Crazy for Chintz: A New Addition to the Sheraton Room

Bedspread, English roller-printed chintz, ca. 1820

This winter’s renovation project focused on the second-floor bedroom, also known as the Sheraton Room. A coat of paint, some rearrangement of furniture, and a few new highlighted pieces have made this room an even more inviting space. The beautiful Sheraton-style four poster bed has been the perfect way to showcase the wide variety of textiles in the Alice’s collection, such as the “Apotheosis of Franklin and Washington” quilt made by Anna Moore Hubbell, Lena Olena Blow’s early-20th century silk crazy quilt, and the woven coverlet donated by Anna Ernberg. 

The bedspread currently on the bed is one that, as far as I can tell, has never been displayed before. It is made of a single layer of cotton chintz printed in a pattern that combines a variety of floral motifs in brown, pinks, blue, and green. The material is only twenty-six inches wide, and the lengths are sewn together with very narrow seams of less than a quarter inch. The top hem is faced with a strip of cotton in another print. The material was most likely made in England around 1820 using the roller-printing process.

An example of an Indian chintz made for the
European market, ca. 1750-1775

When British, Dutch, and French trading companies began importing textiles from India in the 17th century, Europeans were immediately captivated by the floral printed and painted cottons they called indiennes (in France) and chintzes (in England). These lightweight, washable, and colorful fabrics were much in demand both for household furnishings and for apparel, and European manufacturers soon began working to develop the technology to make their own versions. They were so popular, in fact, that French and English silk and wool manufacturers feared the competition and successfully agitated to restrict the manufacture and import of printed textiles. Despite these laws, the popularity of printed textiles only grew during the 18th century.

Block printer at work.
“Calico” was another general
term for a printed textile.

There were three basic ways to transfer a pattern to fabric: block printing, copperplate printing, and roller printing. Block printing uses carved wooden blocks, one for each color in the design, to which colorant is applied before being placed on the fabric and struck with a mallet to impress the pattern. Though the basic idea behind block printing is simple, it required great skill to precisely align the blocks to create the pattern, and the more colors used, the more difficult it was. Nonetheless, even as new technologies for printing were introduced, block printing remained the most common technique until the early 19th century.

In the 1750s, copperplate printing was introduced in Ireland. This form of printing fabric uses the same principles as printing on paper—a metal plate is engraved with the design and ink (or dye) is applied to the plate. Copperplate printing had some advantages over block printing: patterns could be much bigger (because the printing was done with a press in which the fabric was laid on top of the plate) and images could be much more detailed and realistic. Copperplate printing was used to produce the famous toiles de jouy, but was also used for chintzes.

A major revolution in printed textiles came at the end of the 18th century with the invention of roller printing. This uses an engraved plate fixed to a continuously rolling cylinder, which is refreshed with new coloring medium on each turn and prints the fabric in one pass from end to end. Roller printing eliminated the need to reposition the block or plate, as well as the fabric, after each impression. The advantages were immediately apparent—printing was much faster and thus, cheaper. For the first time, printed textiles could be produced on a large scale. This, combined with new developments in chemical dyes, meant that by the 1830s, they were no longer luxury goods exclusively for the middle and upper class, but were widely available (they lost much of their prestige among the well-to-do at this point—hence the term “chintzy” for something cheap or gaudy).

Detail of bedspread. Note that the pattern runs all
the way to the selvedge.

The narrow width of the material in the bedspread, combined with the crisp, detailed printing and use of multiple colors, suggests that this fabric was roller-printed. The muted color scheme, and the use of blue overprinting on yellow to produce green, suggests a date prior to the 1830s. The dark background is also more common in later printed textiles. This material still has its original glazing, produced through the application of friction to create a crisp, glossy finish. Normally glazing would wear off through use and washing, but a purely decorative bedcover like this one would not need much washing.

As is unfortunately the case with many of the items in the collection, we don’t know how Alice acquired this bedspread or what its history might be. But it certainly makes a fine addition to the Sheraton Room!

Sources:

Printed Textiles 1760-1860 in the Collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum (Smithsonian Institution, 1987).

Eileen Jahnke Trestain, Dating Fabrics: A Color Guide, 1800-1960 (Paducah, KY: American Quilter’s Society, 1998).

