The Fannie B. Shaw Prosperity Quilt, Prosperity Is Just Around the Corner, 1930–1932
Mrs. Fannie B. Shaw (American)
Van Alstyne, Texas
Cotton
86 x 72 in. (2 m 18.44 cm x 1 m 82.88 cm)
Anonymous gift, 1998.209

The mood depicted in the Depression-era Prosperity Quilt is one of deliberate optimism as Mrs. Shaw has presented people from all walks of life looking around the corner for the prosperity promised by the president:

“My inspiration came from Herbert Hoover. Every time you picked up the paper or heard the radio he would talk about good times around the corner. He would make it sound so good. I wondered if I could make a picture of what he said and what he meant. I went to bed one night and couldn’t get it off my mind.”

—Interview with Fannie B. Shaw, 1988

Shaw and her neighbors would have to wait almost ten years for Uncle Sam to arrive at the lower right corner with “farm relief, legal beer, and aid.”