“Husband Every Hour”: Early American Textiles in the Fielding Collection

Warren, Elizabeth V.

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“Husband Every Hour”: Early American Textiles in the Fielding Collection

Elizabeth V. Warren

Description: Becoming America: Highlights from the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection of Folk...

Becoming America: Highlights from the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection of Folk Art

~In the first years of America’s settlement, textiles were often the most expensive and important household possessions. Bedcovers were sometimes worth more than beds, for instance, as shown by estate inventories of the period. Since fabric was produced by hand, usually at home, the process was extremely labor-intensive. Imported fabric was rare and expensive,...

Author

Elizabeth V. Warren

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 2020 The Huntington Library, Art
Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Related print edition pages: pp.109-139

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00280.006

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22046

Chapter subject tags:Folk artDecorative arts, Early AmericanQuilts

“Husband Every Hour”: Early American Textiles in the Fielding Collection

ELIZABETH V. WARREN

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Description: Lone Star of Bethlehem Quilt

Lone Star of Bethlehem Quilt, ca. 1880–1900
Cotton, pieced
78 × 78 in.
L2018.3.2

In the first years of America’s settlement, textiles were often the most expensive and important household possessions. Bedcovers were sometimes worth more than beds, for instance, as shown by estate inventories of the period. Since fabric was produced by hand, usually at home, the process was extremely labor-intensive. Imported fabric was rare and expensive, and found only in the dwellings of the wealthy. And as the raw material was so costly, inventive artists tended to recycle materials.

The beautiful examples of early American textiles in the Fielding Collection reveal a remarkable range of resources and creativity. These works of art were usually created by women, many of whom have not been identified. By closely examining the textiles in the collection—quilts, samplers and needlework embroideries, hooked and sewn rugs, embroidered pockets and pocketbooks, Native American beadwork—this essay presents an overview of needle arts in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, primarily in the Northeast.

QUILTS

Women without means had precious few minutes to devote to sewing. For some, creating a quilt was an expression of creativity—a rare chance to make something beautiful and colorful to enhance their lives. By the early nineteenth century, textile mills in New England were producing a wide range of fabrics for household use, including quilts. Some of the fabric that women used for quilt making was recycled or left over from other uses, including clothing, but a remarkable number of quilts were made from material that was specifically purchased to make a bedcover. These were intended to be used as “best” bedcovers, only put out for visitors, which is part of the reason they still exist today. Everyday bedding, often made from scraps, simply wore out from hard use and the wash, and no longer survives.

Quilts comprise the largest category of the Fieldings’ textile collection, but not the earliest. There are currently thirty-five quilts in the collection, most dating from the second half of the nineteenth century. Many of them were made like a traditional sandwich: a pieced top, cotton batting, and a fabric backing, with stitches running through all three layers to hold the bedcover together. And while the makers of most of these quilts remain unidentified, the artist behind the Lone Star Quilt was very likely Mary Seeds Moon of Baltimore, Maryland.1Mary Seeds Moon was born in England in 1806. She married Edward Moon in 1826 in Baltimore. By the 1850 U.S. census, she was living in Baltimore with her husband, Edward, and their ten children. By the 1880 census, Moon was a widow, and sick, due to old age. Year: 1880; Census Place: Baltimore, Baltimore (Independent City), Maryland; Roll: 504; Page: 651B; Enumeration District: 181, Ancestry.com. Both family history—the quilt was passed down through Mary’s daughter Emily Quail Moon—and examination of the materials and techniques used in making the quilt help to date it to around 1840. Moon used a combination of piecing, designs created out of fabrics that are seamed together side by side, and appliqué, decorative patches cut from assorted textiles and sewn onto a contrasting background fabric, to construct her quilt. She also used cut-out chintz appliqué, a practice that was popular in the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. This technique involves carefully cutting printed motifs from fabric and applying them to a ground fabric. (In the second half of the nineteenth century, the term broderie perse, French for “Persian embroidery,” was used for this method.) These chintz floral motifs can be seen between the lone stars on the quilt top. Often the chintz fabric was manufactured specifically for home-furnishing projects, with designs printed with the intention that they would be cut out and then sewn on a contrasting background. On this quilt, a second chintz fabric has been used as a border for the bedcover.

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Description: Lone Star Quilt by Moon, Mary Seeds

ATTRIBUTED TO MARY SEEDS MOON (1806–AFTER 1880)
Lone Star Quilt, ca. 1840
Baltimore
Cotton, pieced and appliquéd
128 × 129 in.
L2018.3.1

The spectacular mid-nineteenth-century Album Quilt also combines the techniques of piecing and appliqué. Each of its 143 blocks contains a handmade appliqué image of a plant or animal, and each is unique. Many of the blocks have been labeled: an “Alegator,” “Red Pepper,” “Rain Deer,” “Great Eagle,” and “Elephant” are among the plants and animals depicted. Some of the images have also been enhanced with embroidery. It is highly unlikely that the maker of this quilt would have seen firsthand all of the exotic animals depicted, but the images could have been copied from contemporary publications.

