New York Beauties: Quilts of the Empire State. With Phyllis Tepper. NY: Dutton Studio Books/MAFA, 1992.

The New York Quilt Project is dedicated to a remarkable group of artists who created a significant body of folk art through the use of traditional tools: needle, thread, and fabric. Through tireless handiwork and creative energy they have warmed generations of beds and hearts, and in the process have left a magnificent legacy.

The Museum of American Folk Art has played a leading role for many years in bringing American quilts to the public’s attention by collecting and exhibiting them in the United States and abroad. Thus, it became a mission of the Museum, as a New York institution, to initiate the New York Quilt Project and locate, document, preserve, and create an archive for the quilts of its home state.

New York Beauties, containing 150 color plates and 56 halftones, is the ongoing progress report of the work of the Project, and it is the collaborative effort of Phyllis A. Tepper, director of the Project, her co-author, Jacqueline M. Atkins, and Lee Kogan, Research Coordinator for the Project. In addition to its wonderful illustrations, New York Beauties provides a fascinating social history of New York State as a stimulating background for a deeper appreciation of the quilts which, after all, are both documents of history and witness to the lives of ordinary beings, for written across their surfaces are stories of personal relationships within families and communities. The astonishing art of quilts and their family warmth inevitably touch us all.

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