Harriet Powers honored on Feb. 28 U.S. commemorative stamps

By David Hartwig

On Feb. 28 the United States Postal Service will honor folk artist and quilter Harriet Powers with four nondenominated (78¢) forever commemorative stamps.

“With this issuance, the U.S. Postal Service honors quiltmaker Harriet Powers (1837–1910), a formerly enslaved woman who stitched works that are celebrated as masterpieces of American folk art and storytelling,” the USPS said.

The first-day ceremony for the stamps will take place Saturday, Feb. 28, at 11:00 a.m. at the Capitol Ballroom of the JW Marriott hotel at 1331 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, in Washington, D.C. Eastern Standard Time. This event is being held in partnership with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, a group that promotes the study, recognition and celebration of African American history, culture and achievements through research, education and public programs.

The stamps are available in a pressure-sensitive adhesive pane of 20 stamps. The four designs show panels from Powers’ pictorial quilt of 1898 and display biblical scenes, local folklore and celestial wonders.

Many of the scenes shown on the stamps portray events that happened during Powers’ life. Powers was born into slavery on a plantation near Athens, Ga., in 1837, and died of pneumonia in Athens in 1910. She learned to sew while enslaved as a child and exhibited her first quilt in the 1880s. It is also believed that she supported herself as a seamstress later in life.

Two of her quilts, The Bible Quilt and The Pictorial Quilt, parts of which are shown in the Feb. 28 stamps, remain on display today and are celebrated as masterpieces of American folk art and visual storytelling. She likely made other quilts, but it is not known whether any others are preserved.

Each of the two remaining quilts feature a collection of panels quilted in traditional applique techniques to express biblical scenes, local lore and astronomical events. Her quilts are sequential, narrative works meant to be read panel by panel.

The Bible Quilt has 11 irregularly sized panels depicting such subjects as Adam and Eve, a ladder to heaven and the Last Supper.

Powers finished The Bible Quilt in 1886 and exhibited it at the Athens Cotton Fair. Jennie Smith, an art teacher from a local girls’ school, asked to purchase the quilt, but Powers initially refused. Four years later, Powers offered to sell the quilt when her large family met with financial difficulties. Today the quilt is displayed at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

While The Bible Quilt draws heavily on scripture, The Pictorial Quilt expands Powers’ storytelling throughout 15 panels to include contemporary events and natural phenomena, such as frozen people and dead animals on Feb. 10, 1895, the day after the second of two devastating freezes in the southern United States during the winter of 1894-95. …

USPS art director Derry Noyes was responsible for selecting and adapting Powers’ quilt panels for use as postage stamps, a process that required translating narrative textile art into a format measured in fractions of an inch.

Although Powers’ quilts are meant to be read panel by panel, Noyes said the pane was designed to feel “quilt-like” through the repetition of four distinct panels.

The design team consulted with both a quilter and a quilt historian during the development of the stamps. Noyes said she worked directly from the original artwork, selecting panels she felt would function best at stamp size. “There was such a rich variety to work with,” she said. ...

Post offices wishing to hold an event for the Harriet Powers stamps are required to use a pictorial dedication postmark consisting of a circular datestamp to the left of “HARRIET POWERS” in bold font. “The word ‘Station’ or the abbreviation ‘STA’ is required somewhere in the design because it will be a temporary station,” the USPS said. “Use of any image other than the … special pictorial image is prohibited.”

Two pictorial first-day cancels for the Harriet Powers stamps are being offered by the Postal Service, one in black and the other in color. The black postmark is applied free, up to a quantity of 50, to most collector-submitted covers. There is a 5¢ charge for each additional postmark over 50.

The black postmark features the text “HARRIET POWERS” in two lines, with the words “FIRST DAY OF ISSUE” above and the issue date and location below. The color postmark features a variation of the same design.

Standard ordering instructions apply. Collectors requesting first-day cancels are encouraged to purchase their own stamps and affix them to envelopes. The first-day cover envelopes should be addressed for return (a removable label may be used) and mailed in a larger envelope addressed to FDOI — Harriet Powers Stamps, USPS Stamp Fulfillment Services, 8300 NE Underground Drive, Suite 300, Kansas City, MO 64144-9900.

USPS item numbers for stamps and FDCs appear in Linn’s 2026 U.S. Stamp Program when they become available.

All requests for the Harriet Powers first-day cancellations must be postmarked by June 28.

Further Harriet Powers issue products are available from the online USPS postal store at https://store.usps.com/store/home. Technical details for the 2026 Harriet Powers forever commemorative stamps were not available at the time of publication. They will be published in a future issue of Linn’s.

To read the full story about the new Harriet Powers stamps, subscribe to Linn’s Stamp News.

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