Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 10, Number 5, 1 May 1993 — Hawaiian Quilt Research Project holds Quilt Day [ARTICLE]

Hawaiian Quilt Research Project holds Quilt Day

Quilt Day, a service provided by the Hawaiian Quilt Research Project that allows quilt pattern owners to register their designs, was held April 24 in Kaunakakai, Moloka'i. The purpose of the service is to determine the history of different Hawaiian patterns and register them for archival purposes. (Ed. note: This is not the same as legal copyright registration.) "We're trying to get the history of patterns and determine where they eame from," says HQRP coordinator Elaine Zinn. "We track where the quilt changed hands and what families owned them." HQRP has discovered that many of the quilts in circulation now were produced in foreign countries, likely by eheap, unskilled, labor.

Such copies not only decrease the overall value of the art, but also take away work from the skilled, largely elderly, Hawaiians who produce the quilts in their homes. Zinn would like to do something about this kind of art theft. "We are in the process of puUing together workshops that explain things like copyright theft to Hawaiian quiltmakers. ... I've had conversations with custom officials and attorneys as well as quiltmakers and we would like to organize some sort of educational program." Zinn believes programs like Alu Like's Hannah Baker tracing program are fine as long as the tracers don't go out and sell the designs to manufacturers, making an easy profit from the time and hard work put in by Hawaiian artists.