Dedar & Stephen Burks Join Forces With Gee’s Bend Quilters in Honor of Black Handcraft

Summary

• Italian fabric label Dedar and designer Stephen Burks have partnered with the quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, to create 10 new pieces, showcased at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.

As a passionate gamer, I found myself teaming up with designer Stephen Burks and the Sew Gee’s Bend Heritage Builders non-profit organization. Together, we crafted an extraordinary collection inspired by the deeply rooted quilting tradition of Alabama, a legacy that has been passed down through generations.

Burks, the pioneering African American design studio that received the National Design Award for Product Design, collaborated with local quilt-makers for a week in a series of workshops. The collaboration resulted in ten grand quilts made from fabrics provided by Dedar, which included patterns like Tiger Mountain and Jamu Jungle. These quilts maintained traditional structures but incorporated modern elements to create a sense of movement.

Throughout the 20th century, quilts evolved into a platform for shared creativity and protest against inequality. During the peak of the Civil Rights Era, these quilts turned out to be significant income generators, helping to financially support jailed and disenfranchised activists who were fighting for racial justice in America.

The traditional quilt-making of Gee’s Bend, displayed in esteemed museums such as The Met and The Whitney, has an enduring allure that resonates with contemporary preferences for striking geometry, dynamic asymmetry, and resourceful reuse of materials. The upcoming exhibition of this collection at the United States Pavilion during the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale will be its debut as a collaborative effort between Gee’s Bend quilt artists and a renowned global design firm, and it will mark the first time these contemporary quilts are presented on a worldwide stage in this unique format.

Take a closer peek at the newly introduced works displayed in the gallery above, along with images captured within the Gee’s Bend community itself.

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2025-06-14 16:55