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Album Quilt, ca. 1850
New York
Cotton, pieced and appliquéd
87¼ × 74½ in.
L2015.41.220

Friendship quilts such as the red-and-white example shown here are often similar to album quilts and are sometimes known as single-pattern albums or single-pattern friendship quilts, terms that indicate that all or most of the blocks are made of the same design. This quilt, dated 1855, features white crosses on red backgrounds. The signature in each cross indicates either the maker of the square or the person who donated money to have it sewn. While many friendship and album quilts were made to celebrate a particular event, to honor a distinguished member of the community, or to give to a departing family member or friend, others were created simply as an expression of community. Sometimes they were used to raise funds, and people would pay to have their names included on the quilt. Album quilts were also sold or raffled to raise money.

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Red Friendship Quilt, 1855
Cotton, pieced
87¼ × 69½ in.
Varied inscriptions
2016.25.54

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Description: Red Friendship Quilt, detail of inscription

Red Friendship Quilt (detail), 1855
Inscription: “James Dearstyne”

In the nineteenth century, piecing was the most common method of making a quilt. The clever needleworker had at her disposal an almost infinite variety of pieced-quilt patterns that could be devised based on geometric designs. Squares, rectangles, diamonds, triangles, and circles could be combined and recombined in original ways or in variations on an existing pattern. The names these quilts are called today are often no more than descriptive titles or romantic, if unreliable, titles that were created by late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century needlework editors and designers. Among the popular nineteenth-century geometric designs included in the Fielding Collection are Jacob’s Ladder, Wild Goose Chase, and Geese in Flight. Clearly there is great similarity among these designs, and unless there is supporting documentation from a quilt maker, it is often impossible to know what the pattern was originally called.

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Jacob’s Ladder Quilt, ca. 1880
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
Cotton, pieced
73½ × 63 in.
2016.25.52

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Wild Goose Chase Quilt, ca. 1880
Cotton, pieced
80 × 80½ in.
2016.25.56

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Geese in Flight Quilt, ca. 1880–90
Pennsylvania
Cotton, pieced
77 × 64½ in.
L2018.3.5

Quilt making was the most democratic of the needle arts. Fine pocketbooks, samplers, and silk embroidery involved not only a substantial cost for the materials and frame but also the school fees and other expenses incurred in attending a female seminary. In contrast, most girls could learn simple sewing and quilt making at home, and patterns were often passed down through families or shared at community events.

Typically, a quilt maker would piece the top of the quilt herself, but often the “quilting,” the stitches required to hold the three layers of the quilt together, would be done around a frame at a quilting bee. This type of gathering was often an important social event for quilt makers, providing time for women to gather for companionship, gossip, and quilt-pattern sharing. Quilting bees were held in the home or at a local meeting place, such as a Grange Hall or church. Many of the quilting groups had religious affiliations, and it was common for women to create quilts as gifts for their ministers. On some occasions, the party could last into the evening, as husbands and families joined the ladies for dinner. Many of the social functions of a quilting bee are continued today by the quilt guilds that exist all around the world.

Godey’s Lady’s Book, a popular periodical of the nineteenth century, began publishing patterns for quilts in 1835. By the end of the century, magazines and newspapers around the country were printing patterns (often the same ones but with different names) in an effort to satisfy their female readership. The Ladies Art Company, believed to be the first mail-order quilt-pattern company, was founded in St. Louis in 1889 and was soon followed by many competitors. Though quilt patterns continued to be shared among friends and family, and sometimes pattern names can be identified by region, quilt making had become big business, and companies invented mythical “grandmas” and “aunts” to sell their designs.

The Log Cabin quilt rose in popularity in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. This type of quilt is important in American textile history not only because of the sheer number of examples made in the many variations of this pattern but also because it introduced a method of construction called foundation piecing. In this technique of quilt making, individual pieces of fabric (the logs of the cabin) are sewn to an underlying piece of fabric, or foundation, as well as to each other. Frequently, the foundation fabric is the size of an individual block, and the block is constructed by working outward from the center. Often, a red square representing the hearth of the cabin is placed at the center of the block. Typically, foundation-pieced quilts consist of only two layers, as there is no need for batting. There is also no need for quilting stitches to hold the three layers together: most Log Cabin quilts are tied to their backing, although some examples are not.

