Under the Coverlets

QUESTION: I’ve long admired the colorful coverlets that are often on display in museum gift shops. Recently, I saw an exhibit of them at a museum in Indiana. The variety was astonishing. I know they were done on a special kind of loom, but I forget what it was called. Can you tell me more about how these coverlets were made and a bit about their history?

ANSWER: Coverlets originated in Europe. Early ones, woven on a four-harness type loom, didn’t have complex patterns like those made in the mid 19th century in the United States. Their unique designs were made possible by the invention of the “Jacquard” loom.

Household weavers usually women, produced these decorative and warm bed covers. They created simple but visually exciting geometric overshot coverlets. Complex, figural designs were more difficult to produce alone on the same loom. That changed in 1806 when Joseph Marie Jacquard of France invented a mechanical attachment that could be attached to most looms by professional male weavers. A series of punched cards  guided the raising and lowering of the warp threads to form complex designs. Repeated motifs could be endlessly varied and re-combined. Floral designs, birds, simple buildings and stars were common, with a central section usually framed by a border along the top, sides, and bottom. Many Jacquard coverlet weavers "signed" and dated their textiles on the decorative corner blocks at the bottom corners.

The Jacquard attachment first appeared in America in the early 1820s, probably by one of the many German, English and French hand weavers who had immigrated from their native countries in Europe. These immigrant weavers tended to settle in areas with populations of their own ethnic group and near sources of good quality wool. Many brought some type of Jacquard attachment or at least the experience to use one. Some even developed their own devices based on Jacquard's idea and patented them in the U.S.

The earliest American Jacquard coverlets appeared in New York and Pennsylvania in the late 1820s. As weavers saturated the market in the Eastern states, and weaving became more mechanized and moved into a factory setting, many weavers moved westward into Ohio and Indiana, and eventually to Illinois, looking for new markets as well as farmland. Raw wool and commercially spun yarns as well as natural and synthetic dyestuffs needed for weaving could easily be obtained throughout the state. The weavers settled in or near agrarian communities among people of shared backgrounds and familiar with folk motifs and designs used in coverlets, primarily those from Germany, France and England. The weavers made lasting contributions to the communities in which they settled, opening businesses and promoting weaving; perhaps most importantly, they brought a touch of color and technical design to an expanding 19th-century population on the western frontier.

Jacquard weavers derived the patterns and motifs they used from well-known folk traditions of Western Europe. The designs of most Illinois coverlets can be traced back to Ohio and Pennsylvania coverlets. The center field patterns were either a large, repeated symmetrical motif on two-piece ones or a centered medallion on single-width coverlets. Floral motifs appeared most frequently, in the Four Lilies and Sun-burst, Four Roses, Octagonal Four Roses, Four Leaves and Four Acorns, and Four Bellflowers patterns. Star and Sunburst designs were also common.

Illinois Jacquard coverlets, like their Pennsylvania counterparts, had borders along each side and the bottom. Popular traditional Germanic motifs include the distelfink, or thistle finch, and Grapevine. A corner block or name line identifies the weaver, his location, and usually the year of production.

Typically, weavers produced cotton coverlets for weddings and births. Wedding or bride coverlets or blankets were required items in a young woman’s hope chest. Starting around 1825, major towns had a resident weaver whose job it was to make blankets and accept work on commission. The weaver may have had an apprentice and the weaver’s loom was the site of his/her business dealings. Coverlets were double woven and produced with wool and imported indigo blue and madder red or brown dyes. A traditional early 19th-century woven coverlet would cost the buyer between $5 and $15. Coverlets were much more commonplace than quilts from about 1823 to the end of the Civil War in 1865.

Learn more about Jacquard coverlet and rug weaving by reading "Weaving their Way Into History" in The Antiques Almanac. This is the story of a family who has kept Jacquard coverlet weaving alive in Pennsylvania.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the early 20th century in the Fall 2018 Edition, "20th Century Ltd.," online now.

