Emotional Journeys: The British Quilt in Space & Time 1770-1939 (PhD).
‘Emotional Journeys: The British Quilt in Space and Time, 1770-1920’. The long-lived and hand-made domestic patchwork coverlet or quilted bedcover was an emotional object which could carry feelings, memories and associations across space, and through time. In exploring both temporal and geographical space this study concerns itself with journeys, presenting the quilt as a flexible and meaning-full vessel which did emotional work over long periods as it travelled through the spaces and places of the long Nineteenth century. Unfolding the focus outwards from my MA study (which explored textiles as conduits for the emotional webs within the family across the lifecycle), this study explores overlapping arenas; the smaller more intimate sphere of the body, senses and souls of makers, and wider spheres by exploring how quilts lived on through remembered afterlives, in alternative domesticities, reinforcing regionalities, and doing the work of nationhood.
This work is supervised by Professor Joanne Begiato, Professor Charlotte Hodes and Dr Sara Chong Kwan at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London.
Within the Frame.
Within The Frame combines academic research with active practice and preservation, honouring the intergenerational exchange of technical, artistic, and embodied knowledge inherent to working at a quilt frame.
Deb McGuire and Dr Jess Bailey co-founded Within The Frame to combine academic research with active practice and preservation, honouring the intergenerational exchange of technical, artistic, and embodied knowledge inherent to working at a quilt frame.
Bridging the past, present, and future of this unique heritage craft, our project is committed to connecting the next generation of hand quilters with the nuanced historical contours of the artform. Our virtual library of resources and ongoing research connects quilters, academics, and museum professionals with archives, collections, and living practitioners. Within The Frame refocuses how we tell stories of quilting communities in the British Isles, while encouraging the creative evolution of frame hand quilting in the present.
Working with the UNESCO charity Heritage Crafts, with museums, community organisations, local history groups, quilt and social historians and contemporary artists and makers, the project convenes vital conversations with academic historians and art historians, and enacts practical measures to use academic history to inform and revitalise craft practice today.
Hands: An Emotional and Material History of Embodiment.
Deb is a member of the Advisory Panel for the collaborative research project led by Prof. Joanne Begiato and Dr Michael Brown which explores the history of the material, emotional and embodied hand in Victorian Britain. Within the knowledge exchange strand Deborah is part of the partnership engagement team which unites The Royal College of Surgeons and The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles, with practicing surgeons, textile artists and makers, to create spaces and events where the public can engage with this research to explore the role of hands in the past and today as the principle site of identity formation. Read about this workshop here.
Remember Me: Memory, Identity & Emotion (Masters by Research).
‘”Remember Me”. Domestic Textiles in Britain 1790-1890: memory, Identity & Emotion’. This research explores the emotional history of stitched domestic textiles asking how makers of the past used made domestic textiles to create and preserve their personal and family memories, but also to establish their legacy for future audiences. Exploring the stitched phrase ‘Remember Me’ which occurs on quilts, stitched samplers and other domestic textiles, Deb asks, who wanted to be remembered? What did they want future audiences to know of them, and what can we learn about makers lives and their own agency when they worked? This research study includes examination of textiles in relation to emotions such as grief, homesickness, societal dislocation as well as love, care and memory. This study spans the human lifecycle, mapping the role of domestic making from the cradle to the grave. Deb’s work is situated in the fields of emotions history, material history and domestic and family history; exploring the central role of domestic stitched textiles in families, and for individuals as a tool to express a sense of personal identity and family history between 1790-1890.
This unpublished dissertation can be accessed at the library of Oxford Brookes University, Headington Road, Oxford, UK.
A paper from this wider research, McGuire, Deborah. ‘Remember Me – Love, Loss and Legacy. British Memorial Quilts’, was published in the academic journal Quilt Studies, The Journal of the British Quilt Study Group in 2022, Issue 23, and was presented at the BQSG Conference in Oct 2021. Copies of this journal can be purchased from the library shop of the BQSG
AHRC Funded Inheriting the Family Network.
Deb is a contributor to the AHRC funded Inheriting the Family Network.
See her work in the film: ‘Quilt Time’ by Lily Ford.
Her paper titled ‘Maintaining ‘The Importance of Aunts’: Textiles, Emotions and the Matrilineal Family’ at the Autumn 2021 Workshops (3)
And informs a forthcoming chapter ‘Although it smack somewhat of the days that are gone’: Memory, Legacy and the Preservation of the Patchwork Quilt’ in Inheriting the Family: Objects, Identities and Emotions. Edited by Katie Barclay, Ashley Barnwell, Joanne Begiato, Tanya Evans and Laura King. (Bloomsbury. Due 2024)
Deborah McGuire 