COUNTERPANES AND COVERLETS
In the early days our forefathers were dependent upon the open
fireplace and during the winter season everyone must wear thick
clothing and provide an ample supply of warm coverings for the beds.
Those were the days of warming pans and heated bricks taken to bed
by both children and grown-ups, and of feather beds, comforters and
patchwork quilts.
Bed coverings in the olden times, and even in our day, have a
variety of names with distinctions sometimes difficult to classify.
Sometimes they are counterpanes, and again coverlets. A _comforter_
suggests warmth and comfort not only for the bed but for the neck.
The _bed cover_ is universal as is the _quilt_.
The patchwork quilt was formerly one of the most familiar and
necessary articles of household furnishing and its origin
reaches backward into the dim and unknown past. It was brought
to the Massachusetts Bay by the first settlers. In cottage and
castle it was known in the days of King John, and down through
the generations its making supplied occupation and amusement to
countless women whose life interests centered in their homes and
household furnishings. Its manufacture may well be styled one of the
household arts, for artistic indeed are the bold conceptions of many
of the designs; while the piecing and the patching provide ample
opportunity for needlework of the finest character.
In the early days the English spelled quilt with a final
_e_--quilte--as did the French. It is a cover or coverlet made
by stitching together two thicknesses of a fabric with some soft
substance between them. This applies to bed covers and also to
quilted petticoats so commonly worn in the old days.
What is a coverlet? Originally, any covering for a bed; now,
specifically, the outer covering. The word comes from the French
_couvre-lit_--a bed covering. The handwoven coverlets of many
beautiful designs, in blue and white and red and brown, are well
known and formerly were woven everywhere.
The _counter-pane_, formerly a bed cover, now describes a light
coverlet woven of cotton with raised figures. The word is a
corruption of _counterpoint_, in allusion to the panes or squares
of which bed covers are often composed. The counterpane was never
quilted.
The _bedspread_ and the _bed cover_ may be considered as one and
the same--the uppermost covering of a bed and accordingly of an
ornamental character in general. The _comforter_ was a thickly
quilted bed cover made of several thicknesses of sheet cotton or
wool prepared for the purpose. This was too thick to be quilted so
it was knotted at regular intervals to prevent the interlining from
slipping out of place. Frequently it was called a "comfort."
There is one other name that was applied to a bed covering in the
Colonial times but which is never heard today in that connection. In
the days immediately following the settlement many a New England bed
was covered with a _rug_. When William Clarke of Salem died in 1647,
in the parlor of his house was a bed with a green rug covering it
which was valued by the appraisers at fourteen shillings. The term
was commonly in use at the time, in fact, as commonly as the word
coverlet. In the probate of Essex County, Massachusetts, estates
between the years 1635 and 1674, coverlets are mentioned one hundred
and forty-two times and rugs one hundred and fifty-seven times while
quilts are listed only four times. These early bed rugs were usually
thick woolen coverings with a shaggy nap.
A never-failing source of accurate information as to the furnishings
and equipment of the New England household in the olden time is the
probate records--specifically, the inventory of the property taken
in connection with the settlement of the estate. For many years
it was the well-nigh universal custom to list, room by room, the
contents of a house and from these painstaking inventories it now
becomes possible to reconstruct in mental picture the interiors
of those homes where lived and died our Puritan ancestors. In
connection with the present subject we learn from these inventories
that it was quite the usual habit to set up a bed in the parlor and
we also learn of the existence of different kinds of rugs used in
the bed furnishings--cotton rugs, English rugs, Irish rugs, cradle
rugs, etc. There were worsted coverlets, tapestry coverlets and
embroidered coverlets. A darnacle coverlet is listed in 1665; but as
darnacle curtains appear in the same inventory it is safe to assume
that darnacle is the name of some long-forgotten fabric. But what is
a "branched coverlet?" Mrs. Thomas Newhall of Lynn possessed in 1674
a green rug and a branched coverlet.
