LINSEY WOOLSEY.
It has often been given as a reason for the discontinuance of home
weaving, that no product of the hand loom can be as exact or as cheap
as that of the power loom. The statement as to cost and quality is
true, but so far from being a discouraging one, it gives actual
reasons for the continuance of domestic weavings. The very fact that
homespun textiles are not exact--in the sense of absolute
sameness--and not cheap, in the sense of first cost, is apt to be a
reason for buying them. Hand-weaving, like handwriting, is individual,
and this is a virtue instead of a defect, since it gives the variety
which satisfies some mystery of human liking, a preference for
inequality rather than monotonous excellence.
Every hand-woven web differs from every other one in certain
characteristics which are stamped upon it by the weaver, and we value
these differences. In fact, this very trace of human individuality is
the initial charm belonging to all art industries, and even if we
discount this advantage, and reckon only money cost and money value,
durability must certainly count for something. A thing which costs
more and lasts longer is as cheap as one which costs less and goes to
pieces before its proper time.
In a long and intimate acquaintance with what are called "art
textiles"--that is, textiles which satisfy the eye and the imagination
and fulfill more or less competently the function of use, I have
learned that certain very desirable qualities are more often found in
home-woven than in machine-woven goods. Something is wanting in each
of the excellent and wonderful variety of commercial manufactures
which would fit it for the various decorative and art processes which
modern life demands. To perfectly satisfy this demand, we should have
a weaving which is not only in itself an artistic manufacture, but
which easily absorbs any additional application of art.
In my own mind I call the thing which might and does not exist, The
Missing Textile. To make it entirely appropriate to our esthetic and
practical needs, the missing textile must be strong enough for
every-day wear and use; it must be capable of soft, round folds in
hanging; and have the quality of elasticity which will prevent
creasing; and above all, it must have beautiful and lasting colour. If
it can add to these qualities an adaptability to various household
uses, it will achieve success and deserve it. These different
qualities, and especially the one of a natural affinity for such
art-processes as colour and embroidery, exist in none of our domestic
weavings, excepting only linsey woolsey. After much study of this
virtuous product of the mountain regions of our Southern States I find
it capable of great development. It has two qualities which are not
often co-existent, and these are strength and flexibility; and this is
owing not only to its being hand-woven, but also to its being a
wool-filled textile--that is, it is woven upon a cotton warp, with a
single twisted wool-filling. This peculiarity of texture makes it very
suitable for embroidery, since it offers little resistance to the
needle, and yet is firm enough to prevent stitches sinking into its
substance--a frequent fault with soft or loosely woven textiles. The
warp is generally made of what the weavers call mill yarns, cotton
yarns spun and often dyed in cotton mills; and when the cloth is woven
for women's wear it is apt to carry a striped warp of red and blue,
with a mixed filling made from spinning the wool of black sheep with a
small proportion of white.
In searching for art textiles, one would not find much encouragement
in this particular variety of linsey woolsey, but the unbleached,
uncoloured material which is woven for all kinds of household use, or
piece-dyed for men's wear, is quite a different thing. In its undyed
state it is of a warm ivory tint, which makes a beautiful ground for
printing, and in my first acquaintance with it, which was made through
the women commissioners from Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia during
the Columbian Exposition, I made some most interesting experiments in
block printing upon this natural background.
One can hardly expect that linsey woolsey will come into frequent or
common use as a printed textile, since the two processes of
hand-weaving and block-printing are not natural neighbours, but this
capacity for taking and holding stains is of great value in
embroidery, since it enables an artistic embroiderer to produce
excellent effects with comparatively little labour. A clever
needlewoman, working upon a fabric which takes kindly to stains, can
apply colour in many large spaces and inter-spaces in her design which
would otherwise have to be covered with stitchery, and in this
way--which is a perfectly accepted and legitimate one--she gains an
effect which would otherwise be costly and laborious.
From the composite nature of this domestic fabric, its cross-weaving
of animal and vegetable fibre, it takes colour irregularly. Every
cross-thread of wool is deeper in tone than the cotton thread it
crosses, and this gives the quality which artists call vivacity or
vibration. Linsey woolsey even when "piece-dyed" has something of this
effect, and judicious and artistic colour treatment would complete its
claims to be considered an art textile.