Varieties of Log Cabin quilts are created by the arrangement of the blocks, which are often composed of half light fabrics and half dark fabrics. The Log Cabin Quilt is a typical example of blocks sewn together to create alternating light and dark diamonds. The Folk Art Crazy Quilt, made by Helen E. Hatch in 1885, is actually not a real “crazy,” in which pieces are sewn together randomly, but combines a Windmill Blades or Pineapple Log Cabin variation center with pieced strips of concentric rectangles. In the Windmill Blades/Pineapple variation, the ends of the center strips are clipped at an angle to create the illusion of motion or to suggest the spiky leaves of a pineapple. The larger rectangles of this quilt do contain some randomly shaped pieces, but the whole has a more regular appearance than a crazy quilt. Quilts made of silk, such as this example, are known as show quilts, as their fragile fabrics make it unlikely that they were ever used as bedcovers. They usually served as throws or decorative objects.

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Log Cabin Quilt, ca. 1870
Boston area
Cotton, pieced
72 × 83 in.
L2018.3.4

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Description: Folk Art Crazy Quilt by Hatch, Helen E.

HELEN E. HATCH
Folk Art Crazy Quilt, 1885
Winterport, Maine
Silk and velvet, pieced
77½ × 82½ in.
Signed in stitch: “Helen E. Hatch’s quilt / 1885”
2016.25.51

For some immigrants, quilts were unknown in their homeland. Unlike their English-speaking neighbors in Pennsylvania, the Amish (and other Germanic groups) did not bring a tradition of quilt making to America with them. Blankets, featherbeds, and woven coverlets were more typical styles of bedding. The quilt-making tradition, learned from their “English” neighbors, seems to have taken hold among the Amish in the 1870s and 1880s, and the majority of Amish quilts collected today were made between the 1880s and the 1950s. The Fieldings’ two Amish quilts (see below) are archetypal designs of this community and among the first styles of quilts made by the Amish. As befitted their conservative lifestyle and their religious prohibition against naturalistic images, the Amish used only geometric designs. Realistic motifs such as flowers, hearts, and baskets could be stitched into the quilt, however, as those stitches were necessary to hold the three layers of the quilt together. The earliest Amish quilts were made of large pieces of solid color fabric (either cotton or wool). By the end of the nineteenth century, these monochromatic quilts were followed by examples with more colors and more complex design elements, although large geometric pieces of solid color fabric were still the norm. Printed fabrics, while sometimes found on the back of a quilt, were considered too worldly to use on the front.

The Diamond in the Square Quilt (sometimes called Center Diamond) is made in the typical jewel-tone colors that the Amish favored for their quilts and for the clothes they wore under their black coats and capes. The fine wool fabrics indicate that the quilt was probably made in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Although the maker’s name is unknown, she stitched the initials “R.S” on the reverse of the quilt. These initials could be the maker’s own, or those of the recipient of the quilt. The fabrics, simple pattern, and initials on the reverse are all typical of Amish quilts made at the end of the nineteenth century and the very beginning of the twentieth.

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Description: Diamond in the Square Quilt

Diamond in the Square Quilt, ca. 1890–1900
Pennsylvania Amish
Wool, pieced
76½ × 76 in.
Inscription (verso): “R.S”
2016.25.60

The Bars Quilt is based on another favorite Lancaster County pattern. Like the Diamond in the Square, it is constructed with a center design surrounded by a narrow inner border and a wide outer border. As this quilt is made of cotton and not the wool usually found on the early Lancaster County quilts, it probably was created either in the mid-twentieth century or in another Amish settlement, most likely Holmes County, Ohio. Holmes County is home to the largest group of Amish in the United States, and their quilts are typically made of cotton. Black and blue were also favored colors in Holmes County at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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Bars Quilt
Early twentieth century
Probably Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, or Holmes County, Ohio
Cotton, pieced
81 × 78 in.
L2018.3.3

Other Germanic settlers in Pennsylvania did not have the same religious proscriptions as the Amish, and their quilts tend to be more complicated. These feature combinations of piecing and appliqué (forbidden among the Amish, as appliqué is considered a decorative technique) and brightly patterned fabrics. The Bulls Eye or Quilt with Concentric Circles is a typical example of this truly joyous expression in quilt making. The bedcover is similar to a group of quilts that were made in a Germanic enclave of Berks County, Pennsylvania, between the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Meticulous sewing skills were required to piece this quilt so that the many diamonds and triangles of the concentric circles would lie flat.

