Feathers and Blankets

Week 22: Notes

How to make blankets from feathers, knitted squares or juice packets and how quilt patterns aided slaves in their flight to freedom in the US South is the content of this programme.

Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Beth Harris, two US-American art historians, recount the history of the famous Aztec feather dress by referring to the reproduction in Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology. According to the Weltmuseum Wien, the present location of the original, it can never be restituted since its transportation has been declared unfeasible. The Telekom Austria Group, a provider of multimedia services, data and IT systems, sponsors free admission for Mexican citizens because Carlos Slim, a Mexican business magnate and the fifth-richest person in the world, took control of the Telekom Austria Group in 2014. Paulette Kahalepuna died in 2014. She used to teach Hawaiian feather craft to ensure the continuation of an ancient tradition with the same motivation as Mary Weahkee, New Mexican archeologist and anthropologist, who weaves a blanket made of turkey feathers, a craft that dates back more than 1,000 years. Very different materials can be used for making blankets: British organizer Pen Huston uses a most unusual material, while a group of women knit squares for blankets for Jewish communities struggling to survive extreme poverty in Eastern Europe. Ruth Grimberg is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and lecturer who lives and works in London. She uses film to tell the stories of the lives of ordinary people, showing their courage and strength in facing personal and political challenges which is also what Maris Curran, a US-American film director and writer, does with the subjects of race, disability, illness and sexuality. Bettye Stroud, a US-American writer, and illustrator Erin Susanne Bennett end the programme with their children’s book on quilt codes. These were employed to communicate along the route of the Underground Railroad, a network of secret pathways and safe houses which helped enslaved African-Americans during the early to mid-19th century to escape from Southern slavery to the free states of the North and Canada.