Bedcover with appliqued crewel embroidery motifs

Eighteenth-century American embroidered domestic furnishings, such as curtains and bedcovers, are rare survivals, and most examples are found preserved in museums. The Met is lucky to have quite a number of pieces, collected between 1922 and the present day (22.55, 24.188, 44.140. 61.48.1,.2, 2000.205). Few pieces, whether bedcovers, bed curtains, or indeed items of embroidered clothing, are in pristine original condition—this type of embroidery was considered so valuable, and so evocative of the amateur embroiderer who spent the hours of time working it, that it was frequently salvaged and reused. In all likelihood, the embroidered vines on this bed cover originally decorated a set of narrow head bed curtains. When the fine linen of bed curtains became too worn, the embroidery was carefully cut out, and appliqued onto a heavier linen sheet in order to use it as a bedcover. It is not immediately apparent when this may have happened—it could have been as early as the turn of the 19th century, since the ground sheet appears to date from then, or post-1876, when the Colonial Revival movement was in full swing, and pieces resonant with our country’s Colonial past were particularly treasured The bedcover seems to have descended in the Cabot family, since there is an old paper label on it signed by Walter Channing Cabot (1829-1904). In the eighteenth century, when the embroidery was made, the Cabots resided in Salem, Massachusetts