HAND-WOVEN COVERLETS
The collector who has been fortunate enough to make a pilgrimage through
the villages of New England, visiting the antique shops in search of
adornments to the shrines of their hobbies, will recall the occasional
hand-woven coverlet that chanced to be displayed as the background to
the ensemble of odds and ends. But one finds fewer and fewer of these
old-time examples of handicraft. There have been eager but quiet
collectors industriously seeking them out. Nevertheless the collector
has always a chance of coming upon an early woven coverlet, particularly
in those remote quarters where local auctions (occasioned by momentous
events and not merely foregone conclusions) still disclose the hidden
treasures of yesterday and bring them within reach of the moderate
purse.
From colonial times the art of weaving coverlet by hand was practised
wherever wool and industry suggested. The overseas traditions were
faithfully carried out by the housewives of New England, and then
southward. There came to be modifications in the old weaving patterns as
the ingenuity of those skilled in this handicraft developed. Indeed, an
enormous variety of patterns was evolved. Proportionately few of the
very old hand-woven coverlets have survived--precious they are to the
collector of household antiques!--but even these show remarkable pattern
variations. Of course, the time came when machine-weaving supplanted
hand-work, and before long coverlets hand-woven were of the discarded
arts, so far as the New England states were concerned. A few years ago,
however, the industry of making hand-woven coverlets was revived, for
the art had in a measure, fortunately, continued in the Southern
mountains of the country. Many of the old-time coverlets were carefully
copied and hundreds of new patterns also were devised. These later
hand-woven coverlets are, many of them, of great beauty and
intrinsically worth having, even when one can also acquire the earlier
specimens, for the modern hand-woven coverlet is more often than not
indicative of the same artistic spirit with which the colonial housewife
endowed her work.
Blue-and-white is the usual combination in the old coverlets, though
many of them introduced other colors, brown being the most commonly used
after blue. This blue was home-dyed--with indigo--and time has lent to
many of the old coverlets a coloring comparable to that of the blues of
Chinese porcelains.
With the aptitude for determining the details of the fabrics, of which
every woman seems intuitively to be possessed, the woman collector will
in all probability be able to distinguish a truly old coverlet from one
of modern fabrication. In a few instances some unscrupulous
antique-dealer may claim antiqueness for an obviously modern coverlet,
but the discriminating collector will be comparatively safe.
The collector will find old coverlets interesting as hangings,
lounge-covers, and portières, as well as when put to their original
uses. Fortunate indeed is one who chances to acquire a signed and dated
example. Such a discovery leads the happy collector to haunt
genealogical libraries until he has unearthed the mystery of its owner’s
place in history; for in the good old days the weaver was probably the
owner as well.
[Illustration:
Wax-Portrait of Ferdinand I. of Sicily, Italian,
Late 18th Century
Wax-Portrait, Subject unknown, Italian,
Early 18th Century
_Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_]
[Illustration:
_Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_
Model of an American Peg-loom. Bearing the Name of W. D. Fales of
Providence, Rhode Island]
[Illustration:
_Copyright by G. H. Buek_
Handwoven Coverlet in Bed-Chamber of the John Howard Payne House,
Easthampton, Long Island, New York]