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Description: Quilt with Concentric Circles

Quilt with Concentric Circles, ca. 1870
Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania
Cotton, pieced and appliquéd
84 × 84½ in.
L2015.41.221

Red and white has been a classic color scheme for American quilts since the early nineteenth century. The popularity of this deceptively simple combination, apart from its intrinsic aesthetic appeal, can be traced to a basic scientific reality: the remarkable colorfastness of Turkey red dye. At a time when most colored fabrics tended to run or fade when washed or exposed to the light, Turkey red cotton was known for its reliability. Derived from madder root, Turkey red dye came to Europe from the eastern Mediterranean in the 1750s, hence the name. Producing it was a long and expensive process, and the fabrics dyed with it were correspondingly costly. In 1868, however, a synthetic version of the dye became available, simplifying the process and enabling the production of Turkey red cotton by American mills. One result of this invention was an explosion in the number of quilt patterns created to take advantage of this colorfast fabric. Both the Red and White Garden Maze Quilt and the Lone Star Quilt Top were probably made at the end of nineteenth century, when red-and-white quilts were at the height of popularity.

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Description: Lone Star Quilt Top--Red and White

Lone Star Quilt Top—Red and White, 1880–1910
Cotton, pieced
79 × 78 in.
2016.25.59

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Description: Red and White Garden Maze Quilt

Red and White Garden Maze Quilt, 1880–1910
Cotton, pieced
73 × 72½ in.
2016.25.53

NEEDLEWORK AND SAMPLERS

Few quilts made in the American colonies in the eighteenth century have survived. In all likelihood, they were used up, worn out over the years. A number of forms of needlework from the colonial and early Federal periods, however, have been preserved. The Fielding Collection includes four examples of eighteenth-century canvas work—including a pair of pockets and a worked pocketbook—as well as several schoolgirl embroideries.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “pockets,” as people today consider them, were not part of ladies’ garments. Instead, most women wore one or a pair of fabric bags tied to the waist and hidden underneath the skirt. These pockets served much the same purpose as a handbag, and they were accessed by openings in the side seams of petticoats.2“A History of Pockets,” Victoria and Albert Museum, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/history-of-pockets/. These bags could be pieced of bits of fabric, much like quilts, or embroidered on canvas with a very fine, two-ply worsted wool known as crewel. The pockets below were probably made between 1760 and 1790, when this latter type of canvas work was most popular. They were sewn in shades of red, green, blue, and yellow crewel in the Irish stitch, today often called flame stitch or bargello. A similar type of flame-stitch canvas work appears in a mid-eighteenth-century portrait of the accomplished women of the Greenwood and Lee families.

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Pair of Pockets, ca. 1775
Wool, linen, and cotton canvas
Each: 14¼ × 9½ in.
L2015.41.64

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Description: The Greenwood-Lee Family, detail by Greenwood, John

JOHN GREENWOOD (1727–1792)
The Greenwood-Lee Family (detail), ca. 1747
Oil on canvas
55½ × 69⅛ in.
BEQUEST OF HENRY LEE SHATTUCK IN MEMORY OF THE LATE MORRIS GRAY, 1983.34, MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON. PHOTOGRAPH © 2020 MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

Worked pocketbooks, such as the one shown below, were similar to today’s wallets and were carried by both men and women, although women often put valuables in their pockets. Leather was actually a more common material for pocketbooks, but over the years the needlework was saved, perhaps because of personal associations, whereas relatively few leather examples still exist.3Susan B. Swan, “Worked Pocketbooks,” in Needlework: An Historical Survey, ed. Betty Ring, Antiques Magazine Library 1 (New York: Main Street/Universe Books, 1975), 53, https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15838641W/Needlework. A handwritten note found inside one pocketbook reads:

“Pocket Wallet / Carried through the American Revolution by / Captain Nehemiah Emerson of / Haverhill - Mass. / (Great Grandfather of Sallie / B. Thomas) Wolcott Covington, Kentucky.” The pristine condition of the pocketbook indicates that it was probably not carried in the war, however; it was more likely a courting present from Captain Emerson’s future wife, Mollie Mary Whittier, before their marriage in 1784. The pocketbook was handed down in the family of their daughter Mary Emerson Smith.

Elisabeth Fellows clearly stitched her name on the flap of the pocketbook that she made, although she failed to leave enough room on one line, so the S in fellows is placed below the W. The date 1776 is also clearly worked on the front of the object, but whether this indicates the date that Elisabeth made the pocketbook or a commemoration of the start of the American Revolution or some other occasion cannot be determined. Elisabeth also favored the Irish stitch in a flame pattern.

