This American Jacquard coverlet is from the 1840s when almost all rural households had one of these blankets.
Why are beds important? I know your mind is racing, but I can tell you why the bed was important in rural America during the entire 19th century.
A mother and father slept together there, but it also housed a few kids, too. Moreover, it was the largest piece of equipment and furniture in the entire house.
As the only place a person could get warm, the bed was not only raised a great deal from the draught of the floor, but it was “dressed” with nice fabrics — as nice as a family could afford.
And the bed was not only in the bedroom. Sometimes it was moved into the main, heated room with the fireplace, into a corner with the chimney wall so that the people in the bed could stay warm longer.
Often the coverlets on a bed were given in people’s wills, because the bed dressing was the main decorative feature of the house and had symbolic meaning.
J.U. sends me an American Jacquard coverlet from the 1840s when almost all rural households had one of these blankets.
Quilts were a long time in making, and they were not just wool. These coverlets were both cotton and wool warp and weft — and therefore warmer.
Quilts were highly decorative and bore the name of the maker, place of making and a pattern that would be patriotic and showy.
Weavers who emigrated from Germany, who had learned how to weave on a household loom, took to making these coverlets, on looms called “overshot” looms, meaning that the designs were simple.
When you turn the coverlet over, you will not see the pattern echoed on the back of the bedspread. English and Scottish emigrants learned to weave as part of their daily chores in the “double weave,” which means you will see the pattern echoed on the back.
In 1820, something wonderful came to America that revolutionized the weaving industry, even for rural weavers, and that was the loom invented in 1800 by French weaver Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834).
This loom was the world’s first punch card analog computer (think here of a player piano) where if you inserted a punch card into the loom itself, the loom could weave in the spaces the card told it to weave. A home loom or a loom on the back of a wagon pulled by itinerant weavers could “attach” a card reader to an existing loom, and make it “read” the punch cards.
This was so revolutionary that many households had fairly intricate bed coverlets featuring custom designs, names, dates, eagles, heads of George Washington, images of specific flowers, and all for an inexpensive price, but usually the prize possession of the household when displayed and used nightly on the bed.
There are two important museums in that feature the history of such coverlets, which I particularly love, because the majority of old coverlets are not expensive to buy at auction, and not easily recognizable as the antiques they are in thrift stores.
One museum is the Shelburne Museum, founded in Shelburne, Vt., founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb.
This museum features circus displays, carriages, decoys, coverlets, folk art, in short, Americana decorative art, and features a loom called a Barn Frame Loom.
The National Museum of the American Coverlet is based in Bedford, Pa., features more woven wool and cotton coverlets than quilts, as coverlets were more prevalent. These coverlets are warm. I have often slept under one dated and designed 1840, which is indigo on cream.
The foundation of such weavings is bleached cotton. Then the warp is interfaced with wool, and the weft is the “canvas” for color. Where did home weavers get the colors? From the local plants! This is because many of these coverlets were pre-synthetic colors for textile dyeing and are from dogwood and bloodroot, which makes red; goldenrod, which makes green; butternut, which makes brown; and bittersweet, which makes orange.
Only after the Civil war did home weavers know of synthetic dyes, which first came out brighter and more strident than natural dyes. And the first color to be invented as a chemical dye was mauve.
If you are a weaver, you will understand that a really fine Jacquard coverlet was 2 ply with a “z” twist of wool and the yarn count was 18 by18.5 per square inch. The National Museum of American History has a wonderful example with repeated images of George Washington. Not sure I want to sleep under George, however.
The value of such a coverlet is $500.
Dr. Elizabeth Stewart’s “Ask the Gold Digger” column appears Mondays in the News-Press.
Written after her father’s COVID-19 diagnosis, Dr. Stewart’s book “My Darlin’ Quarantine: Intimate Connections Created in Chaos” is a humorous collection of five “what-if” short stories that end in personal triumphs over present-day constrictions. It’s available at Chaucer’s in Santa Barbara.
