Mrs Dorothy Osler
Nationality: United Kingdom
Year: 2004
Subject Area: Arts and Humanities
My scholarship funded travel to investigate visual connections and potential cross-cultural links in Amish and Welsh quilts, a material culture field of aesthetic and historic significance. Formal research was conducted in museums, libraries and archive sources in Wales and Pennsylvania with selected data presented at academic seminars in Britain and the US in 2005, 2006 and 2007 with a further presentation planned for a major seminar at the University of Nebraska in 2009. All presentations have subsequently been published.
Less formally, networks of professional and cultural contacts were established - contacts subsequently fostered for data sharing, project support and assistance in presenting research findings to a popular audience. As a result, significant quilts uncovered in the course of the research are now on exhibition in the Welsh National Woollen Museum. The research data will also be incorporated into a major quilt exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, 2010) and in the accompanying national publication. Discussions are in hand with a London publisher and an American university press for co-publication of a further book.
Photograph: ‘One of two superb examples of late nineteenth century Welsh flannel quilts discovered hidden in a museum store during research on cross-cultural connections on Amish and Welsh quilts and now displayed in the National Woollen Museum in Drefach Felindre, Ceredigion where they were originally made (Courtesy: National Museums of Wales).’
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