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Description: Pocketbook by Fellows, Elisabeth

ELISABETH FELLOWS
Pocketbook, ca. 1776
Wool on linen, cotton trim
4¼ × 8⅝ × ⅞ in.
L2015.41.68

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Description: Pocketbook, detail of verso by Fellows, Elisabeth

ELISABETH FELLOWS
Pocketbook (detail), ca. 1776
Wool on linen, cotton trim
4¼ × 8⅝ × ⅞ in.
L2015.41.68

Samplers and silk embroideries made by girls at school are much more likely to have survived than canvas-work pockets and pocketbooks. Until about 1840, when public schools became more common, almost every girl who received any amount of education was taught to embroider linens for her future household, and she produced a sampler to showcase her needlework skills. Often, these samplers were framed and hung in the parlor or best bedroom, but sometimes they were carefully stored away, ensuring that their colors remained bright and fresh. And because samplers were signed by the girls (who usually included their ages and sometimes their hometowns), it is often possible to locate the young makers in family genealogies.

Samplers made in Marblehead, Massachusetts, “represent American girlhood embroidery at its best,”4Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers and Pictorial Needlework, 1650–1850, 2 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1993), 1:131. writes needlework scholar Betty Ring in her two-volume opus on the subject. Nine-year-old Eunice Hooper’s work (below) is part of a group of samplers that were probably made under the direction of schoolmistress Martha Barber,5Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, 1:134. Eunice Hooper was born in Marblehead in 1781. She married John Hooper there in 1799, and together they had nine children. Eunice died in 1866. who most likely designed the work of her young pupils. The instructor might have drawn the design directly on the linen background or provided an image for the girls to copy. Eunice’s work is similar to samplers made by twelve-year-old Hannah Hooper in 1790 and teenaged Sukey Jarvis Smith in 1791, around the time Eunice made her piece.6Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, 1:135–36. All three needleworks feature distinctive black backgrounds and scenes of domesticity and nature. Sukey’s embroidery has the same yellow house that is seen in Eunice’s work.

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EUNICE HOOPER (1781–1866)
Sampler, ca. 1790
Marblehead, Massachusetts
Silk on linen
Framed: 23 × 23½ in.
Inscription: “Work by Eunice Hooper in The Ninth Year of her Age”
L2015.41.65

Mary Craig Hamlen was also nine years old when she stitched her sampler at a still-unidentified school in Augusta, Maine, in 1807. Though needlework from Augusta is less well known than that made at schools in Portland and other towns along Maine’s coast, the town did have at least one prominent girls’ school, the Cony Female Academy.7The Cony Academy did not open until 1815, however, so Mary could not have been a student there when she made her sampler. Mary’s sampler is not as pictorial as Eunice’s,8The Mary Craig Hamlen sampler is similar in design to samplers made by girls at schools operated by the Society of Friends (Quakers). See, for example, the sampler worked by Mary Starbuck in 1808 at Lydia Gardner’s school in Nantucket, illustrated in Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, 1:150. but it does contain the alphabet in a number of styles, along with didactic verses that may have been proposed by Mary’s teacher or parent: “Quickly lay hold on time while in your power / Be careful well to husband every hour / Wisdom to gold prefer, for tis much less / To make your fortune than your happiness.”9The first two lines of verse appear, among other places, in various editions of William Mather’s educational text The Young Man’s Companion, first published in 1681. The last two lines appear in John Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters, 2nd ed. (Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, 1796). Hamlen, or Hamlin, was a common name in Augusta in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so Mary cannot definitely be identified in genealogical records. However, it is likely that she is the Mary Craig Hamlen (1798–1881) identified in Hamlin Family: A Genealogy of James Hamlin of Barnstable, Massachusetts; that Mary Hamlen was born in Augusta in 1798 and died there in 1881. She married Levi Page in Augusta in 1824 and had two children. The Hamlin Family; a Genealogy of James Hamlin of Barnstable, Massachusetts, Ancestry.com.

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Description: Sampler by Hamlen, Mary Craig

MARY CRAIG HAMLEN (1798–1881)
Sampler, 1807
Cotton on fabric
17¼ × 15½ in.
Inscription: “Mary Craig Hamlen Aged nine years. Augusta 1807”
L2015.41.67

The family record sampler, such as the example made by Abigail M. Andrews, below, became popular at girls’ schools during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Abigail’s needlework contains not only the birth, death, and marriage dates of most members of her immediate family but also the name and location of the school where she was a pupil: “D. Warren’s school Woonsocket Falls.” Abigail found room for a decorative floral border at the top of the sampler as well as a number of versions of the alphabet and a suitably poignant verse: “When to my work God puts an end / And hence my soul doth call / May I with joy to heaven assend / And quit this earthly ball.” Abigail, born in 1818, is found in the records of the coeducational Friends’ Boarding School (now known as the Moses Brown School) in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1837. Both she and her sister Lucy, along with two other Andrews girls who are not on the family register, are listed in the Catalogue of the Officers and Pupils of the school, and it is noted that their home is in Smithfield, Rhode Island.10U.S., High School Student Lists, 1821–1923, Ancestry.com. It is possible that by age nineteen, Abigail was a teacher at the school, but her attendance accompanied by her sister and other relatives makes it more likely that they were all students.11Abigail Maria (“Abby”) Andrews married Albert Todd in 1839 in Smithfield and died there in 1871. Rhode Island, Vital Extracts, 1636–1899, Ancestry.com.

