The HRC is pleased to introduce Snapshots!, a new column that examines museums through interviews with the people who know them best--their directors, curators, and educators. This week's Snapshots! question asks, "What are your favorite objects in your collections?" Snapshots! is written by Anne Farrow, senior content editor for the Encyclopedia of Connecticut History Online and a frequent contributor to the Heritage Resource Center.

Snapshot 3 of 4: Linda Eaton, Winterthur Museum & Country Estate

Linda Eaton is the Director of Collections and Senior Curator of Textiles at Winterthur Museum in Winterthur, Delaware. Linda came to the museum as a conservator nearly 20 years ago, having first trained and worked in Europe. For this curator, the object does not stand apart from its story--the two are woven together.

She said she was hard-pressed to choose three favorite items from Winterthur's collections, but admitted she is "still massively in love with the Mary Remington quilt." Described in her book Quilts in a Material World, Selections from the Winterthur Collection, this 1815 quilt and bed hangings, all in purest white, open an extraordinary window onto the past. Mary Remington was the daughter of an affluent family in Warwick, Rhode Island, and stitched into this quilt is her love and doubt around suitor Peleg Congdon. A remarkable series of letters in Mary's hand chronicle their long courtship and short marriage. Sadly, she died not long after the birth of their second child. Their marriage does not sound like a happy one, but in the quilt and companion pieces she made, Mary Remington created something rare and beautiful. The curator says her quilt is the only American one yet discovered that bears a quilted coat of arms in the center of the design.

Another favorite object is this indigo-resist printed whole cloth quilt, so named "resist" for the method used to dye the cloth. One of fifty different resist-dyed quilts in the museum's collection, Linda says she loves this fabric, which is very similar to one in a painting by Matisse called "Pansies." In the design of the Winterthur fabric, she sees a connection to the bold shapes and designs of Raoul Dufy, and a deep connection between a traditional design and modernism. 

For her third favorite object, Linda chose two needlework pieces recently purchased by the museum. Executed during the first half of the 19th century in a style known as "Berlin woolwork," both pieces were stitched by young African American women as part of their schoolwork. "This is an important story that is rarely told," Linda said. "Without the names of their makers and the schools they attended, there [would have been no way] to tell whether they were worked by young girls of color." Rachel Ann Lee, who stitched her embroidery in July 1846 at a school run by the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore, was the daughter of a laundress (above, right).

Olevia Rebecca Parker stitched her project in 1852 at the Lombard Street School in Philadelphia (below, left). "Clearly education was very important to her and her family," Linda says. "Her son, who became a dentist, was the first African American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania."

All images courtesy of the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate.