Stenciled bedcovers

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2003 by Lynne Zacek Bassett

Despite the large number of authors in both the United States and Europe who published stenciling directions, none suggested its use for decorating bedcovers. The stenciled coverlets themselves show that the makers used a variety of techniques to apply the color, often rubbing it on, back and forth, probably rather hard. This technique no doubt led to the use of the term scrubs to describe stenciling brushes. (11) Child recommended "moving the brush round and round in circles, gently until your [design] is coloured as deep as you wish," (12) while Porter recommended a vibrating action.

Stamped decoration is often mistaken for stenciling (see P1. V). (13) In stamping, which is like block printing, the coloring matter is applied to a carved wooden block that is then laid on the fabric; a thump with a wooden mallet insures the transfer of the colon The designs of stamped coverlets tend to be more closely packed and finely detailed than those on stenciled coverlets, and the color lies differently on the fabric, without the evident brushstrokes or build-up of color on the outside edges of the motif that is seen in stenciling. Most tellingly the designs often have negative spaces that would be extremely difficult to achieve with stencils. Stamped coverlets most commonly originated in the mid Atlantic and midwestern states.

It has been speculated that fruits and vegetables from the garden or pigments ground in oil and set with a "stencil mordant" were used for the colorful designs of stenciled bedcovers. (14) Although elements of these ideas may be valid, the coloring agents used were much more complicated and diverse. Most surviving stenciled bedcovers are still vibrantly colored and were probably made with pigments that combined watercolor and dyeing techniques. Experiments in inorganic chemistry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries created dozens of new dyes; some of these new chemical compounds were used to create colors for stenciling on textiles. (15)

The Old Sturbridge Village Research Library in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, contains a small, unpaginated notebook from about 1820, in which Frances Rogers Arnold (1786-1865) of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote down instructions for making numerous "Colours for painting on velvet satin &c." (16) These colors would also have been appropriate for stenciling on the smooth cotton used for bedcovers, quilts, window shades or curtains, and table covers. Her color recipes, some of which were copied from Alston's Hints to Young Practitioners, include:

Red crimson N. 1--Boil one drachm [a dram, 1/8th of an ounce] of carmine [cochineal, a beetle imported from South America and used for red dyes] in six tablespoons full of water for two minutes. Then add one ounce of spirits sal ammoniac [chloride of ammonia] & boil it two minutes longer

The blues were particularly time-consuming and potentially hazardous to make:

Blue No. 2--Mix one fourth pound of indigo with half an ounce of oil of vitriol [sulfuric acid] & a little water; shake the bottle every day till the whole is dissolved. This may be made paler by adding water it is a bright blue.