It is not to be supposed that the weavers themselves can work out
this problem. It will need the direction and encouragement of educated
and artistic women. Taking the fabric just as it exists, it is ready
for the finer domestic processes learned by the women of the South
during the hard years of the Civil War. The clever expedients of
stitchery, the ways in which they varied their simple home-manufactures,
and above all the knowledge gained of domestic "colouring," will be of
inestimable value in the direction of artistic industries. In truth,
Southern women have ways of staining and dyeing and producing
beautiful colour quite unknown to other American women. They know how
to get different grays and purples and black from logwood, and golden
and dark brown from walnut bark, and all the shades of blue possible
to indigo; and yellow-reds from madder, and rose-red and crimson from
pokeberry, and one yellow from pumpkin and another from goldenrod; and
they are clever enough to find mordants for all these dyes and stains,
and make them indelible. It needs exactly the conjunction which we
find in the South, of facile home-weaving, knowledge and practice of
experimental dyeing, and love of practical art, to develop true art
fabrics.
To show what linsey woolsey is capable of, I will instance a material
woven in India in thin woolen strips of about twelve inches in width.
It is what we should call a _sleazy_ material to begin with. The
strips of different colours are sewn, and very badly sewn, together,
and they are also badly woven. Too flimsy for actual wear, they are
simply admirable vehicles for colour, and to this quality alone they
owe their popularity and importance. After being sewn together, the
strips are generally embroidered in a rough way, with a constantly
repeating figure on each breadth. The colour is certainly beautiful, a
contrast of soft blues, and a selection of unapproachable
browns--yellow-browns, red-browns, green-browns and gold-browns, with
yellows of all shades, and whites of all tints, and this colour-beauty
gives them a place as portieres and curtains where they do not belong
by intrinsic or constitutional worth.
If one was intent only upon producing an imitation of the Bagdad
curtains in linsey woolsey, it would be easy to weave narrow lengths
of various colours, and by choosing those which were good contrasts or
harmonies, and embroidering them together with buttonhole-stitch, or
cat-stitch, or any ornamental stitch, to get something very like them
in effect and far better in quality. But it should be the aim of
domestic manufacture to do something which is _distinctive_, and
therefore it would be better to start with the intention of producing
the effect in one's own way. This could be done by weaving the cloth
in full width (which should, if possible, be four feet), depending
entirely upon the warp threads for colour. This, it may be remembered,
is already one of the means of variation applied to linsey woolsey in
weaving homespun dress goods; but in this case it must be carefully
chosen art-effort, using colours which are in themselves beautiful. In
depending upon the warp alone for colour the fact must be kept in mind
that it will be much obscured by the over-weaving of the wool filling.
It will be necessary, therefore, to use far stronger colours than if
they were to stand unmixed or unobscured. Vivid blue, strong orange,
flaming red and gold-brown could be used in the warp in stripes of
about ten inches in width, with two inches of dead black on the sides
and between each colour. The filling must be of one pale tint, either
an ivory white or lemon yellow, or a very pale spring green woven over
all. This would modify the violence of colour, giving an effect like
hoar frost over autumn leaves. As a simple weaving this would have a
beautiful effect, but when a coarse orange-coloured silk embroidery,
consisting of a waved stem and alternate leaves, is carried down the
centre of each black stripe, the simple length of linsey woolsey is
transformed into what would be called a very Eastern-looking and
valuable embroidery.
This is just one of its possible and easily possible adaptations for
portieres and hangings. Quite another and perhaps equally popular one
would be cross-colour upon a tinted warp. In this case the warp might
be ivory white, yellow, light green, or even for darker effects,
claret red, dark blue, dark green, or black. If an ivory white or
light warp colour should be chosen, the cross-colours must be selected
with special reference to the warp tint. A beautiful effect for a
light room would be made on an ivory-coloured warp by weaving at the
top and also below the middle a series of narrow stripes like a Roman
scarf. There should be a finger's depth of rose colour at the top, and
this would be obtained by a filling of light red, woven upon the ivory
white warp. Then should come an inch stripe of pale blue, an inch of
gold, another inch of blue; three inches of orange, then the inch of
blue, the gold, and the blue again, and after that the rose-red for
two-thirds the length of the portiere, when the ribbon stripes should
again occur, after which the remaining third should be woven with a
deeper red or a pale green.
Such a portiere would not require embroidery to complete its effect,
for if the tints were pure as well as delicate, it would be a lovely
piece of colour in itself.
This variety or style of hanging would have the advantage of throwing
the burden of colour upon the wool, and as the animal fibre is apt to
be more tenacious in its hold upon colour than vegetable, the question
of fading would not have to be considered.
