Thanks to ephemera dealer Debra Spencer of Suit Yourself International, I was able to confirm Zegart's recollection.  The quilt exhibited at the Grace Museum was identical to an illustration of a mass-produced, Chinese knockoff of the Grider quilt in the November 1998 J.Peterman catalog, whose twin size sold for $225.  A Peterman representative said the quilt was one of several reproductions they bought from the inventory of an unidentified importer no longer in business (perhaps Arch Quilts of Elmsford, New York, known for its high-end Chinese-made quilts?). 

All together now - Clockwise from above:  The J.Peterman catalog illustration, the "Ora Phillips" quilt, and the original - the Nancy Miller Grider quilt.  Peterman catalog courtesy Suit Yourself International.

When the maker or origin of a quilt constitutes part of its value, provenance (the documented chain of ownership back to its creator) is important.  The "Ora Phillips" quilt was legitimized (and its value enhanced to more than $1,500) by appearing in the museum exhibit with Todaro and her husband identified as its owner. Lecturer Streeter naturally assumed the curators and Todaro had verified the quilt was indeed an African-American original.  Mark French, the ebay seller, says he trusted what he was told when he bought the quilt from Ohio dealer Michael Council, who got the quilter's name and race and the museum flyer from Todaro herself when she sold him the quilt.   But Todaro says the museum and Council were mistaken, and she was just the go-between.  In reality, she said, the unused, unwashed quilt - "one of the most graphic" she has seen - belonged to a now-dead, unnamed friend, who bought the quilt directly from Ora Phillips.  Todaro said she had simply brought the quilt to the museum, and later, when her friend became ill, sold it to Council on her behalf. She had no valid contact information for her friend's family.  

I was able to locate only two Arkansas women, living or dead, named Ora Phillips born before 1960. Both are white.

Later, after being shown pictures of the Peterman and Grider quilts, Todaro said did not "have enough knowledge to inject an opinion" but that her friend "would not have knowingly reported false data". She said her friend had bought the quilt for $350 at a craft or flea market near Little Rock from an African-American woman named Ora Phillips, and that when her friend had asked Phillips about the inspiration for her design,  Phillips replied that "she’d seen something similar that inspired her in a catalog or book" whose name she could not recall.  

But the Phillips quilt is not merely "similar" to the Peterman illustration.  It is virtually identical, right down to the fabrics.   Either Phillips's quilt was inspired by Grider's and became the prototype for the Peterman quilt (but was never revealed as such); or Phillips somehow forgot she had made a line-for-line copy of the Peterman quilt; or a mass-produced knockoff of a 19th century white Kentucky girl's well-known original quilt was successfully passed off as the recent, unique handiwork of an elderly black Arkansan.   

Whichever the case, the "Ora Phillips" quilt cannot be described as an example of African-American "improvisation," African-inspired color and design, or "Quilt Code" symbolism.  Instead, as Streeter observed when she learned of the quilt's true origin, it stands as an object lesson in "how historical inaccuracies, errors and nonfactual information take root and become perpetuated, whether it is a matter of incomplete research, the failure to verify sources, taking information on faith, getting carried away by imagination, etc. etc., and it is far from unique."

Whether French ever informed the high bidder of this quilt's recent origin is unknown. 

Diaspora-era African textile history online

Thanks to exhibits like the one discussed above, when asked to describe a "typical" African-American quilt many people will use words like "improvisational," "strip-pieced", "multiple patterns," "brightly colored" and "rhythmic", all of which are described as "Africanisms."   Some, such as folklorist John Michael Vlach, have even claimed that African-Amerian quilts that lack these attributes "reflect a lesson well-learned rather than a heritage well-remembered," and that "the only thing African or Afro-American about" such quilts is their makers' race.  Black quilters who use subdued colors and regular patterns are, according to this view, acting white.

Vlach, Wahlman, Dobard and others trace these Africanisms to contemporary African textiles, many of which do indeed share those attributes. 

But would these fabrics have been familiar to the people brought here as slaves in the 18th and early 19th centuries?  Are those "textile memories" reflected in African-American quilts such as those made in Gee's Bend?  How accurate are conventional ideas about Africanisms in African-American quilts?  

I have been investigating this subject for the past two years, and the answers are surprising. 

Because of its length, I am publishing my research in serial form. The first several parts can be found here, and you can request notice of later installments by clicking here.

At the end of the series, I hope to be able to provide some ideas for quilt designs that recall the textiles America's African-born slaves would have known and used. 

One side of machine chainstitching (fabrics c.1875)...

...and the other.