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Fannie Lee Teals with her red, white, and blue American Revolution Bicentennial quilt, 1977. Photograph by Beverly J. Robinson. South-Central Georgia Folklife Project. American Folklife Center. (6-17617-29a)

Although the American Folklife Center does not collect artifacts, it does collect the documentation of folk art objects and numerous other forms of traditional expression. There are no quilts in the Archive of Folk Culture, but its many photographs of quilts, along with recordings of women talking about the making of quilts, document this folk art.

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Agnes Vanderburg and Kay Young on the Flathead Reservation, Northwestern Montana, 1979. Photograph by Michael Crummett. Montana Folklife Survey. American Folklife Center. (MT9-MC3-15)

Agnes Vanderburg, a teacher of traditional skills at a heritage camp for children, pit-roasting camas roots at her camp on the Flathead Reservation in northwestern Montana in 1979, while folklorist Kay Young records her commentary. The American Folklife Center holds the largest and most diverse collection in the world of sound recordings documenting American Indian music and spoken word, from the 1890s to the present day. Most of the recordings feature men performers, but many of them were made by women ethnographers. Folklife specialists at the center maintain close contact with Indian communities, which use the collections regularly for matters pertaining to cultural--especially language--retention. Several of the contemporary collections include documentation of pow-wows, which are tribal and pan-tribal social gatherings. Women and children figure more prominently in these collections than in the earlier materials.

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Myrtle B. Wilkinson playing tenor banjo, Turlock, California, 1939. Photographer unknown. California Folk Music Project. American Folklife Center. (AFC 1940/001:PO51)

Myrtle B. Wilkinson accompanied fiddler Mrs. Ben Scott with her tenor banjo, as they played a medley of Anglo-American tunes in Turlock, California, in 1939. The Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture houses about three thousand ethnographic field collections, many of which were made by individual folklorists, ethnomusicologists, or inspired amateurs with a particular mission or interest. In the case of the California Folk Music Project, Sidney Robertson Cowell recorded a variety of ethnic music from Northern California for the Works Progress Administration.

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Josephine Martellaro of Pueblo, Colorado, with the Saint Joseph's Day table she created at her home in 1990. Photograph by Myron Wood. Italian-Americans in the West Project. American Folklife Center. (IAW-MW-C001-13)

Women are often regarded as tradition-bearers within their respective communities. One tradition maintained by women in the Italian American community of Pueblo, Colorado, derives from a centuries-old tradition on the famine-plagued island of Sicily. According to the story, Sicilian peasants prayed to Saint Joseph, the island's patron saint, to end the famine and suffering that was their lot. When their prayers were answered, the poor people of the island offered up in thanksgiving their most prized possession--food. Brought to Pueblo in the 1890s, the tradition has evolved into large, open-house events that feature tables laden with food, such as this one, photographed in 1990. Today, the tables are prepared to thank Saint Joseph for his assistance in helping families through all sorts of difficult times.

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Dressmaker Elsa Mantilla and a beauty pageant contestant, Woodridge, New Jersey, 1994. Photograph by Martha Cooper. "Working in Paterson" Folklife Project. American Folklife Center. (WIP-MC-C008-20)

Latina dressmaker Elsa Mantilla adjusts one of the dresses she has made for a contestant at the annual banquet and beauty pageant sponsored by the Dominicans of New Jersey, held at "The Fiesta," in Woodridge. A 1994 Folklife Center field project based in Paterson, New Jersey, documented the traditions surrounding work in this industrial city--traditions found in both its factories and its homes. A number of the women interviewed for the project had exploited skills traditionally associated with home life, such as cooking and sewing, for the sake of gainful employment.

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Mr. and Mrs. Frank Pipkin being recorded by Charles Todd (left) at the Shafter Migratory Labor Camp, Shafter, California, 1940. Photograph by Robert Hemmig. Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant-Worker Collection. American Folklife Center. (AFC 1985/001:P9-p1)

Much can be discovered or surmised by studying the faces and postures of the man and woman featured in this photograph, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Pipkin. Life has been difficult, but they have endured. Like many "Okies" who left the Dust Bowl, these people, one suspects, hoped for a new life in California. Behind the Pipkins, musicians stand ready, either to accompany Mrs. Pipkin or to play on their own, because these are people who know how to make their own entertainment, whether telling stories, playing the fiddle, or organizing Saturday night dances. Charles Todd, the man at the recording machine (left), that day in 1940, wrote that Mrs. Pipkin was a gold mine of Old English ballads, and that many thought of her as the prototype for "Ma Joad" in The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck was in the labor camps doing research for his great novel at the same time that Todd was there.

