Texas Quilts and Quilters: A Lone Star Legacy by Marcia Kaylakie, Janice Whittington (review)

fence in a refugee camp along the border during the Mexican Revolution, among several examples, provided visual artifacts of the exoticism of South Texas for those passing through the region. The most interesting images in the book appear in the third chapter, which features South Texans at work. A tamale vendor from the 1880s, troops and Texas Rangers stationed along the border during the Mexican Revolution, firewood vendors with horse-drawn carts, and the operator of a power loom in 1921 (in the building that currently houses the San Antonio Museum of Art) provide visual evidence of the region’s laborers. Also interesting are the photos in the book’s final chapter, all taken by photographer Jack Specht. A 1925 picture of chili stands in San Antonio’s Hay Market Plaza, with three young Mexican children smiling at the camera in the foreground while their mother serves food to two Anglo men behind them, provides a beautiful image of San Antonio in the early twentieth century. This book certainly does not provide any profound historiographical innovations , and Shackelford’s use of terminology can be maddening. The word “frontier ,” for instance, is never defined and seems to serve as an imprecise catch-all term for everything that is exotic and culturally different. Nor does Shackelford confront the “noble savage” imagery (especially in Chapter 2) that fills many of these pictures and that clearly drove their commercial value. Instead, he simply falls back to an overly simplistic notion of benign cultural curiosity that ignores the rather ugly history of cultural conflict in South Texas. Even with these problems of interpretation, however, this book still serves as an interesting and beautiful collection of images of the people of San Antonio and South Texas. It is not a great work of history, to be sure, but it does make the striking images of the Witte Museum photographic collection available. Southern Methodist University John Weber Texas Quilts and Quilters: A Lone Star Legacy. By Marcia Kaylakie with Janice Whittington, photographs by Jim Lincoln, foreword by Marian Ann J. Montgomery. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007. Pp. 264. Illustrations, color photos, map, source note, suggested reading. ISBN 978-089672 -606-2. $39.95, cloth.) It has been a few decades now since American quiltmakers began to be recognized for their artistry and ingenuity and historians began to recognize the quilts themselves as significant social and cultural artifacts. Yet there is still much quilt history to be captured, and this book offers a delightful record of Texas quilters and their creations, from the 1870s to today. Marcia Kaylakie, a quilt appraiser and collector, has selected thirty-four quilts she has encountered or sought out in the course of her work, choosing them in part for the stories behind them that “enrich our Texas legacy” (p. 6). Her finds range from Fidella McConnell’s lavish 1887 crazy quilt top that contains a lone star and embroidered cotton and wheat plants to famed contemporary Austin quilter Kathleen McCrady’s dynamic “Traveling Stars” creation. 2009 Book Reviews 307 *jan 09 11/26/08 12:00 PM Page 307 Each of the quilts in this oversized book has been stunningly photographed by Jim Lincoln. In most cases, a full-page color photo of the quilt is followed by generous color close-ups of a quilt section or two. The vibrant overall effect does justice to the quiltmakers’ art. As an added bonus, many of the quilts are shown draped artfully in various locations, from the porch railing of a former church rectory to a courtyard wall of the Gage Hotel at Marathon. The composition of these photos, and the juxtaposition of the quilter’s craft with the evocation of place, enhances the author’s intent and the reader’s experience. Kaylakie has searched out quilts that remain in family hands (only three of the thirty-four do not), and with the assistance of Janice Whittington she has pieced together short narratives and historical photographs that testify to the quilters and their work. In each case, she gives an overview of the quilter’s life, a brief description of the quilt’s conception and construction, and a conclusion on the way the...