Embroidered blanket

The patterning on this piece breaks all ties with eighteenth-century design motifs. With its classical medallions embroidered in white cotton thread on an indigo blue wool base, it is obviously a handmade imitation of the popular professionally woven Jacquard coverlets of the day. Although the Museum documents prepared when it entered the collection in 1941 listed it as being from New England, the type of blue-and-white doublecloth coverlet that was the blanket maker's inspiration was more typically found in New York State. (For comparisons, see 67.33; 25.127; 1993.369; 1997.343.)
Most coverlet weavers working in the middle decades of the nineteenth century charged between two and three dollars per woven coverlet. The enterprising maker of this embroidered blanket attained the elegant effect of a woven coverlet at a fraction of the cost. The wool for the twill-woven blanket base could have been shorn from the family's own sheep and carded, spun, dyed, and woven at home. By the early years of the nineteenth century, the cotton thread used to embroider the design in economy and stem stitches was being manufactured in factories up and down the East Coast and could be purchased for a few pennies. The end product is a unique testament to its unknown maker's ingenuity and talent for design.
[Peck 2015; adapted from Amelia Peck, "American Quilts & Coverlets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," 2007]