Often called the great corridor of America's westward expansion, in the nineteenth century the Great Paltte River Road carried wagon trains and settlers through Nebraska Teritoty to points farther west. Starting in the 1840s, three of the major trails to the western United States - the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, and the California Trail - paralleled each other along the river and converged in the valley of the Platte. In jumping-off places such as Omaha and along the Missouri River, settlers from the East Coast as well ass immigrants from Europe packed wagons with essentials for the long journey. And often tucked among the essentials were qilts fro bedding, cherished reminders of home and loved ones, stitched with care. Going West! Quilts and Community, produced in conjunction with an exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, presents more than fifty quilts, brought to, or made in Nebraska in the nienteenth and early twentieth centuries. Embellished with flowers, stars, wagon wheels, dazzling mosaics, even signatures, the quilts reveal the extraordinary creativity of the individuals who made them. Roderick Kiracofe gives an overview of quiltmaking traditions, while Sandi Fox provides commentaries on individual pieces, using diaries, journal entries, and newspaper accounts to contextualize a quilt's owner or maker, or the period in which the quilt was creaated. Together, the essays reveal the hardship and risk overlanders undertook to leave the familiar and forge new communities out West, and the apparent joy and pride quilmakers brought to this time-honoured craft. AUTHOR: Roderick Kiracofe is the author of the critically acclaimed The American Quilt: A History of Cloth Comfort, and Cloth gComfort: Pieces of Women's Lives from Their Quilts and Diaries. He co-founded The Quilt Digest; produced Homage to Amanda: 200 Years of American Quilts; and was a regular participant on the PBS series The Great American Quilt. He has been actively inviloved in the creation of some of this country's most important private and corporate quilt collections. Mr. Kiracofe is an aet collector and has assembled one of the largest private collections of 'unique' twentieth-century quilts which he is currently organizing for exhibition and publication. Sandi Fox is former curator of quilts at the Los Angeles Countu Museum of Art, associate fellow at the International Quilt Study Center, University of Nebraska, and research associate, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. She is the author of numerous articles, books, and exhibition catalogues. She has been awarded research grains grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Winterthur Museum, among others. Sandi Fox lives in Los Angeles. 96 colour a12 b/w illustrations