“18th Century Printed Cotton Fabrics,” http://demodecouture.com/cotton/

A Partner in Collecting: Emma B. Hodge

Publicity photo of Emma B. Hodge

After Alice T. Miner herself, the individual who probably did the most to shape the way the museum looks today is Emma B. Hodge. Her influence is most evident in the ceramic collection, which Alice acquired under her mentorship, but she also donated books, textiles, Japanese prints, and ephemera such as Valentines. An early collector of American folk art, Hodge also played an important role in the Art Institute of Chicago as a patron and a donor.

Emma Blanxius was born in 1862 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the daughter of Christian and Amelia Petterson Blanxius. Like Alice, Emma came from a large family and had three older sisters. By 1870, the Blanxius family had moved to Chicago and as a teenager Emma—whose parents were both immigrants from Sweden—joined the Freja Society, a Swedish and Norwegian choral group. Through the Freja Society she met Walter Hodge, an English immigrant working in a dry-goods store. They were married in 1879 and had three children.

Frank Gunsaulus (left), Emma Hodge (second from right),
and other Central Church Choir members at Heart’s Delight

The 1900 census shows that by that time Hodge was a widow living with her children, her mother, and her sister Jene (both also widowed). She supported her family as a professional musician, singing in the choir of the Central Church in Chicago. This nondenominational church had been established in 1875 and was as much a theatrical venue as it was a religious one. Music was a focal point of its services, and in 1879 it had moved into the newly built Central Music Hall, a multi-use building that held shops and offices along with an auditorium. Emma Hodge had previously been a member of the Plymouth Congregational Church choir, but when its pastor, Frank W. Gunsaulus, moved to Central Church in 1899, she came with him. In addition to singing at church services, the Central Church quartet performed widely throughout the United States, often accompanying Gunsaulus in “musical lectures.”

Quilts from Emma Hodge’s collection on display at
the Art Institute of Chicago, 1915

It’s not clear if Alice Miner originally met Emma Hodge through her friendship with Frank Gunsaulus, or the other way around, but the three of them shared interests in collecting books, ceramics, textiles, and other decorative arts, and were early supporters of the Art Institute of Chicago. Between 1912 and 1915, Hodge and her sister, Jene Bell, lent and then donated over one thousand pieces of American and English ceramics to the Art Institute in honor of their mother Amelia. Hodge also became interested in collecting textiles, particularly quilts and samplers. To Hodge, quilts represented “the story of American women from Jamestown and Plymouth down; the story of their thoughts and hopes and dreams, as well as the skill of their fingers.” Though Hodge and her fellow Colonial Revival-influenced collectors tended to romanticize the past, they also were some of the first people to recognize quilts, samplers, and other women’s work as art.

Embroidered Russian towel
Art Institute of Chicago,
gift of Emma Hodge (1919)

Emma Hodge also understood the power of art and museums to shape public opinion. In 1918 she organized an exhibit at the Art Institute of textiles from Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Russia—all areas that experienced profound suffering during World War I. As one newspaper reporter observed, knowledge of what was currently happening in those regions “looms like a ghost at the feast of enjoyment of color and design.” The beauty of the textiles stood in contrast with the suffering of their makers, and helped to humanize people who might otherwise have seemed distant and foreign to Americans. By generating sympathy for those ravaged by the “war machine,” the exhibit also had the potential to encourage support for organizations like the Red Cross.

Hodge’s 1918 textile exhibit was held in Gunsaulus Hall, a recently opened addition to the Art Institute which had been funded by a $50,000 gift from William and Alice Miner. Even as the Miners turned more of their attention to Chazy and Heart’s Delight Farm, they remained connected to Chicago’s art world through friends like Emma Hodge. As for Emma, she became nationally known as an expert in antiques, and was the frequent recipient of queries from people who believed—or hoped—that they were the owners of some rare and valuable piece. As her obituary notice in the Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago stated, “It was often her uncheering task to reply that these cherished possessions were worth little or nothing, a duty she accomplished with rare tact and kindness.” Until the end of her life in 1928, she remained an “enthusiast and delver into the historical past,” and an “unfailing and patient adviser of the new collector.”