Capt. George Corwin of Salem who died in 1684, had a calico
counterpane in the red chamber in his house. In the corner chamber
was a green counterpane and in the kitchen chamber was a sad colored
counterpane, two coverlets, and a quilt of colored and flowered
calico.
Let us have a look at a few of these wills and inventories. In 1640,
the widow Bethia Cartwright of Salem, bequeathed to her sister, then
living in England, her bed, bolster, blanket and coverlet. It is an
open question if the value of the property equalled the probable
cost of transporting it to that loving sister in distant England.
Mrs. Joanna Cummings of Salem, at her death in 1644, among many
other items possessed a feather bed, flock bolster and a green rug,
jointly valued at £2. 5. 0.
In the "hall" of John Goffe's house, in Newbury, in 1641, were found
"3 bedsteeds, £1; 1 pr. curtains with 3 rods, 18s.; 1 green rugg,
£1. 6.; 2 blankets, 15 s.; 1 bed, bolster and 4 pillows, £4. 10.; 1
coverlet, 10s.; and 1 bed matt, 2s."
The next year William Howard, afterwards the first town clerk of
Topsfield, was one of the appraisers of the estate of Samuel Smith
of Enon, the name by which Wenham was then known. In one of the
chambers he found a "bed, blancits & coverlet" which he valued at
£7. 8. Rather a valuable bed, or, may it have been the coverlet?
In connection with "cobbard clothes" at £1. he lists a "carpitt"
at 15s; and this carpet, curiously enough, he did not find on the
floor but on a table. Joanna Cummings owned a "carpet & table" that
were valued at 7s. 8d. Joseph Metcalf of Ipswich had "a table &
old carpett" worth £1. In the parlor of Governor Endecott's house
in Boston were found a "Table, Carpet & 3 stools," valued at 50s.
William Bacon's "carpets & qushens" were worth £1. 10s. and in the
inventory of the estate of Rev. Ezekiel Rogers of Rowley, appears
the following: "a presse and a litle Table with ther Carpets, £1.
10s."
John Whittingham lived in Ipswich and died in 1648. In the parlor
of his house was found a "Joyne Table with Five chairs & one ould
Carpet, 10s.; one cupboard and Cloth, 10s.; 2 paire Cobirons, 15s.;
two window Curtains and curtaine rods, 6s.; one case of Bottles,
5s.; Books, £6. 5s.; Eleven Cushions, £1. 10s.; one Still, 5s.;"
and perhaps most important of all--"one fetherbed, one flockbed,
two boulsters, one pillow, one p. blankets, one Rugge, Curtains
& valients and bedsted, £12." In the chamber over the parlor was
another bedstead well supplied with furnishings, including two
quilts, a blue coverlet and a trundle bed. This upstairs chamber had
wall hangings which were valued at £2. 10s. and in the room were six
trunks, a chest and a box, containing stores of bed linen, table
cloths, napkins, hose yarn, silver plate and eleven spoons. Two
chairs, four stools, a screen, two pairs of cobirons and a pair of
tongs completed the furnishings of the room. It almost stands open
before us. And those wall hangings valued at £2. 10s.!
Another parlor chamber in a house in Newbury, in which had lived the
minister, the Rev. James Noyes, was more meagerly furnished. Here
the appraisers found "2 boxes, 4 hogsheads, a musket and a gun and
two swords, £2.; a bolster and a quilt & two blankets and a parsell
of Cotton wooll, £3. 10s."
Just one more inventory--the estate of William Clarke who died in
1647 in Salem. The parlor contained a half-headed bedstead with
curtains and vallance which was furnished with a feather bed and
bolster, a straw bed and flock bolster, white blankets, sheets,
and a green rug. In a corner of this parlor stood another bedstead
having a mat, canvas flock bed, sheets, old blankets and a red rug,
and in the chamber over the kitchen was a low bedstead with a flock
bed and bolster, a blanket, a rug and an old quilt.
