Marian Bradshaw Lecture
Cover of Lisa Binkley's Canadian Quilts and Their Makers: Design, Material, and Place in the Nineteenth Century published by University of British Columbia Press. Background image of Martha Gervais, Laura, and Emilie Bottineau, Bottineau Quilt, c. 1885-93. Cotton, velvet, satin, and wool, 70-78 in. Made at Red Falls Lake, Minnesota. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society. |
Canadian Quilts and Their Makers, presented by Lisa Binkley
The hybrid event takes place on Saturday, September 26, 2026, 11:00am - 2:00pm ET
Arts & Letters Club, 14 Elm Street, Toronto, ON, M5G 1G7
For centuries in what is now known as Canada, quilts have kept us warm at night and served as vehicles for makers to express their creativity. Drawing on her new book, Canadian Quilts and Their Makers: Design, Material and Place in the Nineteenth Century, Lisa Binkley explores a range of quilt styles—from homespun and patchwork to elegant appliqué and whole-cloth work—to reveal the social, cultural, and economic experiences of their nineteenth-century makers and users. In Canada, quilt making, furthermore, evolved with technological improvements, including new forms of transportation, such as the railway and steam-powered ships, and factory-made cloth and print media, furnishing makers with affordable textiles and myriad new patterns. As settlement extended west from the Maritimes to the mid-west/Prairies, quiltmakers were influenced by their surrounding environments. The quilts presented here offer a glimpse into Canada’s quilt-making history, its relationship to European influences, and how to read quilts as documentary evidence, unravelling aspects of Canadian women’s daily, domestic, and design histories that are often overlooked.
Join us in-person and celebrate the 20th anniversary of our publication Ornamentum magazine!
Ornamentum is the only magazine dedicated to design and decorative arts in Canada.
 | SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Lisa Binkley is an associate professor in the Department of History at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia; a member of the Royal Society of Canada, College of New Scholars; and founding co-director of Material Culture Collective. Among her publications are Stitching the Self: Identity and the Needle Arts, coedited with Johanna Amos; Dwelling on the Margins of Empire: Colonized and Indigenous Peoples’ Imaginaries of Home; and Where We Meet: Expressions from the Indigenous Artists Collective, coedited with S.J. Jones and Rachel Hurst. |
TICKETS
In-Person - CSDA Member: $20
In-Person - Non-Member: $25
Virtual Pass - CSDA Member: $10
Virtual Pass - Non-Member: $15