Episode 52 | Are Quilts Folk Art? Collecting Antique American Quilts with Laura Saville
About this episode
Matt Ledbetter and Laura Saville discuss the significance of antique American quilts as folk art and their historical context.
In this episode of House of Folk Art, Matt Ledbetter sits down with longtime friend and antique dealer Laura Saville for a full conversation on antique American quilts, how to look at them, how to date them, and why more collectors are starting to take them seriously as both historical objects and pieces of art. Laura talks about falling headfirst into quilts over the last several months, studying fabrics, construction, and textile history, and learning how quilts connect to antique clothing, regional taste, and daily life in America. Matt brings in the picking side of it too, explaining how common quilts once were in Southern households, how they were stored, and why dealers used to bring stacks of them back from house calls and auctions. Together, Matt and Laura get into the practical side of collecting. They talk about mothball smell and why it does not always mean a textile is ruined, how long quilts actually take to make, the difference between quilts and coverlets, early whole cloth examples, hand stitching versus machine stitching, crazy quilts, Victorian era patterns, Gee’s Bend, what makes one quilt worth sixty dollars and another worth thousands, and how personal taste…
More episodes of House of Folk Art
- Episode 55 | Riding Out to Liberty with Matt Ledbetter
- Episode 54 | What Matt Bought at the Catawba Valley Pottery Festival
- Episode 53 | 10 Picks Inside a 15,000 Sq Ft Folk Art Warehouse
- Episode 51 | Mary Proctor: Called to Paint
- Episode 50 | Rare 1990s Folk Art Footage from Tom Wells
- Episode 49 | From Football to Folk Art
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