Georgia Bonesteel, interviewer Karen Musgrave, and Bernie Herman at a QSOS training, 1999
Bernie conducted some of the earliest QSOS interviews, including Jean Ray Laury, Ellen Danforth, and Valerie Goodwin. He also conducted more than 30 research interviews with quilters in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, for his ongoing writing about the quiltmaking tradition in the area, including an essay in the book Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt that accompanied the groundbreaking exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Listen to Bernie’s thoughtful 2006 interview with Jette Clover here. Bernie was endlessly curious about things, whether it was cataloging his fig library, championing quilts and their makers, or rebuilding the oyster population near his family home on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
Bernie photographing quiltmaker Darlene Christopherson for her QSOS interview, 2000
Bernie’s death is a loss for the folklore, material culture and foodways academic communities, but it is also a personal one. I met Bernie in 2009, when I was an undergraduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill. I had signed up for a class called ‘Visual Culture’ on a whim – it covered everything from birthday cakes to Brazilian graffiti, with a healthy dose of critical theory and jargon. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about half the time, but I loved it. I’d never considered that ordinary things could deserve such thoughtful analysis. The fourth week of class was dedicated to quilts, spotlighting the Sunbonnet Sue pattern and the satirical quilt ‘The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue’. When he offered a class the following semester called “The Art of the Quilt”, I signed up. I was hooked on quilts, making my very first quilt in lieu of a term paper for the class. Bernie suggested I look into an organization he was part of – the Quilt Alliance – as I conducted research for my senior thesis about contemporary quiltmaking.
Fifteen years later (thirteen of them as the Quilt Alliance’s oral history project manager), I’m still hooked on quilts! Bernie’s infectious enthusiasm for everyday and overlooked objects, as well as the stories of people who make them, continues to be a guidepost for the Alliance’s work documenting and preserving quilt history.
–Emma Parker, QA Project Manager