Forgotten at the Fair: Quilts at Chicago's World's Columbia Exposition

Abstract

At the first World's Fair with it's own women's pavillion, chaired by a woman, designed by a woman, and decorated by a woman at a time when sewing was the predominate activitiy for women, why were no quilts in the Women's Pavillion Building? This article details the many interesting cultural changes that took place during the Gilded Age in Chicago that set the stage for high art and diminished the handmade craft of quilting.