Scarves for Associations & Organizations
When Welch expanded her scarf design business in 1969, she noted in a promotional brochure that having her name associated with a design would be “meaningful to the women who purchase or are given your custom scarf.” These scarves communicated both the wearer’s sense of fashion and specific affiliations, interests, and experiences. By keeping production limited for each of these designs, Welch cultivated a feeling of exclusivity and increased the scarves’ values as keepsakes.
Welch’s longtime friend Emily Payne, director of the Tri-County Regional Library (now the Sara Hightower Regional Library) in Rome, encouraged the Georgia Libraries Association to commission a scarf from Welch. Payne requested that the state of Georgia be acknowledged very subtly, which Welch did by including the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress call numbers that designate books on Georgia history (975.8 and f281).
The Tobacco Institute formed in 1958 as a national tobacco industry trade association funded by cigarette manufacturers. One scarf recipient wrote to the Tobacco Institute in 1978, “How nice of you to remember me at Christmas time with the lovely Frankie Welch scarf. What a clever idea - - tobacco leaves and all.” The Tobacco Institute was dissolved in 1998 as part of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