Simply Elegant Find

QUESTION: Some time ago, I purchased two wall pockets decorated with a matte green glaze in an antique shop while on a routine antiquing foray. Each has the word “Teco” stamped on the bottom along with a number. I have these hanging in my kitchen, but know little about them. Can you tell me anything?

ANSWER: You’ve stumbled on a real find. What you have are good examples of what’s known as Teco Ware, a type of art pottery produced in the beginning of the 20th century. While pieces originally sold for $2 to $5, none sold for more than $30 because the maker’s goal was to produce something of beauty that the average person could afford.

The Teco Pottery began in 1879 when attorney William Day Gates started the Spring Valley Tile Works in Terra Cotta, Illinois, to make drain pipe. But his goal changed after visiting the World's Columbian Exposition in nearby Chicago where he viewed exhibits of new matte glazes, produced by French potters. After his factory was nearly destroyed in 1887, he decided to rebuild, naming it the American Terra Cotta and Ceramic Company. When it reopened, he began working on an art pottery line after conducting experiments using local clays. In 1895, Gates registered the Teco trademark, deriving the name from the first two letters of his company's name, the Terra Cotta & Ceramic Company. He introduced a line of art pottery in 1899.

He derived his pottery shapes from line and color rather than elaborate decoration. While he created most of the 500 shapes he offered by 1911, many of the remaining Teco designs came from several Chicago architects that practiced the Prairie School style, including Frank Lloyd Wright. They had rejected the revival styles of American architecture of the 19th century in favor of using wood, stone and clay in simplicity of design. Ornamentation merged gracefully with the form. By 1923, the number of shapes had increased to more than 10,000.

Gates’ son, Major Gates, a ceramic engineer, invented a pressing machine and tunnel kiln, and also a glaze spraying apparatus called a pulischrometer to make production more efficient. In 1918, they acquired Indianapolis Terra Cotta Company. And the following year, opened a branch in Minneapolis.

Teco started making their green architectural vases in 1901, well before other art potters in the country produced similar wares. That’s why Teco vases are so valuable today. Gates produced his pottery from clays in Illinois and Indiana, and forms ranged from organic to architectural to geometric.

Teco pottery comes in hundreds of shapes, all cast from molds. Even exotic shapes that look handformed aren’t unique. The type of shape directly affects the value, with scarcer taller shapes more valuable. Gates marked the bottom of each of his pieces with a large “T” followed by the letters “ECO” and incised or stamped the shape number below it.

Gates’ goal was that every American home should have at least one piece of Teco ware. He believed that good design was as critical as the quality of materials and workmanship. So while some of Teco's more interesting pieces had at least some hand finishing, all of the pieces started with modern production techniques, including molds and power glaze sprayers.

Although Gates commercially introduced his line of Teco art pottery to the public in 1902, mass marketing of his products didn't really take effect until 1904. The event was the St. Louis World's Fair, where he exhibited vases, planters and other wares.

Gates exhibited art pottery with a green microcrystalline glaze which received many awards. It would also be the only glaze he used for several years. And although he introduced glazes in other colors–-including shades of yellow and gold, brown, cream, gray, orange, maroon, blue, gray, blue and purple—in 1909, none were as popular as those in various shades of green.

The most desirable pieces have been enhanced with a charcoal overglaze. Decorators used this secondary charcoal glaze to emphasize the negative space in embossed decoration or to highlight the detail found. in pieces with attached handles. Pieces with lowlights, or those that are mostly charcoal black are particularly striking.

Teco's organic pieces, an aesthetic blend of Art Nouveau and Prairie School featuring leaf and floral motifs, are more interesting, and as such, command higher prices than the geometric ones. The finest examples feature details such as swirling tendril and whiplash handles and/or embossed designs.

The typical Teco vase sold for $2-$5, while larger cost $7-$20. Today, that $2-$5 vase sells for a few hundred dollars, with fine examples commanding several thousand dollars. Major pieces that feature considerable hand finishing fetch anywhere from $20,000 to$100,000. But the majority of Teco vases and bowls sell for $500 to $2,000. However, there are plenty of rarer forms that can go for $10,000 or more. And even though the company produced pieces in other colors, collectors favor those in green.

