WELCOME to the website of Linda Baumgarten, specialist in the early history of textiles and costumes.
For 39 years she held the position of curator of textiles and costumes at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
in Williamsburg, Virginia. Linda is the author of four books and co-author of another. What Clothes Reveal,
The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America
won the Millia Davenport Publications Award from
the Costume Society of America. In 2014, Linda teamed with longtime colleague Kim Ivey to produce Four Centuries
of Quilts, The Colonial Williamsburg Collection. Her most recent book is an adult coloring and pattern book,
with designs adapted from quilts and quilted clothing. In her retirement, Linda continues to lecture, research
clothing and quilts (especially Amish quilting), and draw quilt patterns using Computer-Assisted Design technology.
Lecturing
- Eighteenth-century Costume History and Construction
- Clothing in Portraits, 1600 to 1800
- Clothing for the Life Cycle from Birth to Old Age
- Amish Quilting before 1970
- Four Centuries of Quilt History from 1600 to 2000
Exhibitions
Assisting museums to plan exhibitions, select artifacts, and write labels- Eighteenth and early nineteenth-century clothing
- Quilts