These two varieties of artistic homespun can by experiment be made to
cover a great deal that is beautiful and artistic in manufacture, and
yet it leaves untouched the extensive field of plain piece-dyed or
yarn-dyed weavings. Yarn-dyed material always has the advantage of the
possible use of two colours, one in the warp and one in the filling,
but in certain places, as in upholstery, a solid colour produced by
piece-dyeing would be preferable. Linsey woolsey dyed in fast and
attractive colour would undoubtedly be a good material for upholstery
of simple furniture, because of its strength and durability, but it
seems to me its chief mission and probable future is to supply an
exceptional art textile; one which has the firmness and flexibility
belonging to hand-woven stuffs, and can be at the same time beautiful
in colour, capable of hard wear and reasonably inexpensive. I am
tempted to modify the last qualification, because no hand-woven goods
ought to be or can be inexpensive, in comparison with those
manufactured under every condition of competitive economy. And in
truth, domestic weavings are sure of their market at paying prices,
simply because they are what they are, _hand products_.
I have shown in a limited way some of the possibilities of artistic
hand-weaving without touching upon cotton or flax diapers and damasks,
since these cannot readily compete with power-weavings, but I have not
spoken of the difference it would make in the lives of the mountain
weavers of the South if their horizon could be widened by the
introduction of art industries. Only those who know the joy and
compensation of producing things of beauty can realize the change it
might work in lives which have been for generations narrowed to merely
physical wants; but there are many gifted Southern women who do fully
realize it, and we may safely leave to them the introduction and
encouragement of art in domestic manufactures.
NEIGHBOURHOOD INDUSTRIES
AFTER-WORD
I am often asked by women who are interested in domestic manufactures,
how one should go to work to build up a profitable neighbourhood
industry. To do this one must know the place and people, for anxious
as most country women are to earn something outside of farm profits,
they are both timid and cautious, and will not follow advice from
unpractical people or from strangers.
In every farming community there will be one or two ingenious or
ambitious women who do something which is not general, and which they
would gladly turn to account. One woman may be a skilled knitter of
tidies, or laces, or rag mats; another may pull rags through burlap,
and so construct a thick and rather luxurious-looking door-mat;
another may have an old-fashioned loom and weave carpets for all the
neighbourhood; and each one of these simple arts is a foundation upon
which an industry may be built, important to the neighbourhood, and in
the aggregate to the country.
The city woman or club woman who wishes to become a link between these
things and a purchaser must begin by improving or adapting them. She
must show the knitter of tidies an imported golf stocking with all of
the latest stitches and stripes and fads, and if the yarn can be had,
undoubtedly the tidy-knitter can make exactly such another. When a
good pair has been produced, the city friend will not have to look far
among her town acquaintances for a "golf fiend," even if she herself
is not one, and to him or her she must show the stocking and expatiate
upon its merits: That it is not machine-made, but hand-knit; that it
is thicker, softer, made of better material than woven ones, and above
all, not to be found in any shop, but must be ordered from a
particular woman who is a phenomenal knitter. All of which will be
true, and equally so when the demand has increased and it has become a
neighbourhood industry.
[Illustration: THE LUCY RUG]
A golf player hardly need be told how to create a demand for
hand-knit stockings, or how to assist the knitter by advice, both in
the improvement and disposal of her wares; but it should be a
veritable golf player and not a philanthropic amateur.
It is the same with other industries. The adviser must study them,
improve them, adapt them, and find the first market, after which they
will sell upon their own merits.
As far as I know, nothing has been done in the way of improvement of
knitted mats or rugs, although a very beautiful manufacture has been
founded upon the method of pulling rags through burlap. Knitted rugs
have much to recommend them. They can be made of all sorts of pieces,
even the smallest; they wear well, and can easily be made beautiful.
The building up of a rag carpet or rag rug industry is a much simpler
matter, because the demand exists everywhere for cheap, durable and
well-coloured floor covering. In my own experience I have found that
the thing chiefly necessary is to teach the weavers that the colour
must be pleasing and permanent, and to put them in communication with
sources of supply of rags and warp. The rugs sell themselves, and
probably will continue to do so.
The thing to remember when one wishes to be of use to their own and
other communities, is that they must be sure of a commercial basis for
the products before they encourage more than one person to begin a
manufacture, and that the demand must be in advance of a full supply.
Kindly and cultivated women who wish to be of real use to their summer
neighbours will find this a true mission. Their lives lie within the
current of demand, while the country woman lives within that of
supply, and it is much easier for the city woman to bridge the space
between than for her working neighbour. All good and well-founded
industries take care of themselves in time, but until the merchant
finds them out, and interposes the wedge of personal profit between
things and their market--inciting and encouraging both--it seems to be
the business of women in every lot of life to help each other.