Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Wealth

The Massachusetts Quilt Documentation Project (MassQuilts) is a volunteer organization that holds "documentation days" across the state to identify, date, and photograph pre-1950 quilts in private and museum collections. Formally organized in 1994, approximately 5,000 quilts have been documented (the original goal was 3,000). These quilts provide a window through which to view the history of the state, telling stories of international trade and domestic manufacture, economic booms and busts, national politics, and neighborly discourse. The project focuses on quilts that have a history of original use in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts Quilts will present the group's findings. Essays by experts will lend context to catalogue-like entries on notable quilts. The quilts themselves will star, in about 200 illustrations, most in rich color.

LYNNE ZACEK BASSETT is an independent scholar specializing in New England's historic costume and textiles, a well-known guest curator, and the author of numerous catalogues and articles. She helped found the Massachusetts Quilt Documentation Project.

Other contributors to Massachusetts Quilts are Dawn C. Adiletta, Marjorie L. Childers, Helen Ewer, Anita B. Loscalzo, Marla Miller, Aimee E. Newell, Pamela A. Parmal, Paula Bradstreet Richter, Vivien Lee Sayre, and Lauren Whitley.