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As a burgeoning nation that had fought hard for its indepedence, late eighteenth-century America was quick to develop visual symbols to represent the newfound freedom and unity of its citizens--the flag representing the thirteen colonies, the American eagle, Lady Liberty. In Stars and Stripes: Patriotic Motifs in American Folk Art, author Deborah Harding finds these and other patriotic images decorating quilts and coverlets, whirligigs and weather vanes, game boards and fire buckets--almost no object that could be painted, stitched, or carved was spared embellishment with our country's colors or symbols. Harding examines these objects, from the minute to the monumental, the whimsical to the more sober, with an eye to both the artistic and historical significance of each piece. Among the items that her extensive research and archival work have unearthed include the flag, hand painted with the figure of Liberty, which was in Lincoln's booth the night he was assassinated and the coverlet crocheted by Grace Coolidge who wished to begin a tradition of First Ladies leaving a memento in the White House. This groundbreaking volume, the first to examine such a wide range of these early patriotic images, makes visual to the twenty-first-century reader our nation's earliest displays of pride and patriotism.
