Qunnie Pettway, "Housetop"
Qunnie Pettway, who passed away in 2010, was the mother of another famous quilter, Loretta Bennett. Ms. Qunnie Pettway was a member of the Freedom Quilting Bee, a group of women in Gee’s Bend who were active in the fight to gain civil rights for this impoverished Black community. To keep the Black voters away from the polls, the White community across the river stopped running the ferry, necessitating a two hour ride, instead of a short ferry trip.
This rug is based on a traditional Housetop pattern, but Ms. Pettway used some unusual colors in the border detailing. The combination of wool and silk gives this rug a special sheen.
Barbara Barran has been working with the Gee’s Bend Quilters since 2003. She has shown and sold their work at over 25 US museums, paying the quilters a royalty for the use of their designs. She has visited Gee’s Bend, AL, several times and stayed at the home of Ruth Kennedy and Lucy Mingo. Working with the quilters has been the highlight of her design career.
Custom Gee’s Bend Quilt designs and sizes are available. For more information, please write to info@Classicrug.com or call us at 718-768-3338.
100 knot Hand-knotted New Zealand wool & bamboo silk rug. Made in India.
6' x 9'
About Gee’s Bend
The women of Gee’s Bend—a small, remote, Black community in Alabama—have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces dating from the early twentieth century to the present. Resembling an inland island, Gee’s Bend is surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River. Some seven hundred or so inhabitants of this small, rural community are mostly descendants of slaves, and for generations, they worked the fields belonging to the local Pettway plantation. Enlivened by a visual imagination that extends the expressive boundaries of the quilt genre, these astounding creations constitute a crucial chapter in the history of American art.