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Description: Sampler by Andrews, Abigail M.

ABIGAIL M. ANDREWS (b. 1818)
Sampler, ca. 1831
Woonsocket Falls, Rhode Island
Silk on linen
16¼ × 17¼ in.
Inscription (verso): “A. E. Todd 33 Middle Street, Woonsocket”
2016.25.61

One of the most intriguing canvas works in the Fielding Collection was made not by a schoolgirl but by a Native American. The Niagara Beadwork Hat represents a blending of needlework styles and cultures. The basic hat, called a “glengarry,” was derived from traditional Scottish Highland dress, familiar to nineteenth-century Wabanaki and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people from military uniforms worn by British soldiers in Canada. The Hudson’s Bay Company of Canada imported large quantities of hats for trade with the First Nations. Many of the hats were then transformed with traditional beadwork and moose-hair embroidery into colorful objects that would be sold as souvenirs at Niagara Falls or kept for private use. The example in the collection includes a red ribbon binding and is worked in what has come to be called the Niagara floral style. The sale of hats and other decorated objects provided economic support for the native peoples of the area, as they were particularly popular with tourists in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century.12Getty Biron, “19th Century Iroquois and Wabanaki Beaded Hats,” Historic Iroquois and Wabanaki Beadwork (blog), April 29, 2011, http://iroquoisbeadwork.blogspot.com/2011/04/19th-century-iroquois-and-wabanaki.html.

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Description: Niagara Beadwork Hat by Unknown

Niagara Beadwork Hat, ca. 1850
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)
Beadwork on black cloth and velvet
3¾ × 11 × 6¼ in.
2016.25.5

RUGS

Before the late eighteenth century, the term rug in America was used only for bed or table coverings. The high cost of textiles (in terms of both time and money) kept them off the floors of all but the extremely wealthy. Hooked, yarn-sewn, and other types of homemade rugs did not become popular until the nineteenth century, when fabric for their construction became more affordable.

Yarn-sewn rugs, probably the earliest form of homemade coverings, were used on both the bed and the floor. These were created using woolen design yarn that was sewn through a linen ground canvas in a series of short stitches. Rugs made using this technique are easily identified by the separate stitches on the back.13Anthony N. Landreau, America Underfoot: A History of Floor Coverings from Colonial Times to the Present (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1976), 39. Most of the yarn-sewn pieces would have been worked on a linen, wool, or cotton foundation with needle and yarn.14Tracy Jamar, “A Few Loops of Hooked Rug History,” New Pathways into Quilt History, http://www.antiquequiltdating.com/Hooked_Rugs-Jamar.html.

The Pictorial Hearth Rug, initialed “PS” and dated 1824, is believed to be the earliest-known yarn-sewn rug in America with a recorded date.15Joel and Kate Kopp, American Hooked and Sewn Rugs: Folk Art Underfoot (New York: Dutton, 1975), 23. Although the motifs on the surface—birds, trees, flowers and flowerpots, sheep—may appear random at first glance, they are actually symmetrically arranged around a central wreath. The sheep on the right side of the rug are balanced by what might be a building (perhaps a barn) on the left, and the initials on the left are balanced by the date on the right. These designs from nature and farm life are not unlike the appliqués seen on quilts and needlework pictures of the same period.

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Pictorial Hearth Rug, 1824
Yarn-sewn wool on linen
25 × 77½ in.
Inscriptions: “PS” and “1824”
L2015.41.82

Shirring, another type of rug making, was most popular from the 1830s to the 1860s.16Landreau, America Underfoot, 39–40. Shirring is essentially an appliqué technique that developed using strips, made from scraps of fabric, that were thicker than yarn and could not be sewn through a woven linen or cotton base.17Kopp and Kopp, American Hooked and Sewn Rugs, 28. With this method, the strips were shirred or gathered with a needle and sewn to the foundation. The needle stitches, but no design yarn, could be seen on the reverse.18Landreau, America Underfoot, 40.

