January 7th, 2009
any info/facts on Texas folk art 1800-1900 such as pottery/quilts/paintingsHello damafrank
This is a great question on a fascinating topic but I am surprised how
hard it is to find resources which focus on both the nineteenth
century *and* visual arts. The Texas State Historical Association
(TSHA) is the site with the most material and, although I have already
searched it, you may find more by browsing through their online
encyclopedia:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/
Here's a collection of excerpts and links which I hope will interest
you as much as they did me!
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QUILTING
========
"Even after 1845, when Texas obtained statehood, frontier women faced
daunting threats to their physical and mental survival[.......] The
orderly process of making a patchwork scrap quilt of one's very own
design was one of the few pleasures life afforded. Suzanne Labry, a
quilt historian [.....] says 19th-century diaries and letters show
that "for many pioneer women in Texas, while quilting was definitely
part of their workload, it was also a creative and emotional outlet
for them.""
Cut from the Same Cloth
http://www.texasmonthly.com/ranch/quilt/history.php
"Through this artistic medium they expressed nostalgia for the world
they had to leave behind as well as appreciation for the new world
they were helping to create. Abstract traditional patterns--nine
patch, wedding ring, tumbling blocks--gave way to new expressions of
pioneer experiences: log cabin, Texas Star, bear's paw. In Texas
Quilts, Texas Women (College Station: Texas A&M University Press,
1984), Suzanne Yabsley discusses still other names of distinctive
frontier quilt patterns: Texas Tears, Battle of the Alamo, Texas
Republic, Yellow Rose of Texas, Texas, even Longhorns on the Chisholm
Trail."
Family Past Times: Texas Frontier Families by Sylvia Ann Grider
http://www.humanities-interactive.org/texas/annexation/family_past_times.htm
This next article isn't only about an Anglo tradition of quilts and
also describes the Mexican- and Afro-American traditions in Texan
quilting.
"Hispanic women began quilting in Spanish Texas in the eighteenth
century, bringing both quilts and the Spanish tradition of needlecraft
with them. They quilted for both practical and artistic reasons on
their family's ranches and other abodes along the border of South
Texas. They often used brightly colored fabrics to design their
quilts. They also made colchas bordadas (embroidered quilts),
utilizing yet another tradition inherited from Mexican needlecraft
artists. White women brought quilts in their wagons as they traveled
from the eastern and southern United States with their families,
following the lure of a new life in the West in the early 1800s. Black
quilters, who entered the state in the 1800s as slaves, had inherited
the tradition of needlecraft from their African ancestors. Each of
these groups made quilts, and frequently the materials they used-flour
and chicken-feed sacks, for instance, or Bull Durham tobacco
sacks-reflected their economic and cultural circumstances
Early black quilters produced quilts for plantations and for their own
families. While they conformed to white society's designs for their
plantation quilts, they incorporated their African heritage and
American experience in quilts for their own use. Some of these were
known as "shirttail," "dresstail," "necktie," and "britches," the
latter of which became the most common quilt for daily use."
Quilting
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/QQ/liq1.html
There are a couple of books you might want to get hold of:
Texas Quilts, Texas Women by Suzanne Yabsley Texas A&M (1984)
Lone Stars: A Legacy of Texas Quilts, 1836-1936. by Karey Bresenhan
and Nancy O'Bryant UT Press (1990)
http://www.art-book-reviews.com/Lone_Stars_A_Legacy_of_Texas_Quilts_18361936_0292746490.html
"...in 1983 Texas became the second state to conduct a statewide
search for valuable quilts in private hands. Supported by grants from
the Texas Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the
Arts, Karey Bresenhan, serving as dating expert and historian, and
Nancy O'Bryant, acting as photographer, traversed the state for two
years. They documented 3,500 of the finest Texas quilts and published
62 of them in Lone Stars: A Legacy of Texas Quilts, 1836-1936."
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PAINTING
========
If you go on a strict definition of folk painting as painting by
self-taught artists, I believe there is just one nineteenth century
painter of interest to you, i.e. William G. M. Samuel, "Bexar County
lawman and folk painter". Read a little about him at:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/SS/fsa14.html
"Samuel painted for his own pleasure and had no formal training as an
artist. The four Main Plaza scenes he painted once hung in the Bexar
County Courthouse."
http://lonestar.utsa.edu/reneg/bios.htm
You can see his works on two sites:
San Antonio's main plaza
http://lonestar.utsa.edu/reneg/plaza.htm
American Studies
http://facweb.stvincent.edu/academics/english/el240/Images/westward.htm
But there are varying opinions about what constitutes folk art:
"Defining folk art is tricky and difficult. What some want to label as
folk art, others want to call "craft" or "ethnic" or "products from
primitive, untrained people". Provincial art, especially in North
America, often falls under the label of folk art."
