THE collector who has been fortunate enough to make a pilgrimage through the villages of New England, visiting the antique shops in search of adornments to the shrines of their hobbies, will recall the occasional hand-woven coverlet that chanced to be displayed as the background to the ensemble of odds and ends. But one finds fewer and fewer of these old-time examples of handicraft. There have been eager but quiet collectors industriously seeking them out. Nevertheless the collector has always a chance of coming upon an early woven coverlet, particularly in those remote quarters where local auctions (occasioned by momentous events and not merely foregone conclusions) still disclose the hidden treasures of yesterday and bring them within reach of the moderate purse.

From colonial times the art of weaving coverlet by hand was practised wherever wool and industry suggested. The overseas traditions were faithfully carried out by the housewives of New England, and then southward. There came to be modifications in the old weaving patterns as the ingenuity of those skilled in this handicraft developed. Indeed, an enormous variety of patterns was evolved. Proportionately few of the very old hand-woven coverlets have survived—precious they are to the collector of household antiques!—but even these show remarkable pattern variations. Of course, the time came when machine-weaving supplanted hand-work, and before long coverlets hand-woven were of the discarded arts, so far as the New England states were concerned. A few years ago, however, the industry of making hand-woven coverlets was revived, for the art had in a measure, fortunately, continued in the Southern mountains of the country. Many of the old-time coverlets were carefully copied and hundreds of new patterns also were devised. These later hand-woven coverlets are, many of them, of great beauty and intrinsically worth having, even when one can also acquire the earlier specimens, for the modern hand-woven coverlet is more often than not indicative of the same artistic spirit with which the colonial housewife endowed her work.

Blue-and-white is the usual combination in the old coverlets, though many of them introduced other colors, brown being the most commonly used after blue. This blue was home-dyed—with indigo—and time has lent to many of the old coverlets a coloring comparable to that of the blues of Chinese porcelains.

With the aptitude for determining the details of the fabrics, of which every woman seems intuitively to be possessed, the woman collector will in all probability be able to distinguish a truly old coverlet from one of modern fabrication. In a few instances some unscrupulous antique-dealer may claim antiqueness for an obviously modern coverlet, but the discriminating collector will be comparatively safe.

The collector will find old coverlets interesting as hangings, lounge-covers, and portiÈres, as well as when put to their original uses. Fortunate indeed is one who chances to acquire a signed and dated example. Such a discovery leads the happy collector to haunt genealogical libraries until he has unearthed the mystery of its owner’s place in history; for in the good old days the weaver was probably the owner as well.