The Augustine W. Phillips Yarn-Sewn Rug features a flat background that is yarn-sewn, whereas the flowers are chenille-shirred, so that they have a raised, almost three-dimensional appearance. With this method, according to rug scholars Joel and Kate Kopp, “strips of cloth one-half inch to one and one-half inches wide were sewn down the center with a running stitch. The cloth was then gathered into folds by pulling the thread, after which the gathered cloth strip resembled a fabric caterpillar. These ‘caterpillars’ were then stitched to a base of linen, cotton, or even a rough grain bag.”19Kopp and Kopp, American Hooked and Sewn Rugs, 28. Augustine Washington Phillips was probably the recipient of the rug, not its maker.20Augustine Phillips, born in Hawley, Massachusetts, in 1823, married Hannah Rosina Maynard in 1845. Hannah died shortly thereafter, and Augustine married Maria Nutting in 1851. Augustine died in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1899. U.S., Find a Grave Index, 1600s–Current, Ancestry.com. It is likely that the rug was made, perhaps as a wedding gift, by one of his wives or possibly by one of his daughters.

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Description: Yarn-Sewn Rug by Phillips, Hannah Rosina Maynard

Yarn-Sewn Rug, ca. 1845
Probably Maine
Yarn-sewn, chenille-shirred wool on linen
54½ × 63 in.
Inscription: “AUGUSTINE. W. PHILLIPS”
L2015.41.83

Bias shirring, the technique used to make the Flower Basket Rug, is even more complicated and therefore rarely found in American rugs. This style of rug is created with an appliqué technique using fabric strips cut on the bias (at a forty-five-degree angle to the fabric’s warp and weft) and stitched lengthwise down the center of the strip to a ground fabric. The strips are closely sewn, side by side, with the edges folded up to create the pile, creating a wavy look in the design. Dating from 1820 to 1840, bias shirring is the earliest and most challenging of the shirring techniques.21“The First Exhibition of Rare Early-American Sewn and Hooked Rugs at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg to Open in September 2018,” press release, ArtfixDaily, July 30, 2018, http://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/4025-the-first-exhibition-of-rare-early-american-sewn-and-hooked-rugs-.

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Flower Basket Rug, 1810–30
New England
Bias-shirred and vegetable-dyed wool on linen
33½ × 66½ in.
L2015.41.81

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Flower Basket Rug (detail, recto)
Illustration of the bias-shirring technique of rug making. Note the white stitches that hold the brown strip of irregularly edged cloth to the rug’s beige linen foundation.

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Flower Basket Rug (detail, verso)
Verso showing the stitches that affix the strips of fabric, like the one shown above, to the rug foundation.

The Geometric Hearth Rug was also created using both yarn-sewing and shirring techniques. The long, narrow shape of this rug indicates that it was made to be placed in front of a hearth during the summer months. It was passed down with an attribution to Mary Peters Hewins and the supposition that “J. Hewins,” written in brown ink on the back of the rug, refers to her husband, James Hewins.22Dr. James Hewins, born in Sharon, Massachusetts, in 1782, was an 1804 graduate of Harvard College. He married Mary Peters in 1814 in Medfield, Massachusetts, and died there in 1846 from complications of disease. The couple had two sons, and Mary died in Medfield in 1876. “Dr James Hewins,” FindaGrave.com, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90970483.

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Description: Geometric Hearth Rug by Hewins, Mary Peters

ATTRIBUTED TO MARY PETERS HEWINS (1794–1876)
Geometric Hearth Rug, ca. 1800
Norfolk County, Massachusetts
Yarn and shirred wool on linen
34 × 70 in.
Inscription (verso): “J. Hewins”
L2015.41.84

The colors of this rug were probably derived from natural sources, based on recipes for dyeing fabric and yarn at home. Many of these materials would have been locally available, but some came through channels of established trade. The red, for example, was likely derived from madder, mentioned above. This dye was made from the roots of a plant cultivated by the Dutch in Zeeland but was also propagated in the United States. Indigo, probably used for the blue, came not only from Bengal, the East Indies, and South America but also (with greater impurities) from the Carolinas and New Orleans.23Nina Fletcher Little, Floor Coverings in New England before 1850 (Sturbridge, Mass.: Old Sturbridge Village, 1967), 35. Much of the beauty of this rug derives from its simplicity. The hand-drawn semicircles and six-leaved flowers are imprecise yet charming. Two similar geometric hearth rugs of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century exist (one is in the collection of Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts), and both are believed to have been made in New England.24Little, Floor Coverings, fig. 35; Landreau, America Underfoot, 39.

These evocative examples of quilts, embroideries, samplers, and rugs of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America were more than simply useful everyday objects. They were expressions of beauty in the lives of women who frequently had no other socially acceptable outlet for their creativity. Whether made as a gift for a loved one, or as a means to bring color and joy in the home, the textiles presented here went far beyond necessity. They are truly works of art.

