Esprit’s quilt collection was the shared vision of CEO and co-founder Doug Tompkins and his skilled and knowledgeable curator Julie Silber, one of the foremost experts on Amish quilts. Julie learned to know Doug’s taste and preferences. Dealers from around the country would contact Julie in hopes of getting quilts into Esprit’s collection. In 1990, Doug and Julie co-curated Amish: The Art of the Quilt at the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art’s de Young Museum, which displayed quilts in a darkened gallery with dramatic spotlights illuminating the center of each of 82 Amish quilts.