Sarah Mary Taylor Collection

Sarah Mary Taylor (1916-2000) was a quilter and visual artist from Yazoo City, Mississippi. She learned to quilt from her mother, Pearlie Posey Johnson, and her aunt Pecolia Warner. Quilting had run in the family for at least four generations.

Late in life, after years of working as a cook, child-carer, and at times a farm worker, Taylor was able to focus on her quilting full-time, and make a living from selling them. Her quilts were especially known from their imagery, often depicting people, animals, and scenes from her life; others included scripture and sayings.

Major museums—including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art—have collected and shown her quilts. She also made a commissioned quilt for the film The Color Purple. In addition to her work with textiles, Taylor was also a prolific visual artist. Her marker drawings have been exhibited in galleries, and mentioned in The New Yorker.

In the mid-1990s, Taylor met Liz Lindsey (1972-2020), then a student at Millsaps College, and took Lindsey on as a quilting apprentice. Together they documented Taylor’s life and work.

About the collection

Whole South Heritage Works (WSHW) is honored to have access to the Sarah Mary Taylor – Liz Lindsey Collection. We plan to make these materials public and, ultimately, return them to the Mississippi Delta. The collection includes:

Hours of audio and video interviews and conversations
Hundreds of photos of Taylor’s quilts and daily life
Drawings, quilting templates, and many other papers and belongings

Together, these materials tell Taylor’s story—in her own words—and give us a rare, intimate glimpse of her creative process and inspirations.