About the Cover
The cover of Last Best Gifts shows a large detail of “Bucket of Blood,” a signature quilt made by the American Red Cross in Roslyn, Pennsylvania. Inked signatures are visible on the quilt next to the individual “buckets” in many of the panels, especially the large center panel. The “buckets” also look like Pennsylvania Keystones.
The quilt is in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. According to their catalog it dates from around 1917.
Although the quilt is called “Bucket of Blood,” the signatures do not represent actual blood donations. Donation was very rare around this time. There were three main obstacles to safe donation and transfusion: finding a safe and relatively comfortable way to extract blood from the donor and transfuse it to the recipient; matching the blood types in the donation; and preventing the blood from clotting. The clotting problem was the last to be solved. Around 1915, Richard Lewisohn, working at Mt Sinai Hospital in New York, found that adding sodium citrate to blood was a safe anticoagulant. Regular blood donation was still a long way off, however. The American Red Cross did not begin collecting blood until 1936, and so this raises a question about the interpretation of the panels on the quilt.
According to the Red Cross signature quilts became popular during World War I. Initially, quilters made blankets to be send overseas, but later local volunteers paid to have their names added to the quilt as part of a fundraising effort. In the quilt used for the gover of Last Best Gifts the potent symbolism of blood and community is especially striking in the image, as the repeated “buckets” and associated signatures in each panel combine to form a powerful representation of social solidarity. The original purpose of the quilt also reminds us that money and solidarity are often found together in practice.
