The Coverlet Index

An online wiki of 19th-century coverlets and their weavers

Browse the Coverlet Index

About the project

The Coverlet Index is an online wiki produced and administered by the McCarl Coverlet Gallery at Saint Vincent College. It is intended to serve as a collaborative common resource for researchers and collectors of 19th-century handwoven coverlets and their weavers.

The wiki is very much a work in progress. In keeping with our mission to educate the public about the rich history of handwoven American coverlets, the McCarl Gallery has an open-access policy regarding its research and archives. As such, we are making our preliminary work on the Coverlet Index freely available to view online despite its rough edges and many incomplete sections. Otherwise, it would take many years to bring it to a truly “publishable” stage.

We are actively updating existing articles and adding new features as time permits, but our staff is small and only periodically able to dedicate our time to this project. If you are interested in volunteering as a guest contributor to the Coverlet Index, please contact us.

Where it started

The Coverlet Index began as an effort to create a language and vocabulary for describing the visual characteristics of figured & fancy coverlet patterns, so that they can be referenced and compared in a systematic way. What began as a tool for more efficient collections management and cataloging quickly grew into a kind of “field guide” to commonly recurring motifs and patterns. This new resource enables us to ask and answer questions about coverlets such as which weavers shared patterns, which were the most popular patterns, etc.

From there, the Index took on a life of its own and expanded to include weaver biographies, information about weave structures, transcriptions of weaving advertisements and other primary sources, and more.

From the outset, one of our goals in the wiki has been to emphasize visual resources. The images on the wiki are largely sourced from the McCarl collections, the public domain, and images that we collect through the Coverlet Documentation Project.

  • Agriculture & Manufactures

  • Bird of Paradise

  • Christian and Heathen

  • Double Roses & Blossom

  • Eagle & Stars (or "Cavalry")

  • Eagle Medallions

  • The Farmer's Fancy

  • Frenchman's Fancy

  • Frenchman's Fancy

  • Grapes

  • Hempfield Railroad

  • Lilies of France & Diamond

  • Peacocks Feeding Young

  • Washington ("United We Stand")

Working on the pattern section of the wiki is like playing an open-ended game of “Match” spanning thousands of coverlet images from many different sources. We’ve created a coverlet matching game to give you the idea.

Note: coverlets that “Match” must feature the same graphic pattern, but they may have wildly different color schemes. If you’re up for a challenge, try the harder version.