Introduction<br >In I978， while making a film for public television about eighteenth- and<br >nine eenth-centurv traditional art bv women， l was surprised to discover tbat no<br >book had yet presented their art entireh as it was made-in tile midst of daily life.<br >This neglect seemed odd， because their samplers， paintings， needle pictures and<br >quilts gain in force and dignity when understood as the creative expressions of<br >everyday people who passed their lives in relative obscurity， raising children，<br >running fanns or homes and devoting themselves to "useful work."<br > To rescue women folk artists from their anonymity is not exclusively a<br >matter of discovering nantes or assigning dates. Such facts alone provide little<br >insight into the significance of self-expression in lives consecrated to duty and<br >domestic industry. The task， rather， is to reconstruct the daily existence and<br >inner lives of girls and women who could execute the most intricate quilt pat-<br >terns without ever mastering the formal principles of geomett3 ， who could evoke<br >the most exotic imagery in thread or paint without ever traveling beyond their<br >counties of birth.<br > Unfortunately， the artists tbemselves rarely left accounts of their work.<br >In most cases they would not have dreamed of presenting themselves as "artists，"<br >or their samplers， school pieces and needlework as "art." And so， in the absence<br >of direct testimony， I relied on their own traditional methods-gathering a scrap<br >of history here， including a bit of unexpected color there， composing the whole<br >out of an instinct for making strong patterns emerge. My materials were the<br >instructional and personal records of the day. I consuhed "domestic receipt"<br >books， published sermons， manners pamphlets and ladies magazines for the<br >reigning definitions of "true womanhood." I found popular engravings prc~luced<br >by men， illustrating "correct" examples of feminine activity to be emulated. I<br >discovered diaries， memoirs and letters of generations of girls and women which<br >suggested the intense aspirations contained in their "utilitarian" creations. In<br >general， I have retained the form and irregularities of the original sources. Minor<br >changes in spelling， punctuation and syntax have been made only when abso-<br >lutely necessary for clarity. Stories， poems， songs-even the scantiest jottings of<br >families and loved ones-contributed vivid detail to the composite life story of<br >the Anonymous Von/an， who ornanwnted every phase of her experience from<br >girlhood dm~ueh ，，]d ~c ~if}~ I， ，ndi~o~k uf startling， nower an，I ; ~;~.<br >