brings a diagnostic eye to domestic cloth, interpreting quilts within richly layered social and material histories.

Publication date: 2014
Publisher: Yale University Press
Pages: 356
ISBN: 9780300207361