A rectangular quilt with eleven bordered panels of appliquéd human and animal figures, stars and other shapes in contrasting fabrics.

Harriet Powers, Bible Quilt, 1885–1886. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. H. M. Heckman. CC0 media; Smithsonian Open Access.

Museum record · Rights and reuse · Unchanged delivered image (2.67 MB)

Shown without cropping. The acquired source is the museum's high-resolution JPEG and matches its 2880 × 2412 IIIF canvas. The museum also offers a high-resolution TIFF; whether that TIFF is a master is unknown.

Harriet Powers

Bible Quilt

1885–1886

Powers called this quilt Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Please Start From Here

The maker's recorded account

The museum records that Powers insisted Jennie Smith record exactly what each panel depicted before the quilt changed hands.

Powers's recorded title for the quilt was Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The eleven subjects, in the museum's recorded order from the top left, are:

  1. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
  2. Paradise continued, with Eve and a son
  3. Satan among seven stars
  4. Cain killing Abel
  5. Cain travelling to the land of Nod to find a wife
  6. Jacob's dream
  7. The baptism of Christ
  8. The Crucifixion
  9. Judas Iscariot and the thirty pieces of silver
  10. The Last Supper
  11. The Holy Family

That account reaches us through Smith and the museum. This list carries the factual subjects without copying the museum's descriptive prose; PSFH has not supplied its own meanings for the panels.

Read the museum's account

Our response · PSFH

Room for the work itself

Powers's recorded subjects belong here before any response from us. We have not assigned new meanings to the panels.

This is our editorial choice, not a claim about Powers's intention or the museum's endorsement.