Harriet Powers Forever Stamp 2026
The U.S. Postal Service honors the remarkable artistry and storytelling legacy of quiltmaker Harriet Powers (1837 - 1910) with a new set of four stamps celebrating her extraordinary contributions to American folk art. Born into slavery, Powers created quilts that transformed fabric, thread, and imagery into powerful visual narratives. Today, only two of her known quilts remain, both recognized as masterpieces of American textile art.
Harriet Powers was born on October 29, 1837, on a plantation near Athens, Georgia. She is believed to have learned sewing skills during her childhood. At age 18, she married Armstead Powers, an enslaved agricultural worker, and the couple eventually had nine children. Following emancipation, Harriet and her family purchased four acres of land in Sandy Creek, Georgia, where they cultivated cotton and vegetables.
Over time, Powers developed her own distinctive approach to quiltmaking, completing at least five quilts during her lifetime. The two surviving examples are often called story quilts because each section combines fabric pieces, appliqu, and embroidery to illustrate meaningful scenes based on biblical accounts, community traditions, and local stories.
In 1886, Powers displayed her Bible Quilt at a local fair, likely the second annual Northeast Georgia Fair in Athens. A young white art instructor, Jennie Smith, was deeply impressed by the work and initially attempted to purchase it, but Powers declined. Several years later, however, she agreed to sell the quilt to Smith. After the quilt was exhibited in the Negro Building at the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, it attracted the admiration of several women connected with Atlanta University. They commissioned Powers to create another quilt as a gift for Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, vice president of the university's board. Completed in 1898, the Pictorial Quilt remained in the Hall family collection for more than six decades.
USPS art director Derry Noyes, who had previously worked on stamp projects featuring quilts, approached Powers's creations from a new perspective. Rather than viewing quilts only as decorative textile works, she recognized them as visual storytelling platforms. Noyes selected sections from the Pictorial Quilt that could retain their detail and meaning when reproduced at stamp size, while also creating a balanced combination of colors and patterns.
Each stamp in the 20-stamp pane features a different panel from Powers's Pictorial Quilt.To create a more dynamic overall design, Noyes arranged the panels in a way that avoids a simple repetition of four images. By changing the sequence at the beginning of each row, she created the impression of a larger collection of stories unfolding across the pane.
The stamp designs and pane layout were created by Derry Noyes using existing photographs of Harriet Powers's Pictorial Quilt, 1895 -C1898 from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston collection.
Powers's other surviving masterpiece, the Bible Quilt,is preserved at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The quilt was donated to the museum in 1968 and was sent there through the United States Postal Service.
The Harriet Powers stamps are issued as Forever stamps, meaning they will always maintain the same value as the current First-Class Mail one-ounce postage rate.
Pictorial quilt, 1895 - C98, by Harriet Powers. Bequest of Maxim Karolik 64.619. Photograph 2025 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