Sources:

In 1924, Emma Hodge presented Alice Miner with a massive scrapbook of newspaper clippings, programs, photographs, and other material about herself and their mutual friend Frank Gunsaulus. Much of the information in this post comes from the scrapbook. Information was also drawn from Judith A. Barter and Monica Obniski, For Kith and Kin: The Folk Art Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012). 

Concerning Samplers

Sampler made by Margaret Platt,
1736. Margaret was a cousin of the
Platt brothers who founded Plattsburgh
and the great-grandmother of Lucretia
Maria and Margaret Davidson.

As we prepare to reopen the museum in May, I have been working on some new labels for the samplers in the Weaving Room. I’ve tried to find biographical information about the girls who made the samplers and other needlework pieces in the collection—a difficult task. Like most women who lived in the 17th and 18th centuries, they left little mark on the official historical record. However, their samplers were treasured and handed down in their families until they were “discovered” by collectors in the early 20th century. In the age of the suffragette and the flapper, samplers became powerful symbols of the industry, piety, and domesticity of early American women.

Until relatively recently, needlework skills were an essential part of female education. All girls learned basic sewing skills, and some pursued more advanced embroidery. The sampler emerged sometime in the 16th century and was originally a pattern record of stitches and techniques (the term sampler comes from the Latin exemplum, or example). Colonists brought this tradition of sampler-making to North America in the 17th century, though very few examples have survived from that period. By the 18th century, distinctive sampler styles were beginning to develop, identified with specific regions and often with particular schools or teachers. However, American samplers shared common elements: alphabets and numbers, religious or moral verses, names and dates (often in the form of a family record), floral motifs, landscape scenes including people, houses, and animals, and geometric patterns.

Scenes from a Seminary for Young Ladies,
ca. 1810-20
Saint Louis Art Museum

In the years after the American Revolution, educational opportunities for girls expanded dramatically. Historians have identified this push for female education as part of an ideology they call republican motherhood. If the new nation was to survive, its citizens must be virtuous, and children’s first lessons in virtue came from their mothers. Therefore, women had to be educated in order to transmit republican values to future generations. Although the emphasis of republican motherhood was on women’s roles in the home, it opened the door for arguments in favor of broadening education for girls. As author Judith Sargent Murray wrote in 1798, “Female academies are everywhere establishing and right pleasant is the appellation to my ear.”

These new academies offered girls the chance to learn the same subjects as boys did: not just reading and writing but mathematics, geography, philosophy, and Latin. However, there was still a great emphasis on fashionable accomplishments or what were called “ornamentals”—embroidery, painting, drawing, and music. Most of the samplers that are in museum collections today were made during this post-Revolutionary period, and almost all of them were produced in schools, under the direction of a teacher.

“Miss Godchild's First Sampler,”
English print, 1793

A girl generally made her first sampler between the ages of five and nine. This would usually be a marking sampler, intended to teach basic sewing and literacy skills through the stitching of letters and numbers. In a time when household linens were extremely valuable, every sheet, napkin, pillowcase, and towel had to be marked with initials to ensure that it was returned safely from being sent out for laundering, and with numbers so that items could be rotated for even wear. If her education continued at a female academy, the young lady might then make a more decorative sampler or needlework picture. This piece might be part of an exhibition at the school, demonstrating her skill to family, friends, and local dignitaries, and would serve as an advertisement for the school. She would then bring the framed needlework home to be displayed as a sort of “diploma,” testifying to her educational and artistic accomplishments.

Colonial Revival sampler, 1917

Samplers began to fall out of the school curriculum in the late 1830s, as educational reformers argued that girls should receive the same education as boys. By the mid-19th century, they were generally found only in Catholic schools and in some frontier areas. In the 20th century, colonial-style needlework enjoyed a revival among middle-class women, who could purchase commercial patterns and kits to make their own “heirlooms.” It was at this time that collectors began to take a second look at the productions of 18th and early 19th century needlewomen. Virginia Robie, writing in House Beautiful in 1902, noted that the sampler had “not yet become a fad”; it was still lumped in with the fancywork of the Victorians and “mildly ridiculed or completely ignored.” But within a decade, the first scholarly works on samplers would appear, and they would be eagerly sought out by collectors like Alice T. Miner.


