Ma uka to Ma kai Exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Hello everyone!

Today I went to visit the Natural History Museum and Pitt Rivers Museums in Oxford. It was my first time going back there since our move back to Oxfordshire, and I was delighted to discover an exhibition of Hawaiʻian Quilts had been added to the Pitt Rivers museum.

Hawaiian quilts have a very distinctive, instantly recognisable style. They are characterised by striking appliquéd shapes with 8-fold symmetry. Often the appliquéd part is a single piece of material, with the shape created by folding it in 8 before cutting (much like making paper snowflakes). They traditionally feature shapes inspired by nature, such as breadfruit, pineapples and marine life. They are then often quilted with quite dense echo quilting - concentric shapes following the outline of the design.

For those not familiar, the Pitt Rivers Museum is the result of a crazy archeologist/ethnologist called General Augustus Pitt Rivers who collected anything and everything from everywhere in the latter half of the 19th century. The museum now has over a million objects, many of which are displayed in themed cabinets. There are some rather controversial items - particularly human remains stored in ritualised fashions (only visible with informed consent of what you are viewing) - but for the most part there are cultural artefacts from every corner of the globe. You would expect it to be - as many British museums used to be - originally designed to show the superiority of European civilization but that was never Pitt-Rivers intent. Instead, by grouping everything by type - rather than chronology - and collecting everyday artefacts rather than simply 'treasures' he revolutionised the way museums were organised and what was considered important to archaeologists and anthropologists. Seeing the insane mish-mash of stuff presented next to each other just makes you wonder at the diversity and creativity of the human race.

This is not a hairdryer, it's an adze, apparently.

But on to the quilts. The exhibition is called Hawaiʻi Ma uka to Ma kai: Quilting the Hawaiʻian landscape.

This quilt exhibition has been there for the last two years - I am not sure how long it will stay. It is in its own dedicated space - a light, well-spaced room compared to the rest of the museum which is deliberately kept quite dark for the preservation of the artefacts.

The exhibition grew from an initial commission of 1 large quilt, to 5 quilts to the 15 that made it to Oxford. Each quilt is accompanied by a panel talking about the aspect of Hawaiʻian landscape it represents, and a Stories from the Quilting Circle text which contain the words of the quilters themselves.

Personal Highlights

Honu by Yoko Nakayama and John Serrao

This one has turtles! Look how cute they are. Yoko Nakayamo explains in her accompanying Stories from the Quilting Circle 'My granddaughter dyed the fabric and on the shell of the Honu I quilted the flower for Hawaiʻi, the Hibiscus; the flower for Great Britain the Rose; and the flower for Japan the Cherokee Rose.'  You can see these in this detail shot:

Nā Iʻa o Ke Kai (Fish of the Ocean) Kala, Heʻe, Pyramid Butterfish, Humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa Quilted by Rae Correia, Susan Lessa, Cissy Serrao, Midori Andrews. Designed by John Serrao.

Apologies for the slightly blurry quality of the photo. I'm a sucker for fish on quilts, so this one obviously appealed.

Here's some detail shots of each of the four sea creatures:

Octopus! And they have 8 legs, I counted and checked.

I love how the quilting is used to show the scales on the fish.

Kukui ʻo Hale Aliʻi Quilted by Yuko Nishiwaki and Designed by John Serrao

This quilt is inspired, not by nature, but the electric lights of the Iolani Palace. According to the accompanying text, Iolani Palace is the only royal palace on US soil, and gained electricity before even the White House.

It's hard to see, even in this detail shot but the white inside the lamps is a different material to the background, and it has a shimmery sheen to it. I also love the way the rays of light are quilted radiating out from the flame.

ʻŌhiʻa Lehua. Quilted by Susie Sugi. Designed by John Serrao

This is a beautiful arrangement of leaves and flowers.

The flowers in this are actually embroidered on as you can see in this detail. There are 15 different shades of red thread used (I haven't counted, but that's what the quilter says in her Stories).

They appealed to me because these red spray type flowers remind me of eucalyptus flowers in my native Australia. They are in fact the lehua flowers of the title of the quilt.

What the exhibition does well

The space is nice, and each quilt is given a good amount of space. In terms of the text provided, I really liked the context of the Hawaiʻian history and landscape, and having the words of the actual quilters, talking about their inspiration and the details. You can read much of this in the webpage accompanying the exhibition here.

What it does less well

At no point does it explain what a Hawaiʻian quilt is! Which is a pity because these are very clear examples of  a modern take on the genre. There is also no explanation of how this sort of design developed in Hawaiʻi. I would have loved to know some of the quilting history, as I am not very familiar with it. I could find some quick explanations online, like this 2019 blog from Krista Moser. There's a bit more and some references in this lesson plan from Jessica Evans (not sure of date, looks to be 2012). I'm afraid I didn't have the chance to look at the shop to see if they had any more detailed published resources available.

Also, there are some quotes from the quilters dotted around the place. I don't like them. They are so trite as to be meaningless. I like knowing the methods and inspiration behind the quilts - that's what I want to see quoted.

The quilt is beautiful. The quote above it is just, meh.

But it is always lovely to discover a quilt exhibition, especially one in a free museum. The quilts themselves are all very nicely hand quilted and lovely striking designs. So we'll done to the Pitt Rivers for not only commissioning the project, but also allowing it to grow organically as art projects do. And especially well done to all the quilters of the Poakalani Quilters who put so much effort into producing these beautiful pieces.

I've not yet tried any of this style of appliqué myself - it is definitely one to add to the ever-growing quilty bucket list!

Thanks for reading!