Bed coverlets cover history, too, say pair

Weavers start 2-year study

Carolyn Reno (left), collections manager with Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, and Marty Benson, a member of the Northwest Arkansas Handweavers Guild, look over coverlet drafts Dec. 18 at the Springdale museum. Benson and fellow guild member Laura Redford are researching 26 coverlets at the museum to learn more about the way they were made and the lives of the people who made them.
Carolyn Reno (left), collections manager with Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, and Marty Benson, a member of the Northwest Arkansas Handweavers Guild, look over coverlet drafts Dec. 18 at the Springdale museum. Benson and fellow guild member Laura Redford are researching 26 coverlets at the museum to learn more about the way they were made and the lives of the people who made them.

— Two weavers have begun a two year study of 26 pioneer bed coverlets.

While that might sound ponderous to some, Marty Benson of Eureka Springs and Laura Redford of Rogers are downright giddy about it. They’re donating their time to Springdale’s Shiloh Museum of Ozark History for what Benson described as the first in-depth study of Ozark Mountain coverlets.

“I can hardly sleep at night,” Benson said. “Honestly. I love it. It’s history. It’s art. It’s culture. It’s weaving.It’s women’s history and the history of our area.”

The study began in mid-December. By the time it’s over, Benson and Redford hope to have written a book that will serve as a guide for other weavers. Their research will also provide Shiloh with information that can be used when coverlets are exhibited, said Carolyn Reno, collections manager at the museum.

On Tuesday, Benson and Redford were analyzing a coverlet donated to the museum by descendants of Alfred H. and Temperance C. Searcy, who moved to the Springdale area from Georgia in 1859.

“There’s not another one like this anywhere in the world,” Benson said of the coverlet.

Benson said the Searcy coverlet may have been made before 1850 because it’s all wool.

With the industrial revolution, by the 1850s cotton yarn was being manufactured that was strong enough to be used as the “warp” - the yarn that goes in a lengthwise direction on looms. The “weft” is yarn that is woven into the warp at a 90-degree angle.

“If you look at coverlets in other parts of the country, you hardly ever see a handspun wool warp,” Benson said, referring to areas outside the Ozarks.

Reno said the Searcy coverlet may have been woven in Arkansas. It’s possible commercial cotton thread wasn’t readily available in the Ozarks in the 1860s. She plans to examine store ledgers to see if cotton thread was being sold here in the 1860s.

Reno said the making of coverlets died out shortly after the 1850s.

“This is kind of the precursor of the quilt,” she said. “The quilt came along with the advent of manufactured cloth, then kind of replaced the coverlet.”

Examining the Searcy quilt Tuesday, Benson said it probably took two years to make. That includes the time it took to spin the thread from wool likely cultivated from local sheep, then to dye parts of it with indigo and madder, an herb root used to produce a red dye.

“There’s probably 150 football fields length of hand-spun wool in this coverlet,” said Benson. “Most looms that would make something like this were probably the size of a queen-sized bed.”

The coverlet’s distinctive design likely provided a bit of decoration in an otherwise drab, one-room log cabin, said Redford.

“She could have just made it all white,” said Benson. “But she put all this pattern and all this color in just to liven up her house. She had to have discretionary time to do this. This is not the easiest way to put a cover on your bed. In order to create art, you have to have the time to do it.”

The women said the madder probably initially was red but faded to a dark pink after more than 150 years.

The coverlet also left some clues about the weaver, said Benson. Small mistakes were left in the coverlet. Since the loom wasn’t the width of an average bed, the coverlet was sewn together to cover the bed width, but the Searcy coverlet wasn’t sewn so that the patterns matched. That could be because the weaver wasn’t that worried about it, or because winter was coming on and she needed a cover on the bed, she said.

“If it mattered to her, she could easily have made it match,” said Benson. “These are people who had very good skills in a technical craft, which was weaving.”

Redford said such details, which can be documented in the study, will help museum visitors get a better idea who the weaver was.

“It humanizes a hard piece of some kind of evidence,” said Redford.

Shiloh Museum has 26 coverlets, all donated from people in Northwest Arkansas, Reno said. Four of those were donated by the Searcy family.

Benson, who moved to Arkansas six months ago from Keller, Texas, said she couldn’t locate 26 coverlets in all of north Texas. The Ozark Mountains, where her grandparents lived, is sort of the western edge of coverlet culture, she said. Coverlets were common in Appalachia and the northeast, but west and south of the Ozarks, the temperature was warmer and making coverlets may not have been a priority.

Before the industrial revolution, everyone knew how to spin, said Benson.

“Before the Civil War, this was a time-consuming part of everybody’s life,” she said. “It took 75 spinners to support one weaver.”

Benson said she and Redford plan to work on the study at the museum about two days a week. For the first year, they will study the coverlets and weave samples that visitors to the museum can touch. (The weavers wear cotton gloves tohandle the old coverlets).

During the second year of the study, the women will work on their book.

Reno said they don’t know who made the Searcy coverlet that was being examined. Temperance Searcy’s journals indicate she made quilts but they’ve yet to find a reference to her making a coverlet, said Reno.

“We hope people will hear about what we’re doing, and coverlets will start coming out of the woodwork,” said Benson.

Redford has been weaving since 1984. She also teaches weaving and has been involved with the Northwest Arkansas Handweavers Guild since 1985. Redford is interested in American history and has worked with Shiloh Museum on several projects since 1991.

Benson said she learned to weave at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, where she received a bachelor’s degree in art in 1976. She became an active weaver in 1998 when she got her first loom. She has been a member of Texas, Arkansas and international weaving guilds. Benson said she has worked on several historical projects regarding weaving and is currently the leader of two Texas-based studies of Civil War and pre-Civil War patterns and drafts.

Drafts are diagrams that weavers used to create patterns. Modern weavers can use drafts to replicate the designs of 19th century weavers. Shiloh Museum has some historical weaving drafts that Redford and Benson will analyze as part of their study.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/25/2012

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