Sources:

Early works on samplers include Marcus B. Huish, Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries (1913) and American Samplers, published by the Massachusetts Society of the Colonial Dames of America in 1921. For recent scholarship, the works of Betty Ring, particularly Girlhood Embroidery and American Needlework Treasures, are invaluable.

From Kentucky to Chazy: Anna Ernberg and the Berea Fireside Industries

Advertisement from the Plattsburgh Sentinel

In August 1926, the Redpath Chautauqua arrived in Plattsburgh, bringing a variety of musicians, lecturers, and other entertainers to the North Country. The Redpath Chautauqua was a descendent of the original Chautauqua Assembly, established in 1874 in Lake Chautauqua, New York to combine recreation with religious instruction and informative lectures (if this sounds familiar, it’s because it was also the inspiration for the Catholic Summer School at Cliff Haven). In 1904, Keith Vawter started the first circuit or tent Chautauqua, in which a group of performers traveled together on a set route from town to town, staying a week in each location.

On the fifth day of Redpath’s stint in Plattsburgh, August 19, Anna Ernberg gave a lecture and demonstration of dyeing, weaving, and handcraft. The advertising in the Plattsburgh Sentinel gave no further information about Ernberg, perhaps assuming that audiences would be familiar with her. As the head of Fireside Industries at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, Anna Ernberg was one of the most visible proponents of the Appalachian weaving revival in the early 20th century.

Coverlet given to Alice Miner by Anna Ernberg

Having completed her lecture but with another day to go before heading to the next stop on the circuit, Ernberg and her son Axel spent the following day in Chazy, visiting Heart’s Delight Farm and taking a tour of the Alice T. Miner Museum conducted by Alice herself. As she later wrote of her visit, “It was more than delightful and we are both very grateful to you for your kindness and hospitality.” As someone who was working for “the revival of the Arts of our grandmothers,” Ernberg was impressed by Alice’s efforts in collecting examples of textile art “and arranging it all so true and beautiful.” To show her appreciation, she sent Alice a “kiver” for her collection—a coverlet in the Blooming Leaf pattern, made using the “Summer and Winter” weave, which differs from the overshot in that it produces a reversible fabric, light on one side (for summer) and dark on the other (for winter). The coverlet is made from three panels and is shaped to accommodate a four-poster bed.

Anna Ernberg weaving on the small counterbalance loom
she designed and introduced to Berea, 1912

Born in Christianstad, Sweden, in 1874, Anna Ernberg emigrated to the United States with her husband when she was in her twenties. She lived in New York and taught weaving at Pratt Institute and Teachers College. In 1911 (now a widow with two young sons) she was invited by Berea College president William Goodell Frost to run the school’s weaving program. In addition to the work she did as an instructor, supervisor, and designer, Ernberg was a tireless fundraiser who traveled to major cities throughout the northeast to sell the products of Fireside Industries. She was a popular speaker with women’s clubs, patriotic organizations like the Daughters of the American Revolution, church groups, and art organizations. By 1917, she had raised enough money to fund a new building called the Log House, which held the looms, spaces for finishing work, sales areas, and an apartment for Ernberg and her sons. In 1930, she was chosen by Ida Tarbell as one of the 50 outstanding women in America, a list that also included Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger, Jane Addams, Mary McLeod Bethune, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Amelia Earhart.

Ernberg directed Fireside Industries for 25 years and turned it into a reliable source of income for the college. When William G. Frost became president in 1892, he introduced the free tuition policy that continues today. Students needed to work to contribute to their tuition as well as room and board expenses. He also had learned that coverlets were an excellent promotional tool and were much appreciated as gifts to donors. Selling woven textiles would make money for the school and would become central to the school’s public image.

From the Berea Quarterly, 1912

When Berea College was founded in 1855, it was both coeducational and interracial. However, in 1904 the Kentucky legislature passed a law prohibiting integrated education. Although the college challenged the law and took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, the school lost the case and from 1908 until 1950 (when the law was changed), Berea admitted only white students. In the 1910s and 20s, the supposed “pure Anglo-Saxon heritage” of Berea students became a selling point with potential donors. Many people believed that the isolated regions of the Appalachian Mountains were home to Americans who closely resembled the original 17th- and 18th-century English settlers. These mountain folk, it was hoped, would help to counterbalance the influence of African-Americans in the south and immigrants from southern and eastern Europe nationwide.

