Jean Ray Laury

Jean Ray Laury (March 22, 1928 – March 2, 2011) was an American academically trained artist and designer. She was one of the first fine artists to move to quilting as a medium of choice in the late 1950s. Her quilts followed neither traditional method nor pattern; they were bold, modern, colorful collages, often laced with humor and satire. Penning over twenty books and teaching over 2,000 workshops, Laury helped women see the creative possibilities in everyday objects and awake their sense of inspiration. Laury has been called a “foremother of a quilt revival”, and “one of the pioneers” of non-traditional quilts.

Born on March 22, 1928 in Doon, Iowa, Jean Ray Laury was the daughter of Ralph and Alice Ray. She was the second of four girls. Growing up, Laury’s “mother encouraged her to ‘do what you want to do, and don’t do what everybody else does.’” As a child, Laury loved drawing and painting. The family moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee where she graduated from high school. She returned to Iowa to attend Iowa State Teachers’ College (now University of Northern Iowa), where she earned her bachelor's degree in Art and English in 1950. After teaching art for several years, she moved to California. She went on to marry Frank Laury, who worked as a professor at California State University, Fresno, in 1952.

Beginning a master’s program in Design at Stanford University, Laury became intrigued by the art of quilting. Laury gravitated towards quilting because it gave her the flexibility work at home and allowed her to start and stop as needed to take care of her home and children. While Laury grew up in a small community where quilting was common, she had paid little attention to quiltmaking until now. Always one to take on a challenge, Laury began experimenting with the craft. One aspect that Laury was adamant about was that she did not want to work with a pattern. Inspired by her son Tom, Laury’s first quilt was an appliqué quilt called Tom’s Quilt. It was filled with images familiar to children, but Laury interpreted them in a simplified contemporary style. Incorporating this quilt into her final master's degree project, Laury graduated in 1956. ‘Tom’s Quilt’ was included in a student exhibition at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, and led to a solo exhibition there several years later.

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