Patchwork Puzzle

Joan Paterson Kerr’s “Patchwork Primitives” in our April/May 1981 issue brought an interesting response from reader John Maass, a frequent contributor to this department: “Jean Lipman’s ‘primitives’ are ingenious, but her memory may be faulty concerning the painting shown on pages 22–23. In your caption for the picture, you say that ‘the striking pattern of the painting … was inspired by a Connecticut Congregational church Jean Lipman had once driven past and photographed.’ I think it’s more likely that the pattern was inspired by a photograph I took of the (Dutch) Reformed Church in Rhinebeck, New York, in 1955. The picture appeared in my 1957 book, The Gingerbread Age , and was also reproduced in several of the reviews that followed its publication. The next time I passed the church, those interesting sectional shutters were gone, and they were never put back.”