Quilt Arts of South Africa

Threaded Legacies

Marsha MacDowell

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9780253072603
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythology
• Index: History

In the southernmost region of the African continent, women have been piecing together materials—textile construction techniques commonly used in quilting— to create bed coverings throughout the history of the San and Khoi peoples. From the late seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century, an influx of Dutch, French, Indian, and British military personnel, traders, miners, and missionaries came to South Africa, bringing with them their own cultural traditions, including making and using quilts. Today, the making of quilts in South Africa is flourishing.

Quilt Arts of South Africa stitches together the history, production, and significance of quilt making from its earliest appearance in the continent's southernmost region to the twenty-first century. With input from curators, linguists, art historians, activist artists, and folklorists, this book presents disparate yet connected inquiries into a wide-ranging history of the quilt. These perspectives connect a rich expressive art to place, showing how the quilting traditions in South Africa together reflect a unique cultural history and natural landscape.

Itself pieced together from diverse voices, Quilt Arts of South Africa offers glimpses into the histories and meanings of quilting in South Africa.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• The Border: Piecing Together a History of Quilts and Related Textiles in South Africa
• Chapter 1. Traditional Bedding and Cloak-Blankets of the Indigenous People of South Africa
• Chapter 2. South African Kappies
• Chapter 3. The Heritage Quilt: The Anglo-Boer War Women’s History Quilt
• Chapter 4. The Boer War Quilt: Discovering History through Studying a Textile
• Chapter 5. Isishweshwe: A Blueprint Fabric in Southern Africa
• Chapter 6. Potchefstroom: A Regional Center of South African Quilt History
• Chapter 7. The South African Quilters’ Guild
• Chapter 8. Fibreworks: A South African Textile Artist Organization
• Chapter 9. Zamani Quilters of Soweto
• Chapter 10. A Lone Star in Africa
• Chapter 11. The Empowering Stitch
• Chapter 12. Amazwi Abesifazane—Voices of Women: A Textile History Collection
• Chapter 13. South Africa, AIDS, and Quilts
• Chapter 14. The Keiskamma Guernica
• Chapter 15. The Tapestries of the Bushman Heritage Museum, Nieu Bethesda
• Chapter 16. Defining a South African Quilt Aesthetic
• Chapter 17. Common Ground, Building Bridges: The Women of Color Quilters Network and South African Quilt Artists
• Chapter 18. The Quilt Index: South African Quilt History, Preservation, and Access
• Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Index