From lap to loom: The transition of Marseilles white work from hand to machine

Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Mar 2001 by Atkins, Jacqueline M

England continued to be a major market in this period, and the English colonies in North America were active secondary markets. Marseilles quilted clothing, yard goods, and bed covers had been known and used in the North American British colonies since the seventeenth century. Most were imported to America via England, as England wished to satisfy the home market first and only then the colonies. Another motivation was the opportunity to levy further taxes on goods going through a transshipment process.

The Marseilles Quilt Moves to the Loom

The distribution and sale of Marseilles textiles was an extremely lucrative import/export business for British traders. But in the seventeenth century, the leaders of British industry began to search for ways of keeping all the profit from the textile trade at home rather than sharing it with France. In An Account of the French Usurpation upon the Trade of England, the unnamed author notes the seriousness of the problem as he highlights the value of the many French textiles brought into England, including "Household stuff, consisting of Beds, Mattresses, Coverlets quite possibly Marseilles quilts ... [worth] above one hundred thousand pounds a year." He further states that "France doth yearly drain out of the Northern Regions of Europe, sixty-five millions of florens; the prodigious sum of money which he doth yearly drain out of the rest of Europe is beyond my Arithmetick to tell you."23 His solution was to "enfeeble the trade of France," and that is just what England set out to do, although it took nearly a century in regard to the quilted textiles of Marseilles.

The British were weavers, not needle workers, and so it is logical that their response to the trade in French textiles would come on that front. Recognizing the overwhelming popularity of the Marseilles quilted goods and the potential for profit therein, in about 1760 the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce offered a premium "to encourage the making in the Loom, an imitation of that species of Needle-work, long known by the name of Marseille Quilting."24 This challenge was apparently met quickly. George Glascow and Robert Elder, for example, registered for a patent in 1763 for a "new method of weaving in the loom, in every method, fashion, and figure, as well as in imitation of the common manner of quilting, as of India, French, and Marseille quilting,"25 but they did not win the premium. It seems that several premiums had already been awarded to other weavers for development of in-the-loom "Marseilles" quilting prior to that date. And the news traveled fast: a 1765 issue of the Georgia Gazette in Savannah carried a notice from London of "the weavers in Spittalfields having struck upon a method of quilting in their looms, which is much cheaper and neater than any person with a needle can do."" The success of the new weaving method was highlighted in the 17 83 Transactions of the aforementioned society, which noted that:

The manufacture [of Marseilles quilting in the loom] is now so thoroughly established, and so extensive... that there are few persons... in the kingdom (and we may add, within the extent of British commerce, so greatly is it exported) who do not use it in some part of their clothing; so that we may safely say, if the whole fund and revenue of the Society had been given to obtain this one article of Trade, the national gain in return should be considered as very cheaply purchased.27