Although weaving today has a serious fashion component, it was among the most necessary of craft skills. Colonial America needed clothing, bedding, towels, and farm textiles.
Woven Coverlet, c. 1825–50, Indigo dyed wool and natural cotton, Collection of Sabra Petersmann, Los Angeles, Rachel Gehlhar photograph
Loom, early colonial, Courtesy of Shaker Museum and Library, Old Chatham and New Lebanon, New York, Jennifer Gerardi photograph
Every immigrant group had its weavers, particularly the Scottish, English, and Germans – who fled the Industrial Revolution that literally put them out of work in the 1820s and '30s.
As mechanized production spread here, handweaving also declined. Steam-powered looms and large mills changed the profiles of New England and Atlantic coast towns.
With the beginning of the 20th century, the Arts & Crafts movement – another English import – provided weavers a new aesthetic, based on humanistic working conditions and pride in their finished product.
The years of the Great Depression saw itinerant weavers throughout Appalachia forming groups like the Southern Highland Craft Guild to provide much-needed incomes for families. Weavers (usually men) would go house-to-house, showing their samples, taking orders, and literally living with their customers as they completed their work. Institutions, like Penland School of Crafts, sprung up as places to teach the craft and provide a living wage.
Today artists create nonfunctional textiles, using fiber as a sculptural material. They experiment with spinning, dyeing, and weaving organic objects such as twigs, feathers, and leaves; synthetic, metallic, and natural materials; or computerized and photographic images – truly creating a revolution in American textile production.
Kay Sekimachi, Takarabako IV, 1999, Collection of Forrest L. Merrill, Charles Frizzell photograph
Learn more about Sekimachi here
Randall Darwall on the machine vs. the handmade. Learn more about Darwall here
Gustine Atlas is one of the many talented needlework artists continuing the quilting tradition at Mississippi Cultural Crossroads, producing articles of historic and social significance - Learn more about them HERE
We filmed American Indian Pat Courtney Gold for the MEMORY episode. Purchase the DVDs or view the programs online
See objects from Craft in America: Expanding Traditions, a seven-city traveling exhibition that ran from 2007-2009, and other Virtual Exhibitions
Want to collaborate to make a quilt or mural? Download a lesson plan HERE
Important craft artists are featured in the Book. Learn more
Click to see a list of over 4 hours of video available online
