Virtual Lecture Series

Unable to make it to Pennsburg for the 2025 Penn Dry Good Market? Five lectures are now available as recordings. Purchase of a lecture allows you access through June 30, giving you a great chance to hear about new research or to see beautiful examples of handwork.

Each lecture costs $25, but consider these packages to save money. Note: Orders that come in over the weekend will be fulfilled at the beginning of the work week.

• Handwork Package:  $66 for “This is the Way I Pass My Time: Mennonite Hand Towels from Eastern Pennsylvania” by Joel Alderfer, “Heritage Craft, Community, and Continuity among Scandinavian Americans” by Josh Brown, and “A Legacy in Thread: Schoolgirl Needlework and Female Education In Dutchess County, New York” by Stacy Whittaker

• Woven History : $44 for both “So intimately are we connected: Antislavery Textiles and the Weight of Cotton” by Mariah Kupfner and “Colonialism, Power & Identity: Fashion in American Portraits, 1670-1840” by Lynne Bassett

• SEE THEM ALL!!! Buy all 5 for $110! If you scroll through the listing of lectures below and decide that you want to see them all, use this PayPal link to purchase all five of the recorded lectures.

Handwork Package

The following lectures are included in this package:

• “This is the Way I Pass My Time: Mennonite Hand Towels from Eastern Pennsylvania” by Joel Alderfer

• “Heritage Craft, Community, and Continuity among Scandinavian Americans” by Josh Brown

• “A Legacy in Thread: Schoolgirl Needlework and Female Education In Dutchess County, New York” by Stacy Whittaker

Woven History Package
The following lectures are included in this package:

• “So intimately are we connected: Antislavery Textiles and the Weight of Cotton” by Mariah Kupfner

• “Colonialism, Power & Identity: Fashion in American Portraits, 1670-1840” by Lynne Bassett

This is the Way I Pass My Time: 
Mennonite Hand Towels from Eastern Pennsylvania

Joel Alderfer, Collections Manager, Mennonite Heritage Center

In this lecture, we’ll look at a unique decorated textile tradition among Pennsylvania German young women in eastern Pennsylvania, the decorated hand towel – popularly called the “show towel”. What do we know about the origins of this textile form? Why do they seem to have been more common among plain Pennsylvania German women?  What was their function? How were they displayed?

Given the presenter’s long-time roll as collections manager at the Mennonite Heritage Center, he’ll then focus on the Center’s large collection of these towels – nearly all from Mennonite families in southeastern Pennsylvania. He’ll highlight some of the design details and the unique needlework motifs found on the towels – some primarily used by Amish and Mennonite women. Joel’s presentation will be generously illustrated and he’ll likely even bring a few originals examples with him to display!

Sponsored by Harleysville Bank.

Colonialism, Power & Identity: Fashion in American Portraits, 1670-1840

Lynne Bassett, Independent Scholar, Curator, and Author

Fashion is often dismissed as a frivolous concern, mostly involving women and of no great importance to world events. Fashion has, in fact, been an instigator of the global economy starting with the Silk Road in the 6th century. A thousand years later—in the 16th and 17th centuries—the pursuit of textiles and fashion led to empire-building, wars, colonization, the subjugation of indigenous populations and the enslavement of Africans, as Bassett will demonstrate through this examination of American portraiture primarily from the collection of the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts.

Sponsored by Meadowood

Heritage Craft, Community, and Continuity among Scandinavian Americans

Josh Brown, Skwierczynski University Fellow (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) and folk weaver

Old identities are challenged, and new identities are formed when people are confronted with new contexts through immigration. Immigrants express those identities, in part, through their material culture. This presentation explores heritage identities expressed through craft among the Scandinavian Americans. As these immigrants and their descendants clung to traditional craft, new opportunities brought changes to the ways they created and understood the material world.

 Sponsored by the Ted Breckel Memorial Fund

So intimately are we connected: Antislavery Textiles and the Weight of Cotton

Mariah Kupfner, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Public Heritage, School of Humanities, Penn State Harrisburg

Textiles connect us. They are often intimate objects. For many abolitionists in the early nineteenth century, this made them perfect tools to express and combat the evils of enslavement. Soft fabrics could contain hard truths and prompt Northern audiences to examine their own entanglement in systems of oppression. In particular, cotton helped many understand their direct connection to slavery.

In the anti-slavery movement, many women picked up their needles to express their commitments, to raise money for the cause, and to try and construct real alternatives to economies based on slavery. This talk explores the phenomenon of Free Labor activists who tried to source ethical textiles and the everyday work of antislavery stitchers who used their needles to envision a changed world. From pieced silk quilts to cotton pinafores, Free Labor mills to mulberry tree farms, this presentation explores the materiality and texture of textiles harnessed to try and make a world with less harm and more freedom.

Sponsored by Master Supply Line

A Legacy in Thread: Schoolgirl Needlework and Female Education In Dutchess County, New York

Stacy Whittaker, Independent Needlework Scholar

Located on the Hudson River, halfway between New York City and Albany, Dutchess County welcomed its first European settlers in the late 1600’s. many cultural and religious influences led to the development of a strong tradition of education there that continues to this day. Female education in particular was encouraged by the development of both Quaker-related schools and a wealth of female academies. Samplers and other schoolgirl needlework were produced at most of these schools. This talk will illustrate, through examples of this needlework, the rich tradition of both embroidery and female education in Dutchess County and how the study of that work provides a unique and fascinating window into the lives of women in the Post-Revolutionary Hudson Valley.

Sponsored by The Betty Whiting Fleming Grant Fund of the Loudoun Sampler Guild