The Reece Museum, housed on the main campus of East Tennessee State University, is inviting the public to view “Stitch Together: The Social Seamstress in Southern Appalachia.”
It’s an exhibit that inspires and informs, and features scores of artifacts. This week, Director Rebecca Proffitt engaged in a Q&A about the exhibit, the museum and more.
Q: What inspired the creation of the “Stitch Together” exhibit?
A: The Reece Museum has about 2,000 textile artifacts in the permanent collection. In the last few years, collections staff have been inventorying, assessing and photographing the textile collection as it is being moved into new collections storage equipment. This project dates back to 2021, when the museum received a digitization grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). We had always dreamed of having the resources to unbox the historic costumes and dress archival mannequins so that the clothing could be photographed in a style similar to the New York Metropolitan Costume Institute.
The NEH grant provided funding for us to hire a digital access coordinator and purchase materials and equipment, such as archival mannequins. The digital access coordinator, Mara Reynolds, curated this exhibition, and helped us to install it before she left for a permanent position at a museum in Iowa. She developed a deep knowledge and appreciation of the textile collection through her digitization and conservation work.
Q: Can you share a bit about the types of fashion and clothing pieces visitors can expect to see?
A: The museum’s textile collection is wide-ranging and includes examples of clothing and accessories made or manufactured in our region from the late 1700s through contemporary times. This exhibit is a curated selection of artifacts that were made in social settings, by sewists who worked in community groups as well as in commercial manufacturing settings. Examples include a late Victorian/early Edwardian mourning dress, a sample from an East Tennessee State College Home Economics class, and house dresses made by home sewists.
Fashions are explored chronologically beginning in the 1800s and ending in the 1970s. Through fashion and fabric choices, the textiles tell stories of mourning, unionizing, war, educational pursuits and communal living.
Q: How did seamstresses contribute to building social connections within their communities in Southern Appalachia, and how is that reflected in the exhibit?
A: The exhibition shows the ways that seamstresses collaborated and worked together, communicating through magazines, in social groups, in academic classes and by unionizing. These networks were important for sewists, and encouraged innovation in home fashions, as well as providing space to share in the labor of making clothing.
Q: Are there any specific stories or pieces in the exhibit that particularly resonate with you or carry an interesting historical background?
A: During research on a cotton house dress, made c. 1930-40s, museum staff discovered newspaper articles about the Holston Institute, a model community on land near the current Tri-Cities Airport. The co-op promoted a self-sufficient lifestyle, and many families made their own clothing. Local newspapers reported on the community from the late 1910s through the 1950s, but we were unable to find materials in the archives or stories about the Institute from our community contacts. This would be a fascinating topic to look into further. The dress was made by Bettie Lou Hawk Barnes (1881-1955). She was born in Sullivan County and was a lifelong resident of the Holston Institute.
Q: How do you hope visitors feel after experiencing “Stitch Together,” and what do you think they will take away from this glimpse into Appalachian heritage?
A: Something we spend a lot of time thinking about is how we transmit memory and story through material artifacts. The historical record is full of writing about wealthy landowners, powerful political figures and influential citizens who owned capital. How do we find and remember the stories of people who are not typically represented in those official narratives, people who had no political power or social influence?
At the Reece Museum, material culture artifacts are treated as historical documents that reveal the mythohistories of the people who made, used or preserved these objects. The textiles highlighted in this exhibition represent movable inheritances, which are much more fragile and sensitive than inheritances that involve land or buildings, and thus more rare and precious. I hope visitors will think about the ways that these textiles monumentalize the work of sewists, preserving the donors’ feelings about kinship and community connections, recognizing the threads of skill, care and social context that provide meaning beyond practicality.
East Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 with a singular mission: to improve the quality of life for people in the region and beyond. Through its world-class health sciences programs and interprofessional approach to health care education, ETSU is a highly respected leader in rural health research and practices. The university also boasts nationally ranked programs in the arts, technology, computing, and media studies. ETSU serves approximately 14,000 students each year and is ranked among the top 10 percent of colleges in the nation for students graduating with the least amount of debt.
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