Here are two kinds of bedsteads mentioned in this house, but there
were other kinds in frequent use at the time: high beds and side
beds, canopy bedsteads, half-headed, joined, cabin, corded, close,
press, standing, truckle and trundle bedsteads and what is strange
indeed, not a single example of these early bedsteads has been
preserved. All have been worn out or destroyed--supplanted by a
newer fashion--and we today can only imagine their various forms and
decorations.
In the New England vernacular, materials for quilts were "skurse"
in the olden times. The settlers, of course, brought all their
furnishings from England and a few years elapsed before wool and
flax were produced here in any quantity. Meanwhile all fabrics were
imported and paid for by shipments of salt fish, furs, lumber, corn,
etc. A brisk trade soon sprang up with the West Indies and Spain and
cotton was brought into the New England ports. Some of the fabrics
in common use before 1650 have names that sound strangely in our
ears. Darnacle has been mentioned. There were baize for jackets,
calico for dresses, linsey woolsey for heavy skirts, serge for
various articles of clothing, coifing stuff for caps, linen for
forehead bands and many other uses, dimity for bed hangings and
petticoats, and a fabric known as "barber's stuff." In time some of
these materials became available for quilt making and at a still
later time the handwoven, home-dyed fabrics were used and some of
these were rudely decorated with tied and dipped patterns or stamped
and stencilled designs.
It should always be kept in mind, however, that geographical
location largely enters into the production and character of the
quilt, and the family that was "well-off" of course would be
supplied more abundantly with furnishings and be less dependent upon
homely makeshifts and the daily practice of household economy. Those
living in the seaport towns, where most of the shops were found,
would be likely to follow the simplest course of fashion and buy
from the stock just imported from England or Holland. The hand loom
was found everywhere but more generally in the country. Weaving
was a trade for men and so practiced, but many a farmhouse had its
loom and every country home its spinning wheel. In the larger towns
the dame of social position or comfortable means would devote her
spare moments to needlework and embroidery, while in the country the
housewives would make pieced quilts or patch the clothing of their
numerous children.
It naturally follows, that the handwoven coverlet, should be a
product of the country rather than the town and usually of the
countryside farthest removed from the influences of the shop and
of English goods. Even today it is still woven in the remote
settlements of Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and judging from
existing examples the vogue of the handwoven coverlet was greater
in New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and the Middle West than in
New England although many fine examples were produced here. The
manufacture of the patchwork quilt as a domestic art also seems to
have reached its highest development in the Middle West during the
first half of the nineteenth century.
The patchwork quilt of New England is known as the "pieced quilt"
when made in the Middle West and more correctly so, for _to
piece_ means to join together separate pieces of like material
into sections or blocks that in turn are united to form the top
of the quilt. The pieces usually are of uniform shape and size
and contrasting colors are blended to form the design--usually a
geometric pattern. These pieces are sewed "over and over" on the
wrong side. To _patch_ means to mend or adorn by adding a patch or
by laying over a separate piece of cloth. The French word _applique_
well describes the patched or laid-on work where the design is cut
out and applied or sewed on, in fact, "sewed-on quilts" and "laid
quilts" are old terms. This type of quilt is found in New England
but infrequently as compared with the "pieced quilt," here commonly
known as the "patchwork quilt."
In early times the pieces were nearly always of a woolen fabric,
the brighter colored cloth being saved for the more central
portions of the design. Every scrap and remnant of material left
from the making of garments was saved and the best pieces of
worn-out garments were carefully cut out and made into quilt pieces.
The historian of the Saco Valley, Maine, relates that a scarlet
broadcloth cloak formerly worn by a Lord Mayor of London and brought
to Massachusetts by a member of the Merritt family of Salisbury,
Mass., after many adventures ended its days as small bits of vivid
color in a patchwork quilt made in Maine. Portions of discarded
military uniforms, of flannel shirts and well-worn petticoats were
utilized and frequently an old blanket would be used for lining.