An example of the way Berea emphasized the links between
“southern highlanders” and early colonists

Because weaving was so closely associated in the popular imagination with the colonial era, Fireside Industries and other Appalachian weaving programs strengthened the perception that mountain residents represented (as Woodrow Wilson put it) “an unspoiled stock...of the original stuff of which America was made.” These images of the noble mountaineers existed side-by-side with stereotypes of Appalachians as feuders and moonshine-makers, which educators like Frost worked hard to dispel. Mountain folk were only “backward” because of their isolation, he argued; education and economic opportunity would “uplift” them and allow them to take their rightful places as useful citizens.

In an article on coverlet weaving in the south that appeared in House Beautiful, author Mabel Tuke Priestman praised the domestic weaving revival for being “a very important step in the labor movement, as it gives employment to those living in rural districts, who have few interests in their monotonous lives, and saves from oblivion a beautiful craft, distinctly American in its conception.” Anna Ernberg and Alice Miner certainly would have agreed with this sentiment (whether weavers themselves had the same ideas about their “monotonous” lives is another question). Woven coverlets represented all that was good about the past—diligent work, self-sufficiency, thrift—in a form that was aesthetically pleasing. By bringing these pieces into the modern home, collectors hoped to transmit some of the values associated with them into the present day.

Sources:

If you are interested in learning more about the Appalachian weaving revival, Weavers of the Southern Highlands by Philis Alvic is an excellent place to start. For an earlier assessment of the craft revival, try Allen H. Eaton’s Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands, originally published in 1937. Appalachia on Our Mind by Henry D. Shapiro is the classic work on the place of the mountain South in American consciousness. In All That Is Native and Fine, David E. Whisnant examines how the “cultural missionaries” who came to Appalachia created their own version of folk culture.

The Revival of Weaving in the 20th Century

In the same year that the Alice T. Miner Museum opened its doors, a new organization was founded in Chicago by a group of women interested in the study and collection of woven coverlets. While Alice herself doesn’t seem to have been a guild member, she knew at least one of its organizers: Georgiana Long Gunsaulus, the widow of Frank W. Gunsaulus, who shared with her late husband and with Alice an interest in collecting and preserving examples of early textile art.

The founding of the Coverlet Guild in 1924 was perhaps the logical outcome of an interest in the art and history of weaving that had been developing since the early 1900s, and which intersected with a number of other contemporary movements. Alice’s coverlet collection might be seen as an outgrowth of her interest in the Arts and Crafts Movement (evident in the scrapbook articles she saved from the 1890s) as well as her connections to the Colonial Revival. It also brought her into contact with individuals who were attempting to revive or preserve weaving in Appalachia in an effort to “uplift” mountain women—a project that was itself influenced by the Progressive movement and the settlement houses of Chicago.

Tools of textile production on display
at the Hull-House Labor Museum

Proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement, the Appalachian craft revival, and Progressivism all believed in the ability of handicraft to improve people’s lives. Handwork provided a creative outlet and a vehicle for self-expression; it could be a way to counteract the homogenizing forces of industrialization and mass production; and on a more practical level, it might provide income for people (women, especially) whose economic opportunities were limited. Many different crafts were promoted (metalwork, pottery, bookbinding), but weaving was especially beloved by all three groups. It was fairly easy to learn and produced useful goods; it had connections to early American history but also was an important part of many of the cultures from which immigrants came; and it was a craft traditionally performed by women in their own homes.

In his 1904 report for the Bureau of Labor, “The Revival of Handicrafts in America,” Max West recorded the activities of dozens of organizations dedicated to reviving hand weaving (mostly in the southern mountains) and rug making (in New England). All were founded by educated, middle- to upper-class women (many of whom had spent time at Hull House or another settlement house) who came to rural communities and worked with local women to revive their craft traditions. 

Women preparing to warp a loom using traditional
methods, North Carolina, ca. 1910

The Appalachian region was the obvious target for this kind of reform work. Communities tended to be economically depressed and isolated, and life was considered especially hard for women, who lived largely without modern conveniences. But because these areas had been “left behind” in the race toward modernization (as reformers saw it) textile production and other handicrafts had never died out completely. There were still plenty of women in the Appalachian south who knew how to spin and weave, using knowledge and patterns that had been passed down from the early nineteenth century.