Cultural Heritage Information Online
http://www.cimi.org/old_site/CHIO/deffolkart.html
So, if you are interested in the development of Texan "provincial
art", note the mention here of the introduction of local themes like
cowboys and bluebonnets in Texas paintings:
Visual Arts
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/VV/kjvtz.html
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POTTERY
=======
The Texas State Historical Association says firmly that "Few
decorative or purposefully artistic pieces were produced during the
nineteenth century."
Stoneware Pottery
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/SS/bcs1.html
To find out more about Texan pottery in the period, check out these
two articles:
"Three different types of traditional utilitarian pottery were made in
early Texas: Indian, Spanish-Mexican, and Anglo-American. Among the
many Indian groups in Texas that made pottery, the Caddos may have
been the most aesthetically developed in the potter's art. They
stacked coiled clay and formed and decorated their pots without
benefit of a wheel. They fired pots but did not glaze them. They often
colored the clay in the working stage and made decorative incisions
and applications. The Spanish and Mexicans used the wheel rarely, if
it all, but did lead-glaze some of their pots and pitchers. The Anglos
brought with them the potter's wheel and the use of alkaline and salt
glazes and established commercial kilns wherever they went,
particularly in those areas where Wilcox Formation clay was
accessible. They made jugs of all forms, preserving and storage jars,
bowls, pitchers, churns, and chamberpots. Some African Americans
worked clay as slaves and established their own potteries as
freedmen."
Folk Arts and Crafts
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/FF/lif1.html
The Wilson Pottery
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/WW/pkwvk.html
==================================
GENERAL MATERIAL ON TEXAN FOLK ART
==================================
As I said, your best resource for studying Texan nineteenth folk art
is the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).
Their material makes me think you might want to consider some other
ninetenth century folk art traditions, including:
yard art
home altars
descansos (roadside crosses)
Pi atas
saddlemaking
wrought iron
and Mexican-American textile arts such as
puntada (knitting)
costura de gancho (crocheting)
bordado (embroidery)
There are three general articles which you should find helpful.
The first has a definition of folk art and craft:
"The craft is the skill required in the making of a thing that will
function as intended. The art is decoration of the object. Both the
craft and the art are "folk" if they have been passed down orally or
by demonstration."
"Round Top in Fayette County illustrates in miniature the evolution of
folk arts and crafts. In 1860 the settlement was the center of a
cotton community not yet ten years old, but its small population
included a gunsmith, a shoemaker, three blacksmiths, three
wagonmakers, a saddler, a chairmaker, a tinner, a cigarmaker, a
bookbinder, a shinglemaker, a mechanic, and an engineer. Few of these
crafts survived industrialization."
Folk Arts and Crafts
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/FF/lif1.html
This one explores the Mexican-American tradition:
"....Texas arts and crafts: the pots the Caddos made, Spanish
ironwork, Mexican horsehair bridles and lariats, and furniture styles
brought from the Old World and modified in the New. Texas material
culture includes children's toys, yard art and distinctive mail boxes,
clothes made out of the materials at hand, and foods cooked from what
was in the pantry or the garden. Material culture includes all the
log, rock, and adobe houses that Texans built, the rugs they
crocheted, and the bowls that they carved."
Mexican-American Folk Arts and Crafts
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/MM/lim1.html
And:
Foklore and Folklife
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/FF/lyfyj.html
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BOOKS
=====
These books may be of interest:
Hecho in Tejas ed. Joe S. Graham University of North Texas Press
(1997)
http://www.unt.edu/untpress/titles/grahamj1.htm
Folk Art in Texas by Francis E. Abernethy
Publications of the Texas Folklore Society 45 (Dallas: Southern
Methodist University Press, 1985).
http://www.unt.edu/untpress/titles/aberne12.htm
Painting in Texas: The Nineteenth Century by Pauline A. Pinckney
UT Press (1967)
"Her best-known work, Painting in Texas: The Nineteenth Century, was
published in 1967 for the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art by the
University of Texas Press. From research in diaries, letters,
newspapers, and other archival sources she compiled biographical
sketches of more than fifty Texas artists. The book, one of the first
of its type, emphasized the relationship of Texas artists to their
culture. It included more than 100 reproductions and an introduction
by Texas painter Jerry Bywaters. An exhibit of paintings selected for
inclusion in the book was held at the University of Texas at Austin
and at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth shortly after the book's
publication."
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/PP/fpi31.html
I must thank you for an interesting research topic and do hope you
will find this material helpful.
If anything isn't clear, or if any links are troublesome, please don't
hesitate to ask for clarification.
Regards - Leli
search terms:
folk art
folk arts
quilts quilting
painting painters artists
pottery earthenware ceramics
nineteenth century 19th century
William G M Samuel#If you have any other info about this subject , Please add it free.# |
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