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Right: Basque ranch wife Delfina Zatica in her kitchen with her grandchildren, Paradise Valley, Nevada, 1978. Photograph by Carl Fleischhauer. Paradise Valley Folklife Project. American Folklife Center. (PFP-CF-4-19379-9a)

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Below right: Carrie Severt milks a cow one-handed at her farm in Alleghany County, North Carolina. Photograph by Terry Eiler, 1978. Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project. American Folklife Center. (BR8-TE-96)

On farms and ranches across the country, the division of labor often has been determined by gender roles. Among traditional duties of farmwives and ranchwives are food preparation, housekeeping, and child-rearing. Folklife Center collections from many regions document these daily activities, as well as family relations in general and the central role that women play in the activities of family and community life. Women tend vegetable gardens, chickens, and small livestock associated with the household economy. They help out with the milking and seasonally demanding tasks associated with the harvest.

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Sidney Robertson copying California Folk Music Project recordings for the Library of Congress in the WPA project office, Berkeley, California, early 1939. Photographer unknown. California Folk Music Project Collection. American Folklife Center. (AFC 1940/001:P001)

Field-worker Nancy Nusz photographs oysterman Cletus Anderson, Apalachicola, Florida, November 1986. Photograph by David Taylor. Florida Maritime Project. American Folklife Center.(FMP 86-BDT025-6)

Throughout the twentieth century, women played a central role in the ethnographic documentation of culture, working with many cultural groups in the United States and around the world. Women folklorists continue that tradition today, carrying out their own fieldwork and participating in team-based field projects like those sponsored by the American Folklife Center. Many of the collections in the Archive of Folk Culture were wholly or in part created by women.

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Henrietta Yurchenco (right) and an unidentified woman, John's Island, South Carolina, ca. 1970. Photograph by David Lewiston. Henrietta Yurchenco Collection. American Folklife Center.

Henrietta Yurchenco speaks with an African American woman in front of a Methodist church that served as a focus for some of her work on John's Island, South Carolina, in the 1970s. Over the years, Yurchenco has made major donations, including audio recordings, manuscripts, and photographs documenting the folklife of African Americans who speak Gullah, to the Archive of Folk Culture.

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Mary Higeko Hamano teaches the traditional art of Japanese flower arranging, Chicago, June 1977. Photograph by Jonas Dovydenas. Chicago Ethnic Arts Project. American Folklife Center. (B50891-24)

Particular folk art expressions are often associated with ethnic groups and are a vital part of their ethnic identity. Through teaching ikebana, the art of flower arranging, Mary Higeko Hamano brought some sense of traditional Japanese identity to her community in Chicago. Ethnic communities are often at pains to see that their folk art traditions are carried on from one generation to the next.

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Girls on a float in the Columbus Day parade, San Francisco, California, October 8, 1989. Photograph by Ken Light. Italian-Americans in the West Project. American Folklife Center. (IAW-KL-C115-4)

In a Columbus Day parade in San Francisco, on October 8, 1989, Italian American girls dressed as angels ride on a festival float created by the Società de la Madonna del Lume. The many strategies for passing on folk traditions from one generation to the next include traditions practiced at home as well as community events such as this parade. Children learn by observing their parents, by performing chores, or by playing assigned roles within a festival or celebration. Religious festivals and beauty pageants are components of many community celebrations across the United States.

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Sister Mary Abdi talking over homework assignments with Rohymah Toulas and Lanya Abdul-jabbar at the Islamic School in Seattle, Washington, 1982. Photograph by Susan Dwyer-Shick. Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America Project. American Folklife Center. (ES82-197518-1-34A)

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Jelina Cubic at the Kalkstein Silk Mills, Paterson, New Jersey, 1994. Photograph by Martha Cooper. "Working in Paterson" Project. American Folklife Center. (WIP-MC-C021-7)

In the 1900s, young women were engaged to work in the silk mills in Paterson, New Jersey. Founded as a corporation in 1792 by Alexander Hamilton and the Society for the Promotion of Useful Manufactures, the city holds the distinction of being the nation's first planned industrial area. When the American Folklife Center conducted its field documentary project "Working in Paterson" in 1994, researchers interviewed a number of former women textile workers about their experiences and visited a silk factory where women are still working the machines.