Quilts occupy a liminal position in the histories of art and material culture. Centering analyses around specific artworks like Martha Ricks’ 1892 Coffee Tree quilt, as well as investigating women’s writing about their material production, illuminates ignored narratives about the ways black women participated in international social, political, and economic networks around the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Quilters who emigrated from the United States to Liberia in the nineteenth century incorporated an aesthetic heritage from the American South with new visual vocabularies developing alongside the newly independent nation. Artists relied on networks with abolitionists in the United States and local textile knowledge to source materials for their work. Finished quilts circulated in local and international contexts, furthering social, political, and economic objectives. Like Harriet Powers’ bible quilts, Ricks’ quilts gained fame through exhibition and a whimsical artist’s biography. Quilts’ fragility as natural-fiber textiles in a tropical climate makes a finding a body of works difficult to examine as there are no extant Liberian quilts from the nineteenth century. However, it is possible to patch together a network of women artists, their patrons, and audiences from West Africa to North America and Europe through creative investigation of diverse historical records, including diary entries, letters, newspaper articles, and photographs. I argue that by examining Martha Ricks’ artworks, self-presentation through portraiture, and published writing, it is possible to envision a new narrative of black women’s participation in visualizing the newly-minted Republic of Liberia for Atlantic audiences.

中文翻译：

---

西非的绗缝：利比里亚妇女在 19 世纪缝合政治、经济和社会网络

被子在艺术史和物质文化史中占据着边缘地位。以玛莎·里克斯 (Martha Ricks) 1892 年的咖啡树被子等特定艺术品为中心进行分析，并调查女性关于其物质生产的写作，阐明了关于黑人女性参与 19 世纪大西洋世界的国际社会、政治和经济网络的方式的被忽视的叙述. 19 世纪从美国移民到利比里亚的绗缝工匠将美国南部的审美传统与新的视觉词汇与新独立的国家一起发展起来。艺术家们依靠与美国废奴主义者的网络和当地的纺织知识来为他们的作品寻找材料。制成的被子在当地和国际范围内流通，促进社会、政治和经济目标。就像 Harriet Powers 的圣经被子一样，Ricks 的被子通过展览和异想天开的艺术家传记而名声大噪。在热带气候下，被子作为天然纤维纺织品非常脆弱，因此很难对这些作品进行检验，因为 19 世纪的利比里亚被子已不复存在。然而，通过对各种历史记录（包括日记条目、信件、报纸文章和照片）的创造性调查，有可能将女性艺术家、她们的赞助人以及从西非到北美和欧洲的观众拼凑在一起。我认为，通过审视玛莎·里克斯 (Martha Ricks) 的艺术作品、通过肖像画进行自我展示以及发表的作品，