WASHINGTON, DC — The colorful quilts in Pattern and Paradox: The Quilts of Amish Women at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art (SAAM) are anything but plain. Although Amish communities are widely known for their modest dress and a humble lifestyle away from the hustle and bustle of the modern world, the quilts in the exhibition reflect a kaleidoscopic mix of patterns and techniques. Accompanying wall texts address the apparent contradictions central to these striking works, which exist at the intersection of tradition and innovation, conformity and individual creative expression, and the modest and the spectacular.

Patterns and Paradox includes 50 quilts—from a collection of 130 recently donated to the museum by art collectors Faith and Stephen Brown—sewn in Amish settlements in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois between the 1880s and 1940s. This period, notably, coincides with the emergence of quilting in Amish communities. Although the Amish have lived in North America since the mid-18th century, quilting among women was not widely practiced until the end of the following century, after the general quilting trend of the mid-19th century had waned. As Janneken Smucker, a quilt historian and fifth-generation Mennonite quiltmaker of Amish-Mennonite heritage, writes in the exhibition catalog, “As other Americans considered quilts old-fashioned, the craft perhaps became more attractive to the trend-shy Amish.”

The textiles were originally intended as bedcovers or keepsakes, and their creators never intended them to be exhibits for museums or art collectors. But in the early 1970s, quilts made in Amish communities became increasingly popular with collectors who drew visual parallels between these objects and the aesthetics of modernist abstraction. As a result, the quilts appeared in major exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Renwick Gallery of SAAM. But this notoriety changed some Amish quilters’ relationship to their craft.

“The Amish themselves were troubled by the fact that they had created and later owned valuable, museum-quality works of art—a notion that was completely at odds with their intentions,” writes Leslie Umberger, co-curator of the exhibition. Amish families began to “dispose” of these pieces. As with their diverse and ever-evolving patchwork traditions, the response of Amish quilters varied. Some families began to buy bedding instead of sewing it, while others began to make quilts specifically for customers outside the Amish community to earn an income. Likewise, some quilters changed their creative practices and preferred color palettes that were less popular with collectors; others stayed the course and continued to make the “old dark quilts.”

The works in Patterns and Paradoxmade before Amish quilts entered the mainstream spotlight, they boast bold, geometric stripes of solid-colored fabrics textured with precise quilting—the term for the tiny stitches that hold a quilt’s layers together, often with a decorative embellishment. Organized around patchwork patterns, blocks, and variations, the exhibit offers an overview of the eclectic styles and techniques used by Amish women in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century. The exhibit also highlights local aesthetic preferences that were popular in particular settlements. For example, “strema” (or “bar”) quilts with broad vertical stripes are a classic pattern from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

To create these highly varied quilts, the women shared cardboard patterns and helped each other piece, mark, quilt and bind their creations. Pieced squares and rectangles, stripes, stars, triangles and fan shapes adorn the resulting quilt tops. Tumbling block quilts are made of precise diamonds of fabric attached with technically demanding Y-stitches, and feature striking cubic optical illusions. Center square quilts, sometimes called plain quilts, forego complicated piecework and instead consist of open panels of fabric that frame immaculate hand-quilted motifs, including feather wreaths, grapevines, crosshatching and scallops.

Overall, this collection of Amish quilts illustrates how patterns can serve as both the framework of tradition and a springboard for dynamic, ever-changing creative experimentation—and that even so-called “simple quilts” can impress.

Pattern and Paradox: The Quilts of Amish Women runs through August 26 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and G Streets, Northwest, Washington, DC). The exhibition was curated by Leslie Umberger and Virginia Mecklenburg, with support from Anne Hyland and Janneken Smucker.