Blue Mountain Room, White House

Already in 1904, West reported, “There is a constant and apparently increasing demand for hand-woven fabrics, notwithstanding their expensiveness as compared with factory-made goods. Aside from the popularity of old-fashioned blue-and-white coverlets for decorative purposes, handmade linsey-woolsey and cottonades are coming into vogue for outing and golf skirts, and even to some extent for men’s clothing; and there is also a growing demand for hand-woven linen and other cloth to serve as the backgrounds for art embroidery, etc.” The Appalachian weaving revival got an important boost in 1913, when first lady Ellen Wilson redecorated the White House’s Blue Mountain Room using traditional textiles made by Emelda McHargue Walker, a Tennessee weaver who worked with Allanstand Industries, one of the major weaving centers in North Carolina.

Allanstand Industries product display, 1910s

Women living in rural areas of the Appalachian Mountains were receptive to the idea of producing coverlets and other textiles as a source of income. It was something that many of them already knew how to do, the materials were readily available, and the products could be shipped inexpensively. Perhaps most importantly, it was work they could do at home and was compatible with childrearing and other household duties. Whether women felt the kind of creative satisfaction that proponents of handicraft assumed they would is another story. Most of the time, weavers did not get to decide what they made. They were given patterns and materials by the managers of weaving centers, who designed products that would appeal to middle-class consumers. Weavers felt pride in their technical skills and doing a job well, but it was not necessarily an uplifting, aesthetic experience. Still, in a region where currency was in short supply, weaving provided a reliable source of cash income. 

The founders and managers of weaving centers also hoped that their work would preserve the traditions of weaving. However, the pattens, tools, and materials they used were modern ones, suited for the production of large quantities of textiles for sale in urban markets. Over time, weaving centers tended to shift production from coverlets and other large items to smaller pieces like towels and placemats that required less time and skill. But women did keep weaving (indeed, the Allanstand Craft Shop is still in operation), and the craft centers do seem to have encouraged a greater appreciation for antique textiles, which helped to preserve them and led to the creation of groups like the Colonial Coverlet Guild.

So where do Alice Miner and her coverlet collection fit into this story? We’ll get to that in the next post, when a visitor from the Kentucky mountains pays a visit to the North Country.

Gems from the Age of Homespun: Woven Coverlets and Their Makers

“Wheel of Fortune” coverlet from the
collection of the Metropolitan Museum

The term “homespun” encompasses many different kinds of fabric. When Martha Ballard wrote about of the cloth produced in her household, she sometimes recorded the kind of fiber used (cotton, linen, tow, wool, or a combination) and sometimes the pattern produced, like “check” or “diaper” (a fabric with a small, all-over pattern). Sometimes she noted what the fabric would be used for—handkerchiefs, shirts, towels—and sometimes who it was for (“Cyrus’s web”). It was rare for Martha to include all this information in a single entry. One occasion on which she did was November 21, 1792, when she noted, “Hannah wove a Bed Blankitt for her Self, Tow & wool.”

Hannah had been married on October 28 to Moses Pollard (brother of Dorcas, who had helped her learn to weave) but she was still living with her parents and continuing to produce the goods she would need in her new home. Between the end of October and December 12, when she and Moses officially “went into housekeeping,” Hannah made a quilt, the aforementioned blanket, and at least two “coverleds.” These bed coverings served a practical purpose, of course, but they also would provide an extra degree of comfort and beauty in the Pollard home, while demonstrating Hannah’s skill at the loom.

Detail of a woven coverlet

It was these woven bed coverings—variously called coverlets, coverlids, and “kivers”—that captured the imagination of collectors in the early 20th century. Unlike humble towels, sheets, and handkerchiefs, coverlets were likely to be treasured, preserved, and passed down through the generations. They used simple color combinations (usually white and indigo blue) and geometric patterns to produce striking effects that appealed to Americans who were tired of the ornate furnishings of the Victorian era. To many collectors, the coverlets were true works of art that demonstrated the innate aesthetic sense of early American women. They also served as tangible symbols of the industry and thrift associated with the “age of homespun.”