Elizabeth V. Warren is an author, collector, independent curator, and leading authority on textiles and folk art.

1 Mary Seeds Moon was born in England in 1806. She married Edward Moon in 1826 in Baltimore. By the 1850 U.S. census, she was living in Baltimore with her husband, Edward, and their ten children. By the 1880 census, Moon was a widow, and sick, due to old age. Year: 1880; Census Place: Baltimore, Baltimore (Independent City), Maryland; Roll: 504; Page: 651B; Enumeration District: 181, Ancestry.com. »

2 “A History of Pockets,” Victoria and Albert Museum, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/history-of-pockets/. »

3 Susan B. Swan, “Worked Pocketbooks,” in Needlework: An Historical Survey, ed. Betty Ring, Antiques Magazine Library 1 (New York: Main Street/Universe Books, 1975), 53, https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15838641W/Needlework. »

4 Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers and Pictorial Needlework, 1650–1850, 2 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1993), 1:131. »

5 Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, 1:134. Eunice Hooper was born in Marblehead in 1781. She married John Hooper there in 1799, and together they had nine children. Eunice died in 1866. »

6 Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, 1:135–36. »

7 The Cony Academy did not open until 1815, however, so Mary could not have been a student there when she made her sampler. »

8 The Mary Craig Hamlen sampler is similar in design to samplers made by girls at schools operated by the Society of Friends (Quakers). See, for example, the sampler worked by Mary Starbuck in 1808 at Lydia Gardner’s school in Nantucket, illustrated in Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, 1:150. »

9 The first two lines of verse appear, among other places, in various editions of William Mather’s educational text The Young Man’s Companion, first published in 1681. The last two lines appear in John Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters, 2nd ed. (Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, 1796). Hamlen, or Hamlin, was a common name in Augusta in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so Mary cannot definitely be identified in genealogical records. However, it is likely that she is the Mary Craig Hamlen (1798–1881) identified in Hamlin Family: A Genealogy of James Hamlin of Barnstable, Massachusetts; that Mary Hamlen was born in Augusta in 1798 and died there in 1881. She married Levi Page in Augusta in 1824 and had two children. The Hamlin Family; a Genealogy of James Hamlin of Barnstable, Massachusetts, Ancestry.com. »

10 U.S., High School Student Lists, 1821–1923, Ancestry.com. »

11 Abigail Maria (“Abby”) Andrews married Albert Todd in 1839 in Smithfield and died there in 1871. Rhode Island, Vital Extracts, 1636–1899, Ancestry.com. »

12 Getty Biron, “19th Century Iroquois and Wabanaki Beaded Hats,” Historic Iroquois and Wabanaki Beadwork (blog), April 29, 2011, http://iroquoisbeadwork.blogspot.com/2011/04/19th-century-iroquois-and-wabanaki.html. »

13 Anthony N. Landreau, America Underfoot: A History of Floor Coverings from Colonial Times to the Present (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1976), 39. »

14 Tracy Jamar, “A Few Loops of Hooked Rug History,” New Pathways into Quilt History, http://www.antiquequiltdating.com/Hooked_Rugs-Jamar.html. »

15 Joel and Kate Kopp, American Hooked and Sewn Rugs: Folk Art Underfoot (New York: Dutton, 1975), 23. »

16 Landreau, America Underfoot, 39–40. »

17 Kopp and Kopp, American Hooked and Sewn Rugs, 28. »

18 Landreau, America Underfoot, 40. »

19 Kopp and Kopp, American Hooked and Sewn Rugs, 28. »

20 Augustine Phillips, born in Hawley, Massachusetts, in 1823, married Hannah Rosina Maynard in 1845. Hannah died shortly thereafter, and Augustine married Maria Nutting in 1851. Augustine died in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1899. U.S., Find a Grave Index, 1600s–Current, Ancestry.com. »

21 “The First Exhibition of Rare Early-American Sewn and Hooked Rugs at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg to Open in September 2018,” press release, ArtfixDaily, July 30, 2018, http://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/4025-the-first-exhibition-of-rare-early-american-sewn-and-hooked-rugs-. »

22 Dr. James Hewins, born in Sharon, Massachusetts, in 1782, was an 1804 graduate of Harvard College. He married Mary Peters in 1814 in Medfield, Massachusetts, and died there in 1846 from complications of disease. The couple had two sons, and Mary died in Medfield in 1876. “Dr James Hewins,” FindaGrave.com, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90970483. »

23 Nina Fletcher Little, Floor Coverings in New England before 1850 (Sturbridge, Mass.: Old Sturbridge Village, 1967), 35. »

24 Little, Floor Coverings, fig. 35; Landreau, America Underfoot, 39. »

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