Sisters at the Loom: The Baer Family Legacy

The drafts that sparked this exhibition came to light in early 2022 when Lisa McCown (Senior Special Collections Assistant at Washington and Lee University) showed them to Frances Richardson.  They are part of a collection of papers pertaining to the Baer family who settled in the Panther Gap area of Rockbridge County in the late eighteenth century.

There are 21 drafts written in a variety of formats unfamiliar to modern weavers.  It was thrilling to think that if we could unlock the code we could move from the realm of speculation and assumption about nineteenth century weaving practices to evidence.  We would know exactly what kind of fabrics were being woven in Rockbridge County homes in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

Mary Meigs Atwater’s book The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving, published in 1928 has a good description how to interpret the old notation for modern use. Using it revealed the threading patterns of the old drafts.  But the nineteenth century weavers had so much intrinsic knowledge that the old drafts failed to note other vital information needed to create cloth, such as the way the treadles are tied to the shafts, and the order in which to use the treadles, and what yarns to use.

Gay McGeary, textile historian and weaver, generously shared her expertise gained from decades of careful study and provided a list of the different weave structures and drawdowns – diagrams of what the fabric will look like.  Some of these weave structures can be found on her website Southern Counterpanes.

An informal talk given to the weavers’ group of Central Virginia Fiber Guild’s weavers’ group in September 2022 generated a lot of excitement about the idea of weaving samples from the drawdowns.  Work began to recreate the fabrics that Mary, Anna, and Rachel knew.

Gay McGeary’s original description of the weaves represented by the drafts:

Drafts 2, 3, 7, 9, 14, and 20 for overshot or floatwork designs, and drafts 10, 11, 12 and 18 for counterpane and table linen weaves have pinholes in them.  This is exciting evidence that the drafts were not just collected but used. Weavers would pin the drafts up on the loom and use a pin to keep track of their threading.

There were thirteen volunteer weavers, twelve are members of either the Central Virginia Fiberarts Guild or the Handweavers Guild of the New River Valley , or both, and one is a local professional handweaver. The group represents various levels of interest and expertise, from historians and weaving teachers well-versed in historic techniques to those who were interested in learning new techniques and expanding their knowledge, to those diverting their attention from their regular weaving to join in the project. 

The samples as woven come close to what the originals might have looked like but are not exact reproductions. Except for one tiny scrap, we have no actual textiles from this collection so we can’t be exactly sure how each draft would have been woven. There are no notes on the drafts indicating what yarns were used. However, using knowledge of other historic textiles from the period and written evidence we were able to approximate the originals.

Overshot or floatwork coverlets were woven using a single-ply fine cotton yarn, usually undyed, for the plain-woven ground. This might have been handspun but by the time the Baers were weaving was more likely a factory spun yarn bought from the store. The colored pattern weft was a dyed handspun single-ply wool yarn.

Entries from the daybook of Wise’s, the general store at Panther Gap, show us that the Baers and their neighbors most often bought No. 9 cotton yarn. This would have had 7560 yards to the pound and been set at 30 - 50 threads to the inch, perfect for the weaving of coverlets. The daybook also shows them buying indigo, madder and alum. Indigo is the dark blue most often associated with nineteenth century coverlets, madder mordanted with alum renders a crimson red. While many old coverlets display a surprising variety of colors, we stuck mostly to the blue for our samples because of the evidence from Wise’s.

The counterpane weaves would most likely have been woven from the No. 9 yarn also.  The table linens may have been woven in flax linen or cotton.

For our project we used 20/2 unbleached, unmercerised (mercerization, a process that gives cotton yarn a lustrous finish, was not available at the time of the drafts) cotton yarn for the ground of the overshot designs and for the counterpane drafts. This size of yarn is equivalent to a No. 10 yarn, but it is a two-ply yarn. Single-ply yarn is hard to find now. 20/2 is readily available and makes a good substitute. The wool weft yarns were a variety of appropriately sized yarns, some two-ply, some single.

Frances Richardson Demonstrates Loom from Washington and Lee News on Vimeo.