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Black
& white photos from the book Useful Work for Unskilled Woman:
A Unique Milwaukee WPA Project by Mary Kellogg Rice, provided by
the Milwaukee County Historical Society.
Through
March 14, the Milwaukee County Historical Society will showcase 30
19th and 20th century quilts from its permanent collection in an
exhibition titled “Quilts and Community.” The quilts featured
in the exhibition represent a wide variety of styles and
techniques popular throughout the first century of Milwaukee’s
history. One of the most unusual pieces to be highlighted in
Quilts and Community is a Masonic Lodge quilt. The quilt was
appliqued in 1867 and includes the inscription “Columbia Lodge
No. 44” along with an interesting selection of Masonic images
set among the flowerpots of a California rose pattern.
In
a 1930s-era program that came to be known throughout the country
as The Milwaukee WPA Handicraft Project,
hundreds
of women who were uneducated, untrained, some illiterate, some
speaking only a foreign language, were taught to produce articles
that satisfied the unmet needs of Depression-starved schools and
of public institutions. One phase, the quilting project, not only
provided work for the women, but
transformed the bare spaces of two newly-organized,
federally-sponsored Milwaukee nursery schools into colorful,
educational places. The project demonstrated that undereducated,
unskilled women of all ages, with little or no work experience,
could develop the skills to make a useful contribution to society.
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