Your modest wall pockets sell for about $1,500 a pair—a real find.

Windmill Folk Art

QUESTION: My mom has had an unusual sculpture in her garden for some years now. It’s a cast-iron rooster that looks like it may have been painted at one time. The thing is darn heavy, so no one has moved it for a long time. It seems to be attached to a concrete block. Can you tell me anything about it?

ANSWER: It sounds like your mom has a windmill counterbalance weight in her garden. If it weren’t for their appeal as folk art, these delightful oddies probably wouldn’t be as highly collectible as they are today. The windmill weight is a key component of the vaneless windmill produced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Counterbalance weights were part of a short-lived but stylish variation of tail technology in windmill production. The Halladay Standard windmill, manufactured by the U.S. Wind Engine & Pump Company  (USWE) of Batavia, Illinois, was the first manufacturer to employ a patented self-regulating wheel that would place itself in or out of sail depending on the strength of the wind. This “folding” mill was first developed in 1854 with a wooden vane that attached to a wooden tail.

In the 1880s, USWE introduced a vaneless version of the Halladay Standard. The Vaneless Standard utilized a star-shaped counterbalance weight instead of a tail. The company produced this mill until 1916 while other companies produced their own versions with different styles of weights into the 1930s. Generally, windmill manufacturers only used counterbalance weights on folding wheel windmills. When electricity came to the re-mote areas of the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, windmills became obsolete.

Windmill makers cast the iron weights in the form of horses, roosters, bulls, squirrels, or rabbits. These
weights measure from 9 to 18 inches high and from 6 to 12 inches wide. And they can weigh as much as 100 pounds. Lighter ones, meant to be filled with scrap metal, were hollow cast. The bigger the mill, the heavier the weight. It all depended on the diameter of the wheel.

Although many collectors seek them out as folk art, they’re not really because they weren’t made in limited quantities by untutored rural or small-town craftsmen. Instead, factory workers cast them by the thousands. The Duplex Open Wheel Mill Company of Superior, Wisconsin, and an Elgin, Illinois, firm that produced the Hummer Windmill led the nation in windmill production.

Once known as the Windmill Capital of the World, Batavia, Illinois, was home to six windmill manufacturers—Appleton Mfg. Co., Batavia Wind Mill Co., Challenge Co., Danforth Co., Snow Manufacturing Co., and U.S. Wind Engine & Pump Co.

Weights not only served as a counterbalance but also as a marketing device, often identifying the mill’s manufacturer with an embossed name someplace on it. But basically, the windmill weight just kept the wheel directed into the wind and prevented tower from tipping over.

What distinguishes one weight from another is its shape. Most windmill manufacturers produced weights in their own foundries. Animal shapes were the most common, but weights also represented letters of the alphabet, horseshoes, celestial bodies and spear tips. The Elgin Windmill Company offered the biggest selection of animals, including roosters, chickens and squirrels. Other companies used the horse, bull, eagle or buffalo for weights. Several, like the Elgin squirrel, rooster and chicken, came in various sizes, tailored to the wheel’s size.

Most weights sat atop a base plate, part of a box or ball often made of tin, cast iron or galvanized metal. Others attached directly to an iron bar. The box, plate or ball then attached to a wood beam extending from the windmill engine. Most weights have lost their bases, mostly due to falls. A sudden fall from a 60-foot tower could break off pieces of the weight, such as a horse’s tail or a rooster’s comb.

Of all the windmill weights out there, the Dempster horse and the Elgin rooster are the most reproduced pieces. Since weights are rare and expensive, it’s often difficult to tell an authentic weight from a reproduction.

In recent years prices for windmill weights have increased from $200 to over $1000 for especially unique ones in good condition. Weights should show traces of rust and pitting after having been exposed to weather over the years. Repainting them drastically reduces their value. However, the value of a windmill weight increases if its paint is 50 to 75 years old and shows wear from the weather.