Overshot weave structure

Coverlets were made on the same four-harness loom that was used to produce other kinds of cloth. As I noted in the last blog post, in its most basic form weaving involves only two sets of elements—the warp and the weft. In plain weaving, the weft yarn goes over one warp yarn, then under the next, and so on. In float weaves, there are also two sets of elements, but the weft goes over or under more than one warp. (Twill and satin are examples of float weaves.) Coverlets use a type of weave called overshot, which also uses floats but adds a third set of yarns to create a compound weave. There is a warp and weft of white cotton or linen and then a supplementary weft of colored wool, which “floats” over and under the warp to create the pattern. Since the width of a loom was limited to the span of the weaver’s arms, coverlets were woven in two halves and then sewn together down the middle.

Example of a weaving draft

Weavers shared overshot coverlet patterns with friends and family as drafts, a form of notation that recorded the way that threads were to be put through the heddles of the harnesses and the sequence of the treadles that controlled the harnesses. Drafts bear a certain resemblance to musical notation, with four horizontal lines representing the harnesses and numbers or other marks representing the threads. Each weaver had her own way of recording drafts which can seem quite mysterious to non-weavers. Like quilters, weavers also gave their coverlets fanciful names—Broken Snowballs, Lafayette’s Fancy, Wandering Vine—which varied by region. In a world of mass-produced goods, the individuality of coverlets and their makers was part of their charm to collectors.

The earliest American woven coverlet that can be definitively dated is from 1771, and women continued to make them into the 19th century, though by the 1820s professional weavers were also making more elaborate jacquard coverlets. As families moved west from New England into New York, Ohio, Indiana, and beyond, they brought the tradition of weaving coverlets with them. In certain parts of the south, particularly the mountain regions of Kentucky and Tennessee, domestic textile production remained an important part of the local economy well into the 1900s. In our next posts, we’ll look at early collectors of coverlets and their relationship with the movement to preserve hand weaving in Appalachia.

Weaving a Social Web: Textile Production in Martha Ballard’s Diary

Martha’s diary

In this post we’re going to look at some of the tools and techniques of domestic textile production through the experience of Martha Ballard, a midwife who lived on the Maine frontier during the early republic. Martha was born in Oxford, Massachusetts in 1735 and married Ephraim Ballard in 1754. They had nine children, three of whom died in a diphtheria epidemic in 1769. In 1777, the family moved to a settlement on the Kennebec River which eventually became the town of Hallowell, Maine. And that’s about all we would know about Martha Ballard, were it not for the fact that she kept a diary for almost thirty years, from 1785 until her death in 1812.

In her diary, Martha recorded of her midwifery and medical practice, kept track of the comings and goings of family and neighbors, and noted the kinds of work she and the members of her household did. Textile production was an important component of this work, from the sowing of flax seed to the bleaching of the finished linen cloth. Although much of this work was done within the Ballard household, it also brought Martha into a network of exchanges with her neighbors. As historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich put it, the production of cloth wove a “social web.”

Drop spindle and distaff

When Martha began her diary in January 1785, she was fifty years old. Her oldest daughter was married, but her five other children were still living at home. Most importantly for the purpose of textile production, two of these children were teenaged girls: Hannah, fifteen, and Dolly, thirteen. Hannah and Dolly already knew how to spin, using the two wheels the Ballards owned—the large wool wheel and the smaller flax wheel. 

Spinning was in many ways the most time-consuming and most skilled element of textile production. The basic idea behind spinning is fairly simple and requires minimal equipment, but to do it well and quickly is another matter. Spinning is the process of drawing out and simultaneously twisting a fiber. The trick is that spinning really requires four hands—one to hold the fiber, one to draw it out, one to twist it, and one of hold on to the new thread. As early as the Neolithic era, the drop spindle was developed as a solution to this problem. 

“A spindle is a weighted stick that can be spun like a top. Attaching a leader of yarn to the shaft, a spinner gave the spindle a quick turn, then dropped it, letting it twist the yarn as it fell. When the spindle stopped, she wound the newly spun yarn onto the shaft and started the process over again.” The spinning wheel was a much later development, and is really just a mechanical device that keeps a spindle in motion.

