Artwork Details
- Title
- Red and Purple Pine Cone Quilt
- Artist
- Date
- 2020
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 109 × 104 1⁄4 in. (276.9 × 264.8 cm)
- Copyright
- © 2023, Betty Ford-Smith
- Credit Line
- Gift of Fleur S. Bresler
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- cotton fabric and batt
- Classifications
- Object Number
- 2023.40.18
Artwork Description
Betty Ford-Smith
born 1951, New Rochelle, NY
resides Sebring, FL
Red and Purple Pine Cone Quilt
2020
cotton fabric and batting
Betty Ford-Smith used more than four thousand squares of fabric, each folded into a triangle and sewn onto a cloth to form concentric circles, when she made this quilt over the course of six months during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ford-Smith learned to make this style of quilt, known as a pinecone quilt for its conical shape, in 2004, from a 92-year-old quilter in Highland County, Florida, known as Miss Sue. Similar styles have been preserved by the Gee’s Bend quilting community and cooperatives like the Freedom Quilting Bee.
The Freedom Quilting Bee was among a larger cohort of Black women–led craft cooperatives that emerged in the 1960s in the Black Belt-an agricultural region in the American South - to address the precarity women there experienced. The cooperative encouraged women to build new economic relations that did not depend on jobs that would blacklist them when they participated in civil rights demonstrations.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.18, © 2023, Betty Ford-Smith
We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts of Black Women Artists, 2025