ATHENS, Ga. — The U.S. Postal Service is honoring Georgia native quiltmaker Harriet Powers with the release of four new stamps featuring her work.
The stamps celebrate Powers, a formerly enslaved woman, for creating story quilts considered masterpieces of American folk art.
The new stamps feature panels from Powers’ “Pictorial Quilt,” which was completed in 1898.
Only two of her five quilts are known to have survived, including the “Bible Quilt” currently housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The “Bible Quilt” was donated and shipped to the museum through the U.S. mail in 1968.
The USPS issued the Powers stamps as Forever stamps, always be equal to the current first-class mail one-ounce price.
Powers was born Oct. 29, 1837, on a plantation near Athens. She is believed to have learned to sew as a child. At age 18, she married Armstead Powers, an enslaved farmhand.
Following Emancipation, the couple purchased four acres of land in Sandy Creek, Georgia, where they raised nine children and grew cotton and vegetables.
Her quilts are referred to as story quilts because they feature pieced, appliquéd and embroidered scenes. Each panel depicts a narrative drawn from the Bible or local folklore.
In 1886, Powers entered her “Bible Quilt” into a local fair in Athens. Jennie Smith, a young art teacher, attempted to purchase the quilt at the fair. While Powers initially refused, she eventually sold the work to Smith several years later. Smith later displayed the quilt during the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta.
The “Pictorial Quilt” was commissioned by faculty wives at Atlanta University after they viewed Powers’ work at the 1895 exposition. Completed in 1898, the quilt was created as a gift for Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, the vice president of the university board. The work remained with the Hall family for 62 years.
Derry Noyes, who served as the art director for the new stamp series, had designed stamps featuring quilts in the past. But she noted that she had not previously considered fabric art as a medium for storytelling.
“This is what is extraordinary about Powers’ quilts,” Noyes said.
She selected specific details from the original 1898 “Pictorial Quilt” that would remain clear at the small scale of a postage stamp.
“I was also looking for variety and color combinations that worked well together,” Noyes said. The final designs were created using existing photographs of the quilt, which is currently held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The stamps are sold in a panel of 20 featuring four different scene designs.
“I wanted the panel to look as if there were more than just four different scenes. By changing the starting order at the beginning of each row I was able to create the impression of a multitude of scenes,” Noyes said.
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