From Artisan to Entrepreneur: The Impact of Industrialization on Nineteenth-Century Coverlet Weavers
Open AccessThis thesis will examine the transition of the professional American coverlet weaver from craftsman to capitalist. This process occurred over the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, and his evolution from craftsperson to businessperson did not happen universally or simultaneously. Weavers left Europe for America in search of land, opportunity, and freedom and came equipped with a variety of techniques and a familiarity with a variety of new industrial technologies that gave them an early economic advantage as craftspeople in America. These men helped introduce industrial technologies that helped spur on the American industrial revolution. Many of these immigrant weavers positioned themselves in economically advantageous locations and used both their craft and industrial knowledge to maximize their profits through product specialization, dominating local markets, and becoming successful local businessmen in the process. There was no guarantee of success, but these immigrant weavers were often willing to risk failure to attempt to create a better life for themselves and their families. Previous scholars tended to view the coverlet as a craft product created by artisans seeking to retain traditional craft ways in the face of encroaching industrialization. Analysis of archival and material evidence shows that many of these weavers embraced industrialization, introducing industrial organizational principles and technologies into the American interior. By the 1820s, some of these men were never trained as weavers at all but were entrepreneurs with access to capital and a head for business who saw a financial opportunity in establishing coverlet mills that hired other immigrants trained as weavers but focused on management rather than the craft of weaving. This thesis shows that regional patterns of industrialization were present in the early decades of the nineteenth century in parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York when many of the New England cotton mills were still in their infancy, Technologies such as the cylinder loom, Jacquard mechanism, mechanized broad loom, and water and steam power led to the development of modern textile industry first in Europe and later in New England. Many coverlet weavers began working in these early large textile industries as weavers and machinists, using these new labor-saving devices and organizational models that reduced cost and increased profit to establish a new regionally isolated woven coverlet and carpet industry. These geographically- and infrastructurally-isolated residentiary industries were small and have therefore fallen under the radar of most industrial historians. Regional trends in coverlets developed, most evident today in the structure, color, and designs of coverlets. Figured and Fancy coverlet weavers used complex technology to customize coverlet designs to meet the cultural, economic, and quotidian needs of their customers. These earlier regional models of design and industry began to hybridize over the first half of the nineteenth century as Americans moved westward and the once regionalized population began to blend. This homogenization of Midwestern America helped to create a national woven coverlet form characterized by a combination of Early-Victorian geometric and floral designs, European folk motifs, and Neoclassical arrangements. Using evidence found in newspapers, archival documents, interviews, coverlet databases, visual culture evidence, and coverlets found in the National Woven Coverlet Collection at the National Museum of American History (NMAH) and collections and archives housed at the McCarl Coverlet Gallery at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania and the National American Woven Coverlet Museum in Bedford, Pennsylvania, this thesis shows how coverlet weavers and their products represent an overlooked yet important link in understanding American industrialization, westward expansion, and the development of a national Antebellum design aesthetic.
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