Walking wheel for spinning wool

Hannah and Dolly would have used a wheel very much like the one in the Alice’s collection to spin wool. This large wheel was also known as a “walking wheel.” The spinner used one hand to turn the wheel and drew out the fiber with the other, walking backwards until she had gone as far as her arm could reach. Then she reversed the wheel, winding the yarn on to the spindle as she walked forward. Flax and cotton, on the other hand, could be spun on a much smaller wheel with a foot treadle, allowing the spinner to sit while she worked.

Regardless of the kind of wheel, the quality of the finished thread was determined by the skill of the spinner and her ability “to draw evenly, maintain the right tension on the yarn, and control the speed of twisting.” The condition of the fibers and environmental factors also affected the finished yarn. Different fibers required different techniques, which also varied according to the intended purpose of the yarn. No wonder, then, that it required 8 to 10 spinners to keep one weaver supplied with yarn. 

Clock reel, used to wind and measure
 skeins of yarn prior to weaving

For the first two years of the diary, spinning was Hannah and Dolly’s main responsibility. Then, in the summer of 1787, Hannah learned to weave. This was an enterprise that involved the whole Ballard family and their neighbors. Her brother Cyrus brought home “the bars & other utensils for weaving” (presumably from neighbors who had borrowed them) and Mr. Ballard spent some time “fixing the loom.” Martha combed flax, measured yarn, and “quilled.” Neighbor Dorcas Pollard warped the loom and another neighbor, Hannah Cool, was also on hand to help instruct Hannah, who completed forty yards of “linning” (as Martha always called linen) six weeks later.

Like spinning, weaving is also a fairly simple process. At its most basic, a loom is simply a device that holds a vertical set of threads (the warp) taut while a horizontal set of threads (the weft) is interwoven with them. If you’ve ever made a potholder with stretchy loops, you get the general idea. By the 18th century, people were using much larger and more complex looms, but the essential idea remained the same. Martha’s loom was probably very similar to the barn-frame loom in the Alice’s collection—a four-harness, foot-powered loom. Treadles or pedals below the loom control harnesses, “each carrying hundreds of heddles with a single thread passing through the central eye of each heddle. After the weaver depresses a treadle raising one or more harnesses, she throws the shuttle through the shed, the open space created between the activated threads. The shuttle carries the weft thread, which is wound onto a quill, or bobbin. After throwing the shuttle with one hand and catching it with the other, the weaver beats the weft into position.” Another harness is activated and the process repeats.

Diagram of a four-harness loom

Before weaving can begin, the loom has to be prepared, or “warped.” This required a good deal of skill and time, which explains why Dorcas Pollard did it the first time Hannah wove. Each warp thread had to be individually threaded through a heddle and tied to the cloth beam at the front of the loom, and the foot pedals tied in the proper sequence. The whole process could take anywhere from 7 to 10 hours, depending on the pattern. 

On any given day, any female member of the Ballard household might perform one or more of the elements of textile production, interwoven with other household duties. A typical entry in Martha’s diary, from October 1789, recorded that “Hannah wove 6 yds, Dolly did house work & Spun 2 Skeins of Linning, Han[na]h 14 knotts Cotten. I quilld & knitt.” Dolly also learned to weave, and over time, the girls took over more and more of the responsibility for supplying the family with textiles, while also making the sheets, blankets, towels, and coverlets they would need for their own homes when they married. Their skills also allowed them to go out and work for other families, earning money that could be used to purchase goods they couldn’t make themselves.

In an era before mechanization, it might truly be said that textile production ran on “daughter power.” As they did in other New England towns, the women of Hallowell exchanged daughters, sending them out to work for relatives or neighbors during slack times in their own households, then calling them back when needed. Martha herself supplemented Hannah and Dolly’s labor with the work of her nieces Clarissa, Pamela, and Parthenia Barton, all of whom lived with the Ballards for a time. By 1795, the Ballard girls and Parthenia were all married, and Martha depended on the short-term assistance of other women and girls—at least, until her granddaughters were old enough to take up spinning, just as their mothers had.

If you would like to learn more about Martha Ballard, check out Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, or the PBS program based on the book. You can also follow Martha on Twitter @Martha_Ballard!