Silk Bedcoverings in the Early Chesapeake Region:

Interpreting Documentary Evidence

 

by

Gloria Seaman Allen

 

 

 

 

Elite and aspiring classes of the early Chesapeake region acquired imported silk coverings for their bedsteads. Described by estate appraisers as silk [bed] rugs or quilts, these bedcovers were a luxurious alternative to the more usual rugs of wool pile and quilts of woolen or worsted materials.

 

The Gunston Hall Plantation class-defined database of 325 Virginia and Maryland probate inventories, recorded between 1740 and 1810, provides evidence for the use of silk bedcoverings in the early Chesapeake region. Silk rugs, which account for more than 15 percent of the recorded bed rugs, retained their popularity up until the Revolution. Several estate appraisers described them as “old” as early as 1745, thus suggesting an earlier entry date. By 1780, silk rugs, and bed rugs in general, had lost favor with the elite.

 

Silk quilts first appear in the Gunston Hall database in 1751. Never as numerous as silk rugs in the 1740-1810 sample, silk quilts account for only 4 percent of the quilts recorded. They peaked in popularity during the 1750s and 1760s. After the Revolution, silk quilts, like silk rugs, lost favor to light weight, washable quilts and counterpanes made from imported, inexpensive printed linens and cottons.

 

Textile historians, working with Chesapeake probate inventories, have speculated on the appearance of silk bed rugs as none are known to have survived. The construction of the few extant domestic and imported woolen rugs offers few clues. Rare eighteenth-century “whole cloth” silk quilts and quilts pieced from different silk materials support descriptors occasionally found in documentary references.

 

 

 

Gloria Seaman Allen received her Ph.D. in American Studies with concentrations in material culture and folk life from George Washington University. Her dissertation explored the roles of slave women in cloth production on large plantations in the Chesapeake region. She has written and lectured extensively on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century textiles and textile workers from Maryland and Virginia. Recent works include the book, A Maryland Album: Quiltmaking Traditions, 1634-1934, the published paper “Slaves As Textile Artisans: Documentary Evidence for the Chesapeake Region,” in Uncoverings 2001, and the article“ Needlework Education in Antebellum Alexandria,” in The Magazine Antiques. From 1980 to 1990 she served as curator and then director of the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington, D.C.